Got Mits WS-55511, looking for help with VGA/RGBHV inputs and more (1 Viewer)

[Chris Brown]

Hello everyone, I’ve been out of the hobby for much of last year due to the fact that my old Mitsubishi RPTV was finally starting to die (Got it in the mid 1980’s, so I can hardly complain). All this changed however when final authorization was given to purchase a new TV. Today we came home with a Mitsubishi WS 55511 55” TV. I know it’s an older model, but I’m satisfied with the deal we got

After spending almost 8 hours hooking everything up, tweaking things, and playing around, I find myself with lots of questions. I’d like your guys help.

I am heavy duty into computers, so when I found the TV had a “VGA input” I was excited to say the least. To have a dedicated computer for the TV hooked up in a manner which was so native was a major selling point. (I’ve previously had it hooked up with either S-Video or composite). I was very disappointed though, because it would only do 640x480. That in itself wasn’t as disappointing as the fact that none of the Stretch/expand/zoom/etc options functioned when using VGA input. I had envisioned it being much the same as when I watch a letterbox laserdisc/DVD. In that case, what I would do would be to switch it to expand mode once the movie started which would bring it from its tiny inner box to its proper dimensions. With the VGA input however, it was permanently in stretch mode which was awful and the only way I think I might ever be able to use a computer to watch movies via the VGA input would be to stretch it vertically on the source to compensate for the horizontal stretching the TV does, though I’m not sure how I’d even go about doing that, sigh…

I noticed on the back, in addition to the many component inputs, there appeared to be one that had 5 inputs, meaning the horizontal and vertical hold on different cables I believe. This is strikingly similar to the setup one of my high end 21” computer monitors use. It has a cable which takes the analog video signal from the computer and splits it into 5 separate BNC cables which then go into the monitor. Could I do this on the TV also?

A quick search on google lead me to a store that sold this cable:


If I were to use this cable to hook up my computer to the TV using the RGBHV inputs, would I still have the same limitations I had when using the VGA input? Ideally, I’d like to be able to set the computer to run at 1920x1080, which I believe conforms to 1080i HDTV.

So do you think I’m headed down the right track with this cable idea?

Also, I understand that the TV is capable of 480i, 480P, and 1080i, but no form of 720 whatsoever. In all likelihood, will this prove to be a huge limitation of the TV? What happens if I have a 720 source, is it upconverted to 1080 or downconverted to 480? I can only speculate.

Thanks in advance for any help you guys may be able to provide.

 

[Robert_J]

Using your internal ATSC tuner, a 720p signal is converted to 1080i. Your component inputs will not accept a 720p signal so whatever you are using for a source make sure it will output 1080i or 420p.

-Robert

 

[Chris Brown]

Well today what I did was I took the VGA breakout cable from my 21” computer monitor (replaced it with a regular VGA cable which works fine). I went to radioshack and bought 5 BNC to phono jack converters (at $5 each, sigh) and that gave me the cable I needed.

When I first plugged it in, it didn’t seem to work. I set it to 1920x1080 and nothing would come on the screen. When I clicked the interlace option in powerstrip a garbled image would come up on the screen. I was able to get it working at 640x480, which the TV seemed to recognize as 480p. Being that wasn’t widescreen, and the same as the VGA input, I started trying different resolutions. I got 856x480 to work, which the TV seemed to recognize as 1080i. I’m not sure why, I’m pretty sure that’s still 480P right? Anyway, anything beyond this is just icing on the cake because it works GREAT at 856x480 and I’m not sure I would need to go higher than that anyway (if there is a reason I should try, let me know). DVD’s looked incredible.

 

[Robert_J]

At 1920x1080 did you change your refresh rate? I think you have to set it to something in the 30hz region.

-Robert

 

[Chris Brown]

When I checked the interlace box, it set the refresh rate to 30hz automatically

 

[Stephen_Ri]

Did you try 960x540p? I assume you have a graphics card that can do interlaced resolutions like 1080i; not all of them can. The most popular for this sort of application seems to be ATI Radeon cards with current drivers. I mention it because I have an older ATI rage card and can't get anything but 640x480 on my set.

 

[Rick Guynn]

There is a sticky thread over at AVS with a bunch of powerstrip settings for a Mitsubishi RPTV. You might try some of those.

RG

 

[Chris Brown]

Yeah, I got 960x540p to work except there is a LOT of overscan whereas at 856x480 there is none at all.

 

[Chris Brown]

Well I’ve run into a new problem. We just got a new box from comcast today. The problem is that there is only one set of component inputs that supports over 480P and it happens to be the one that is also part of the RGBHV inputs. I would have to go back there and swap the cables every time I wanted to use the HTPC.

I'm wondering if there is any possible way to pass anything other than 640x480 via the VGA port. If I could just get something like 856x480 going, that would be great. I found that my PC isn't really powerful enough to do 1080i anyway, and for things like deinterlacing DVD's, 480P would be fine, I just need it to be 16:9 and not 4:3.