Help! Connecting VCR to Panasonic HDTV (1 Viewer)

[AGN]

My dad recently bought a 32 inch Panasonic Viera HDTV (model # TC-L32C22) to replace his 15 year-old tube TV that finally went out. He has a VCR and DVD player connected to it, both using composite (red-white-yellow) cable connectors. The DVD player works fine, but the Sony VCR (model # SLV-N500) is causing some problems. It plays tapes O.K., but while playing a tape if you hit the fast-forward or rewind buttons the screen on the TV goes blank. After you take your finger off the button and the tape starts playing, the screen turns back on again. I also noticed that the screen turns off whenever there is blank tape being played, instead of showing static on the screen. I tried hooking up another VCR made by RCA, and got exactly the same results with the screen going blank during fast-forward and rewind. These VCRs both worked fine with other TVs, so I think that the problem lies with the new Panasonic TV.


Panasonic customer service wasn't able to help with this, and didn't know of any settings on the TV that could be changed to stop the screen from going blank. Has anyone else run into this problem, and more importantly know how to fix it? Thanks.

 

[Jesse Skeen]

It has to do with how these newfangled 'digital' components are handling older analog signals. When forward or reverse-scanning through a tape, the signal is unstable so the TV may just 'mute' it out if it can't stabilize it. I have my stuff going through a receiver which is hooked to the TV by HDMI- the first receiver I tried had a lot of dropouts with analog material, it even dropped out for a few seconds on laserdiscs when the player switched to side 2, which was completely unacceptable so I returned the receiver and got a different one which doesn't have this problem. It seems to handle scanning tapes a lot better too, though I usually just play tapes straight through when I watch them.

 

[Charles Smith]

Interesting. On my new Panasonic plasma, I saw this total blank-out happening during some credit/title sequences -- the type in which the background is totally black and one name fades completely out before the next name or title fades in. I was playing a Blu-ray or DVD, sorry I don't remember which. When the one name or title had faded out to "film black", the screen display itself would switch off to "screen black", then it would immediately come back on when the next thing appeared on screen...so you had this switching-off-and-on thing happening throughout the sequence.


Now, it just happens that when I observed this, I had the TV set to its "standard" picture mode, which actually provides a very dim picture. Since I was experimenting with settings anyway, I then switched to THX mode (which I'm finding pretty near ideal for watching movies on Blu-ray and on the better DVDs)... and guess what? The image held stable and solid throughout all such sequences. So, in this instance, this was a matter of the TV's settings.

FYI, all signals are routed via HDMI from my receiver, a Pioneer VSX-30THX. I have a different issue going on with laserdisc signals, which I'm going to ask about when I have my facts together.

 

[AGN]

Thanks Jesse and Charles for your replies. I had a feeling it had something to do with the signal being unstable when scanning through a tape, and the TV not being able to understand the signal. I'll be at my dad's house later this week and I can try fiddling around with the TV a bit. I don't think he has a THX setting for the picture, but I believe there are about 3 other picture settings that I can try changing it to. If that doesn't work, then I'll look into routing the VCR through a receiver or just getting one of those newer VCR/DVD combos that have an HDMI output, so that there will at least be a digital connection to the TV. Thanks again for your help with this.

 

[AGN]

Thanks Jesse and Charles for your replies. I had a feeling that it had something to do with the signal being unstable when scanning through a tape, and the TV not being able to understand the signal. I'll be at my dad's house later this week, and I'll try fiddling around with the TV at that time. I don't think he has a TXH setting for the picture, but I believe there are about 3 other picture settings that I can try changing it to. If that doesn't work, then I'll look into routing the VCR through a receiver or just getting one of those newer VCR/DVD combos that have an HDMI output, so that there will at least be a digital signal going to the TV. Thanks again for your help.