Help with Black&While picture from DVD player (1 Viewer)

[Marshall Alsup]

Hey everyone, A buddy of mine is having a really wierd problem. I've been badgering him to get a DVD player for a while now and He finally got a Sony(model #DVP-NS300/B). The problem is that when he hookes it up to his TV the picture is in B&W!
here's the story, I had him bring it to my place and we hooked it up to my TV and it was in color and looked great. So I travelled back with him to his house to see what the deal was. I plugged it into his tv directly via the RCA jacks. Result: B&W, I then plugged it into his VCR via RCA jacks. Same, B&W picture. His VCR is plugged into his TV via a coax cable. So I had the DVD player going RCA into the VCR and the VCR going coax into the TV. The wierd thing is that if you switch the VCR from VIDEO in to a cable station the station is in color even though the video in (input from DVD player) isn't! Since the picture is still black and white I then used a second set of RCA cables to hook up the VCR to the TV via RCA, at this point the DVD was hooked to the VCR via RCA and the VCR was hooked to the TV via RCA. Still a B&W Picture!
His tv does not have SVHS input or this would probably be a mute point.
Just for fun, here's an even wierder twist to the story. I let him borrow one of my DVD player to take over to his house and see if it works. My DVD player plays on his system in color! I would instantly say that his DVD player was a POS but since it played fine when he brought it to my house I am at a loss.
Heres is stuff:
TV: Toshiba 20" stereo
VCR: Panasonic PV8450.
Heres the DVD player I lent him (that works on his system):
Pioneer: DV333
Thanks you guys
Marshall

 

[Guy Kuo]

Bizarre story. My first inclination would be to make sure that he was consistently hooking into composite video out of the DVD player (yellow RCA jack) and not the Y portion of the component out (green RCA jack). That could give a results as you are seeing if you did it right at your place and he is doing it right with the Pioneer but wrong at his place with the Sony.
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Guy Kuo
Link Removed
Ovation Software, the Home of AVIA DVD

 

[Marshall Alsup]

Thanks for the reply Guy, I did check that. We were using the composite outs not the components. You are right, this is bizarre!!

I have no idea what the problem is.
Thanks again
Marshall

 

[Robert_F]

Hi Marshall, Not sure if this is the same problem as yours but it may be worth trying. My father and I have had troubles with our Pioneer DVD players playing some disks in colour and some in B/W. I found that I needed to move the auto select switch for PAL/NTSC from auto to PAL. Once done all disks played properly in colour (including NTSC disks).
Hope this helps