I think my TV may be dying - help!? (1 Viewer)

[BrianShort]

This is a somewhat long post, but I have a summary diagram at the end...

I'm not sure if this is the right forum for this, but I posted it here since I think it's TV related

I have a 42" Sony rear projection TV I bought a few years ago. Don't remember the model number offhand, I'll check later. It's a 720p model that was popular a few years back. I think it may be dying.

Long story short, I got up to play some GTA IV, turned everything on like normal, and noticed that the display was garbled. I switched to Cable TV, and it was the same thing. By garbled, I mean the picture shows up as a bunch of horizontal lines on the screen, colors that may represent what is supposed to be on the screen, but pretty much useless otherwise.

Video is fed to the TV via HDMI from my Denon AVR-888 receiver. Video/Audio from the PS3 comes into the receiver via the HDMI #1 input, and from my cable box through component for video, and optical for audio. Audio from both sources sounds fine as outputted to my speakers from the receiver.

I turned everything off, unplugged the HDMI cables, hooked it back up, turned it back on, and same thing. I did switch a couple of HDMI cables around, but it didn't really change anything.

Now here is the interesting thing... I don't know if I did something, or it was just a fluke, but at one point during my troubleshooting session, I managed to get a picture from the cable box, and my PS3 display came up correctly (I have it set to output in 1080i or 720p mode), but when I fired up a game (Warhawk), it was garbled again, until I quit out of the game. I put in a blu-ray movie, displayed fine.

So I started thinking maybe the receiver was bad and wasn't liking certain video modes. I put in a DVD to see if it liked 480p, and it displayed fine, but then I remembered that I have my PS3 set to upscale DVDs to 1080i. I turned upscaling off, and boom, the display was messed up for DVDs at 480p.

I figured I was onto something now, and maybe something in the receivers HDMI conversion hardware was broken. I forced my PS3 into 720p mode, and same thing, garbled display. It seemed 1080i was the only thing that worked. I shut everything down and powered back up, and unfortunately I was back to where I was before... nothing working... cable, PS3 in any display mode, nothing.

Just for s#!t$ and giggles I hooked the PS3 directly to the TVs HDMI input. The PS3's main menu came up just fine, so I fired up Warhawk again, and guess what? Didn't work, garbled display... !@$%$#^* Seemed to be the same thing as before... 1080i displayed fine, but 480p and 720p both don't work. Cable into the TV via component works fine.

I hooked everything up as I had it before through the Denon, and it was the same as before, everything garbled. I guess it was just a fluke that it was working before.

So, a diagram summarizing my problem

PS3 (HDMI) -> Denon (HDMI) -> TV
720p, 480p: Doesn't work, garbled display
1080i: Worked once, but then stopped
Audio works fine

Cable (Component) -> Denon (HDMI) -> TV
Garbled display
Audio works fine

PS3 (HDMI) -> TV
720p, 480p: Doesn't work, garbled display
1080i: Works fine
Audio via HDMI is scratchy and broken
Cable (Component) -> TV
Works fine

Soooo.... what do the experts here think? Is it my TV or my receiver? I'm leaning towards the TV since hooking the PS3 directly to the TV didn't seem to work very well except for 1080i mode. I guess if it is dead, it's the excuse I wanted to buy a new set, except I really didn't want to spend the money on a new TV right now :frowning:

I guess my next step would be to bring the receiver and the PS3 to another HDMI capable HDTV to see if it works with that, which sounds like a PITA.

 

[BrianShort]

I'm not sure what's going on... came home from doing some errands, and turned the TV and everything back on. Through the receiver, everything worked fine (except 720p mode through the PS3, still garbled)... I set the PS3 to output 1080i ONLY (and the default 480p you apparently can't turn off), and fired up Warhawk, and it WORKED!! Didn't look like it was playing in 480p, so I guess the PS3 was playing it in 1080i mode? I thought it downconverted to 480p if 720p wasn't available, but whatever. Tried Call of Duty 4 as well, and it looked like I remember it. Spose it could have been my imagination too.

I also set the Receiver to output HDMI in 1080i, so maybe there was some upconverting going on that I didn't notice. I'll need to play with it more, as I expect the next time I turn things on, it won't work again...

 

[BrianShort]

I feel like I'm talking to myself here, but anyway... I turned off the power to everything at the power strip, let it sit for a minute, turned the power strip back on, and so far everything seems to work just fine... so disregard!