New to this HDTV/BluRay Thing, Questions (1 Viewer)

[Mike_Heggemann]

Hey all,

I just recently made "the plunge" and got into this HD world.

I just recently picked up a 37" Westinghouse LTV-37w2 HDTV and a Playstation 3.

When I picked up the HDTV at Bestbuy, I was told it had 2 HDMI ports, but it didn't - it only had 1. But, after hooking up my Sony DVP-NC85H upconverting 5 DVD changer to it (via HDMI) and seeing how beautiful the picture was, I didn't feel like taking the TV back to exchange it for the similar Insignia model that had 2 HDMI ports on it. So, I had to hook the PS3 up via component cables.

Now, here are my questions:

1) I know that the PS3 does not upconvert SD DVDs via component (it outputs it at 480p, which kinda makes the Widescreen HDTV a moot point unless I tell the TV to "fill" the picture), but will it play Bluray discs in HD over component (my TV supports both 720p and 1080i)?

2) The HDTV works great and looks beautiful except for one thing: it seems to not like one of my over the air HD stations (I don't have cable or satellite) - the TV has locked up (the screen will freeze and audio will stop) twice on this station, and this station only. I have to power down the TV and then power it back up to get control back. Signal strength is one bar from maximum, so it doesn't seem to be a signal strength issue. Is it a problem with the TV itself, a firmware issue, or just something that can happen occasionally in this brave new HD world?

3) I'm somewhat confused by this upconvert thing, but I think this is the upshot: if a DVD player does not do upconversion, it will output to an HDTV in 480p, which means it won't be true "widescreen" unless either: the HDTV does upconversion, or you have the HDTV "fill" the screen. have I got this right?

4) Anyone want to soothe me by telling me I was right to keep Westinghouse over going back and trying the Insignia to get the extra HDMI port? (Based on price and features, these were my only 2 options)

 

[Aaron Silverman]

Hi Mike,

Upconversion has nothing to do with whether the image is widescreen. 480/ 720/ 1080 refers to the number of horizontal scan lines, not the number of pixel columns. On a 37" set, unless you're sitting right on top of it, it probably won't make a huge difference anyway.

Were you watching a non-anamorphic DVD? For that you'd need the TV to blow up the image to fill the screen. Pretty much all newer DVDs are anamorphic, which means they'll fill the widescreen image without being zoomed in.

IIRC, the PS3 should output in HD via component as long as the discs aren't copy-protected. Most aren't these days, but you never know if that will change. BTW, it also upconverts DVDs -- you should try it via the HDMI jack. It may look just as good as the DVD changer. Unless you need the changer feature, you probably don't need the separate deck at all.

Insignia is Best Buy's store brand -- does it have a better warranty than the Westinghouse? I'd lean towards exchanging the set if it's not a hassle, especially considering that locking-up problem. The OTA signal should not be freezing the set like that.

 

[Steve Schaffer]

The PS3 with 1.9 update will blow away the other player for upconversion. So far no BD disc released in the US has the flag that prevents HD output over component video.

Upconversion has nothing to do with correct aspect ratio for widescreen movies, but you may need to set the player for a 16/9 aspect ratio screen in it's setup menu. Only non-anamorphic widescreen dvds will require you to zoom with the tv.

That one HD station may be having problems with it's digital encoder causing the screen freezeup, this was fairly common a couple of years ago, in other words it's just something that can happen in this brave new HD world. Stations vary in their commitment and budget for fixing these problems.

Another possible cause may be multipath caused by the signal boucing off a nearby large or tall building, or the signal just might be too strong--in the latter case you can get RF signal attenuators at Radio Shack.

 

[Mike_Heggemann]

As far as my upconversion question, here's why I asked:

As mentioned in my OP, I have the PS3 connected to the component input on my HDTV, and I have set the PS3 to allow output in 480i, 480p, and 720p (I turned off 1080i because the PS3 menu text got too tiny to read from my couch in that mode.)

I put in the SD DVD version of Aeon Flux (the movie version with Charlize Theron), which is anamorphic widescreen, and, when it played, the TV switched to 480p, and the movie played in the center of the screen and did not fill the width of the widescreen TV.

 

[Paul Dyer]

Update your PS3 and you should not need the sony dvd player except as a backup. The ps3--once updated--will offer a better image through the hdmi connection.

 

[Steve Schaffer]

On your PS3, go to Settings then BD/DVD settings then "DVD Upscaler". Set DVD Upscaler to "normal". If you set this to "Double" you'll get bars on all 4 sides of a widescreen movie.

 

[Aaron Silverman]

It sounded like the TV was completely frozen, requiring a power-off, not just a frozen image on that station. Is that really a common effect of station encoding issues?

I've seen plenty of frozen images from OTA HD signals, but they never locked up my set like that.

 

[Mike_Heggemann]

Yes, it required a poweroff, although I was able to adjust the volume with the frozen picture on the screen. Now that I think about it, I didn't try changing the channels via the remote - the remote on the new TV has the channel and volume buttons reversed from where they were with my old TV, so I was adjusting volume when I thought I was changing channels.

It hasn't happened again (so far) since my initial report, and last night I was playing DVDs and using the PS3 most of the night.

 

[Mike_Heggemann]

Ok, so here's what I did last night...

I switched the DVD player to use the component inputs on the HDTV, and moved the PS3 to the HDMI port.

Here's the problem I had when I did this:

The DVD player outputs at 480p and the TV switches to 480p, but any anamorphic widescreen DVD's I watched were windowboxed and would not fill the screen on the HDTV unless I set the TV to "fill" mode.

I had the TV type set to 16:9 on the DVD player.

The PS3 looked wonderful and played the same DVD in full widescreen without having to use the "fill" mode on the TV.

Should a 480p signal play anamorphic DVDs in full widescreen on an HDTV w/o having to use the "fill" mode of the HDTV?

 

[Stephen Tu]

Not necessarily automatically. Probably your TV when it sees 720p/1080i signal (upconverted output) assumes that the signal is 16:9 & automatically forces "fill" mode. When it sees a 480p signal, this could be 4:3 or 16:9 so you have to choose yourself. There are some sets/DVD players that support a widescreen signalling protocol, to auto-switch but many do not.

Note your particular TV lacks a zoom mode for 4:3 letterboxed content to fill the screen. You'd have to watch with bars on all 4 sides, or watch it distorted. There aren't many 4:3 letterbox DVDs these days, new ones are mostly "16:9 enhanced", but you still run into a few when renting older discs, foreign films, films from smaller studios, and also on non-HD cable channels that sometimes run letterboxed content. The only way to fix this would be to find a DVD player that has some sort of zoom function itself to fix this. This issue would actually be big enough for me to choose a different set, but YMMV. What sort of budget is your limit? Still in return period?

 

[Mike_Heggemann]

Actually, the TV does have a selectable "fill" mode (it's even got a button for it on the remote), but my wife and I tend to watch a lot of TV on DVD and a lot of classic movies from the 30's and 40's, so we'd constantly need to be switching it back and forth. My wife is not that technologically savvy, so I was hoping to get away from needing to do that.

 

[Stephen Tu]

I think it's not too difficult to teach a person "if black bars all around, or people/objects look stretched out, hit button XXX until it looks right".

 

[Mike_Heggemann]

You don't know my wife

 

[Adam Gregorich]

Try making the regular DVD player output 480i, or better yet, sell it on Ebay, buy the PS3 remote and just use the PS3 for DVD, Blu-Ray and games.