HD channels come in in SD quality

[tangential]

We've had a weird problem crop up with our Voom since yesterday. It manifests itself this way. We switch to an SD only sat. Channel (like SciFi or TBS) and instead of having sidebars on the 4:3 picture (as the setup says) the picture is stretched to fill the screen. From that point on, all the menus and channels come in in (crappy) SD quality, although the HD channels (Sat and OTA) are stretched to fill the screen. (Our connection is component to an Infocus 4800.) The menus are really ragged and bad, but if I go into setup mode, the box says it is set to provide sidebars on 4:3 images.

At that point, we power off the voom, tv, stereo, etc.. and power back on. That doesn't help.

Then we power it all off and disconnect the power and coax from the Voom. That doesn't help.

Then we cycle thru the red reset switch on the front several times and the picture sometimes returns to normal.

Has anyone seen this behavior?


Thanks,
John

 

[Sean Mota]

In the system settings of the stb in the picture menus, there are two other menus that can put the image back into 4x3. I believe the top menu needs to be in pillar and the other non-stretch. I do not exactly remember the options at this point but I can check tonight. Are you sure you have these options selected properly on the stb?

 

[Ilya]

From that point on, all the menus and channels come in in (crappy) SD quality

I think you are in Native mode. Switch to 1080i and everything will be ok again.

Then we cycle thru the red reset switch on the front several times and the picture sometimes returns to normal.

John, this is not a reset button. It's a resolution selection button. When you cycle through different resolution modes see which horizontal bars are lit. The top bar is 1080i-fixed mode. All 4 bars lit is Native mode. Leave it in 1080i, not in Native.

 

[tangential]

HD in SD Mode (Problem FIxed)

Turns out it was user error.

I run the voom component output thru my Sony Receiver before it gets to the projector. That way the receiver can auto switch DVD (also component) to the InFocus projector.

I recently added a wall hung 17" flat panel (SD) monitor in the bar area (around the corner from the projector.)

So that it would autosource properly, I also connected the voom and the dvd player composite to the Sony and ran a composite out from the Sony to the flat panel. That way both monitors always run from the same source. (I also already had a svideo cable running from the Sony to the projector for my laserdisc player, so there was a non compositet path to the projector in place, but signal was only present when the ld was being used.)

I had always run the voom so that it would dynamically switch between the various settings (1080i, 720p, etc..) because the InFocus handles that. Apparently we accidently turned the auto-select of source on inside the InFocus and now that there was signal on composite output from the voom into the Sony, it would switch to that when we went to SD channels and the HD signal was temporarily lost while it switched modes. Since the composite signal never went away, it never switched off of it.

It was easily fixed by turning off the autoselect feature of the projector.

Duh!

Thanks for the input.

 

[Ilya]

I would've never guessed!