HDMI connections

[mr]

Apologies about the blue room - you appear to have been right royally ignored there which I find odd unless the place has died since I last looked in (which was some time ago).

 

[RogerS]

Ray...have you asked the place that you bought them from? They are the first line of support (and legally obliged to boot). Also as both are LG devices you might get (slim chance I know) some help from LG?

 

[Argee]

Apologies about the blue room - you appear to have been right royally ignored there which I find odd unless the place has died since I last looked in (which was some time ago).

No worries, mr - perhaps the question was just too low-tech for them? Anyway, I've been ignored at better places than that!

Ray.

 

[Argee]

Ray...have you asked the place that you bought them from? They are the first line of support (and legally obliged to boot). Also as both are LG devices you might get (slim chance I know) some help from LG?

That might have been an option, Roger, had he bought them elsewhere than a large Currys shed. We had absolutely no problem changing the DVD player this afternoon and put them on notice that if another cable didn't solve it, then the (£2.5K) TV was next! I strongly suspect that it'll be the cable, but we'll see.

Thanks for the various responses, everyone. I'll report final outcome, although that might be after a couple of weeks away in the sun.

Ray.

 

[Neomorph]

That might have been an option, Roger, had he bought them elsewhere than a large Currys shed.

Make sure it's sorted within 30 days of purchase as Currys insist on repairing after that time. When I had a video recorder go duff and had repair after repair done (often involving over 4 weeks at a time) I asked for a replacement and they refused stating that after 30 days they only had to repair it (which they never did in the end).

After several attempts at fixing it they tried to fob me off saying that stereo meant the sound came out of both speakers. When I told them it was mono they denied it. In the end I threatened them with Watchdog and Trading Standards and they gave me my money back reluctantly.

I've not bought anything from their chain of stores since (Dixons, Currys, The Link).

 

[RogerS]

have you thought of doing a factory reset of both if such an option is possible?

This text taken from the LG blurb on your plasma screen suggests that it should be automatic...

Integrated remote provides simple control of your system: HDMI has built-in intelligence that can automatically configure your system on demand. When utilizing this feature- with the click of a single button- your remote control tells your HDMI-linked system which components to turn on or off to view a DVD, listen to a CD, or watch cable TV.

But then again reading the manual for your DVD player seems to suggest that not all HDMI devices are compatible.....so I reckon still that your best bet is to speak to LG and ask if the two devices are compatible.

They both need to be either on Bitstream or PCM. Does your TV support Bitstream?

On a slightly different tack, you will get a better picture if you avoid composite feeds. The DVD has both component and RGB (SCART)...much better

 

[Neomorph]

Oooer Roger... I never knew HDMI did that. You learn something new every day! Oh and they arent using composite as the digital video is going through the HDMI lead. This is loads better than scart or composite.

I haven't got anything connected via HDMI yet as I haven't upgraded my cable tv to Telewest's TVDrive as it's apparently pretty tempramental at present. I'm waiting until midsummer when I'm hoping the early adopters will have nagged the engineers to fix most of the problems. Until then everything goes through component from my AV amp.

 

[RogerS]

I haven't got anything connected via HDMI yet as I haven't upgraded my cable tv to Telewest's TVDrive as it's apparently pretty tempramental at present.

Temperemental? You call that temperemental?? You should have a Hummy 9200....now that's what I call temperamental...lockups nearly everyday. It strikes me that the closer TV and AV get to digits ...which is where they are heading then featuritis sets in with the boxes...and because the various specs are either badly written/vague/have holes in (delete where appropriate) then things like MHEG will continue to cause no end of problems that the equipment vendors will struggle to fix. BRING BACK ANALOGUE.

And could well be at the bottom of Argees problem.

EDIT....Ray, a quick peek in AVforums seems to point the finger at either too long a cable or poor quality. www.bettercables.com seem to be their 'Dure-edge'...so maybe your gut feel was right all along :lol:

 

[Neomorph]

Roger how about this for a list of probs...

Loses recording and hides them on the hard drive requiring a reformat.
Hangs when pressing remote button.
Reboots itself multiple times.
Loads of duff boxes requiring one customer to have three boxes in two days.
TVDrive is painfully slow changing channels, both when it is recording and when it isn't.
The series link seems to be hit and miss, one series will record fine, and another will record every second episode.
Some manual recordings just don't record.
Recordings have squeaks and blips in the audio.
Menus leave large black blocks on the screen after closing them.

I could go on but that would be pointless. Would you believe even the installation engineers think this system has been deployed too early and that customers shouldn't be charged for a system that falls over so frequently.

I think that all of the new technology that is coming out now is pretty buggy and fails to work right. I have a DVD recorder with a computer network socket and I thought "WOOP, I'll be able to watch stuff over my network and remotely program the recordings like they do in Japan" but what happens??? They cripple it for export and all it allows you to do is remotely change the names of the recordings. :evil:

Mind you I do love my setup as I am currently sitting on my sofa and composing this on my plasma TV while downloading TV episodes from the states well in advance of them arriving here... oh yeah and in better quality than what I get over my cable box at present as they have more HD programming over there.

 

[RogerS]

I think that all of the new technology that is coming out now is pretty buggy and fails to work right.

Totally agree with you. However I see an even bigger problem and that is because this is consumer electronics they are market driven to bring out new products on, roughly, a six month cycle. So all effort goes towards developing the new products and zero towards fixing bugs in the existing products. At least in the PC world there was a broadly generic underlying product and so things gradually converged towards making a stable platform (although over a period of many years)

Better let Ray have his thread back :wink:

 

[Neomorph]

Roger I thoroughly agree. I've had a Pinnacle Showcenter for a while now and the software updates add new stuff but routinely forget to fix existing bug in even the original deployment abilities. I keep installing the new software and then get annoyed at the bugs and then go back to software I installed over a year ago as it is much more responsive and table.

... and yeah... oops and sorry for the hijack.

 

[Argee]

A correction - the TV is LG 50PX4D - but no matter, what is important is that it does NOT have a decoder to handle PCM! I've written to LG to get this confirmed, but shan't hold my breath. It is, therefore, no flippin' wonder that the sound was awful via HDMI.

Hardly seems worth the trouble changing the cable now, does it? I haven't passed this news along yet, but I know that he'll be using his AV amp for the audio anyway, so I guess it's a case of enjoy the better picture and forget about a single-lead setup.

Thanks again for all your thoughts and suggestions. I've learned quite a bit along the way.

Ray.

 

[Neomorph]

LOL... don't worry about it as stuff these days are so damned complicated they take time to figure out. Hell I still haven't totally sussed out my Denon AVR-3805 amp and I've had it over a year now. Like for instance the channel for my Showcenter will only appear if I switch to DVD and then to vdp (the channel I chose for the Showcenter). They are two completely seperate inputs but one doesn't work without the other heh.

One thing that's confusing me... He bought this HD-DVD player for a reason I'm guessing... but where is he getting the disks to play in it? Or does the DVD player have a scaler in it to improve the standard DVDs?

 

[RogerS]

Glad you've got to the bottom of it..even though not the ideal solution you were looking for.

I also have a funny with my Sony plasma.. when I installed it I used AV socket 5 for the DVD player..component feed (or RGB..same difference) and labelled AV5 as the DVD. All worked well for many months until recently when I now have to select AV4 to see the DVD! Now I've not plugged the cables over...I've not done anything to the TV. I've scanned through the available set-up options on the TV and can't see any settings that will cause this...and yet I have to select AV4 to watch the DVD.

At first glance the picture seems just as good and so I'll live with it but it's damned annoying not knowing WHY :twisted:

 

[Argee]

One thing that's confusing me... He bought this HD-DVD player for a reason I'm guessing... but where is he getting the disks to play in it? Or does the DVD player have a scaler in it to improve the standard DVDs?

Yes, it's supposed to have a scaler (and it's definitely a better picture), but after all this caper, it may well just have a thicker rubber band for all I know!

Ray.

 

[Argee]

Just when I thought I'd got to the bottom of this flippin' saga, I get a very swift reply from LG:

"Could we please identify where the problem is here. Does the TV experience problems when the DVD is not connected? Does the DVD work properly when connected to another TV?
The TV has an integrated digital detuner and HDMI connections should give perfect quality sound, in theory there should be no problems handling the sound input.

Yours Sincerely,
LG Electronics UK Helpdesk
0870 607 5544"

So, according to the "horse's mouth" there is a decoder built in. Well, the new cable is awaited with interest, but the airport beckons, so it'll have to wait. BFN!

Ray.

 

[Neomorph]

Well I can see one mistake in the LG message... What the heck is a digital detuner!!! :roll: I'm guessing he means a digital decoder.

 

[RogerS]

or upscaler?

 

[Neomorph]

or upscaler?

Nah, hes saying the TV should be able to decode the digitil audio coming inbut used detune instead of decode.

 

[Argee]

On return from our holiday, a new cable had arrived, so we plugged that in and all was well - for about 5 minutes! Turns out it's the TV that's at fault - probably a dry board - so that'll get replaced on Monday (hopefully), so all should finally be well.

My friend's just had Sky HD installed and the difference in picture quality is spectacular. Now he needs a splitter box to feed both the Sky box and the HD DVD into the TV, which has only got one HDMI socket - a lesson for when I get round to upgrading.

Ray.