[Cowboy10uk]

Hi. I hope someone can help me. I've had a 29" Phillips tv for about 7 years now, I've had no problems untill last month when it started playing all Region 1 dvds in Black and white. It has normally played them with no probs. Any ideas as no matter what I do I cannot get the colour back.

[fatmogg]

Hi cowboy10uk,

I have a Philips 24" widescreen. I need a little more info. What DVD player have you got: is it chipped or multiregion straight from the box?

I assume TV pictures are still in colour? If so, it's not the tube going. It's possible something has failed in the scart socket it's plugged into. The little metal contacts can get worn away, so I bend them slightly for a tight fit.

Try the following, although I would have guessed you might have already:

1) If you look at the back where the scarts are (there are 2 on mine), swap the scart sockets around, see if the other works OK. Or try playing it through the camera input on the side if it has one. Is that works, its the scart socket that's faulty.

Only one of my TV's scarts (the upper one) supports NTSC, so the other one has my Freeview box plugged in.

2) Check the settings on the DVD player setup menu that it outputs a PAL signal: labelled NTSC-PAL60 or something like that. The player may have defaulted back to the factory (i.e Region 2 settings), hence the b&w picture. Some players have a switch at the back so it will convert NTSC to PAL, or give a true NTSC picture. This may not be seated properly, so switch it acrioss to the other setting andback again

3) Turn the player on put a R2 disc in, play for 5 mins, then swap for a R1 disc. This trick sometimes works if you play little or nothing apart from R1 DVD's.

4) Does the player play R2 DVD's in colour? If it does, the DVD player's NTSC/PAL conversion electronics may have failed, so you'll need to bin and replace/get a refund. If it's out of the guarantee, buy a new one, it'll be cheaper. If you have another TV, try the player on that first.

Let me know what happens.

Fatmogg

[meltcity]

Simple solution in two steps:

1. Change the display setting in your DVD player's menu to RGB.

2. Make sure your SCART cable is connected to AV1 on the TV.

[Cowboy10uk]

Hi guys, thanks for your quick replys. I'm using a sony tvp-s536d . It plays region2 fine but whenever I put region 1 disks in, the tv goes to black and white, plays in colour at all other times. The dvd is set to Rgb and plugged into Av1. Don't think its a problem with Dvd player though, as I get the same problem when using my playstation 2. Like i said before everything used to work great then one day, Black and White, I've tried different scart sockets, changing leads but no good. Got a horrible feeling that the converter inside tv is kaputt. But thought i'll give this site a go to try and save me buying a new tv.

[Scorpio]

Aren't region 1 DVDs likely to be NTSC and not PAL?
Does your DVD automatically output the appropriate format?
Does your Tv automatically cope with either format or do you need to change the setting?

Perhaps you have inadvertantly changed one of these settings from AUTO to Manual so it used to work but now it doesn't - without manually making the setting change.

Rgds,
Scorp

[meltcity]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cowboy10uk

Hi guys, thanks for your quick replys. I'm using a sony tvp-s536d . It plays region2 fine but whenever I put region 1 disks in, the tv goes to black and white, plays in colour at all other times. The dvd is set to Rgb and plugged into Av1. Don't think its a problem with Dvd player though, as I get the same problem when using my playstation 2. Like i said before everything used to work great then one day, Black and White, I've tried different scart sockets, changing leads but no good. Got a horrible feeling that the converter inside tv is kaputt. But thought i'll give this site a go to try and save me buying a new tv.

Region 1 discs playing in black and white is *normal* if your TV doesn't support composite NTSC colour decoding, and is not a fault of the TV. Changing the DVD player's display setting to RGB should solve this problem because the colour is decoded by the player before being sent to the TV. I'm guessing that for some reason your TV is not detecting the RGB signal.

SCART carries composite and RGB video at the same time. When no RGB signal is detected, the TV automatically reverts to composite video. As a test, try switching back and forth between RGB and composite in your DVD player's settings menu. If the RGB signal is detected, you should notice a big difference in the crispness of the menu text when in RGB mode. If there is no difference in picture quality between the two, then the RGB signal is not being detected. The most likely reasons for this are 1) you are not using a fully wired SCART cable, 2) you are not viewing the RGB channel on the TV, or 3) you are connecting the DVD player to the wrong SCART socket on the TV. On TVs with two SCART sockets AV1 *usually* supports composite/RGB; AV2 usually supports composite/S-VIDEO.

A couple of other things you can try: if your DVD player has an NTSC disc output setting, try changing it to PAL60. This will output region 1 discs in PAL colour which your TV should be able to understand. As a last resort, if your TV and DVD player supports it, you could try outputting S-VIDEO from the DVD player to AV2 on the TV.

Good luck!