hi all

Been playing with my new DHD4000 which arrived today and so far I'm less than impressed.

I have the following problems which very well might be because I'm doing something wrong.


1. I tuned the RF output from the box into my analogue TV card in my PC. The RF modulated freeview output from the box is appauling and totally unwatchable. It has horizontal bands of distortion skiping up and down the screen. I tried changing the output channel from 22 to 50 but no different, will try a few other channels but if this is as good as it gets it's either a faulty box or, if not, forget buying this box for the RF output of freeview (analogue channel output is fine so it's not the cable or inteference).

2. I connected the Coax digital output into my philips surround system and either get the following.

a) no sound at all after changing channels
b) a nasty very loud click when changing channels or moving through the menus in the DHD4000 (this happens almost every channel change or menu change)
c) no sound for a while, say, 7-8 seconds after changing channel, then sound.

When the sound does work it sounds ok.

Can anyone tell me, if I connect my surround sound system to the thomson via the VCR scart, will the resultant sound from the thomson (output through the surround sound system via the scart lead) be almost as good as the sound would have been through the coaxial digital output/ phono leads?

Anyone else had problems connecting the system up to surround systems?

Also I'm totally confused as to the correct resolution I should go for to defeat the widescreen bug. I'm watching TV heaven TV hell on more 4 and it would seem I need to set the thomson to 4:3 FF to get the whole picture but then what should the correct TV aspect ratio be? 4:3 or 14:9? 14:9 seems to be the best but I get black bars top bottom & left and right; if this bug were fixed, would it look like that? Also, what aspect ratios would I need to select on the thomson and my tv to view it as it was intended?



The main reason I bought this box over the digifusion fvrt100 my friend has is because it had an RF modulated output and an optical digital coaxial output but it seems that both of these features can be struck of the feature list as neither of them work.

Your thoughts on any or all of these issues would be greatly appreciated - I hope it's me and not the box as I think it will be going back as things stand.

P.S. my surround system is a philips LX8300sa.


Any help greatly appreciated,

Thanks

Pete

Sound though digital or analogue connections is virtually identical, I’ve used both in the past.

If your connecting to your TV using a normal UHF cable I’m pretty sure you’ll never get true widescreen (I’m sure someone will confirm). I think you need to connect via scart for proper widescreen.

Hi Hubamonster

I do connected to the TV with a scart. I only use coax for digital audio output to my surround system and for outputing the rf modulated signal to my analogue TV card in my PC. The widescreen issue is related to a know bug in the Thomson not setting the aspect ratio correcty for a growing number of channels - would someone list all channels involved?

Re: my surround system problems; checked my surround system manual and it only accepts PCM audio which is lucky as that's what the thomson outputs. There are no settings I can change on my surround system. I have used the same digital coax cable to connect my surround system to another DVD player with no problems. I will try another tho.

The EPG seems to have updated for most channels last night but some channels live TVX / CITV have no information is this right?


Thanks.

Pete

This bit depends on the TV. You need a zoom mode that will handle the letterbox picture but unfortunately every TV manufacturer seems to do things slightly differently.

In your case using 14:9 zoom gets close but isn't ideal. The original picture was 16:9 so is more squashed vertically than a 14:9 picture, hence you still see small black bars top and bottom. Also since the TV is trying to display as 14:9 on a 16:9 display you also get small black bars left and right.

I'm a little surprised your TV has only 4:3 and 14:9 available. Are you sure there aren't any other zoom modes available? With my TV the zoom setting needed is called "Wide" and it is selected automatically. I've seen other sets where it's called other things like "Letterbox", or even the cryptic "Zoom2".

If you can't find such a zoom mode you could try setting the thomson to 4:3 LB, and using the 14:9 zoom mode on the TV. This should get rid of the black bars top and bottom, although you will then be losing a small bit of picture each side. You may find the results unsatisfactory, but it's worth a try.

I'm afraid however the bottom line is this workaround depends on your TV having a suitable zoom mode, so if it doesn't have one you're screwed.


You would have a normal 16:9 widescreen picture, just the same as you currently get on other channels such as the BBC. Both the thomson and tv would be set to use 16:9.

I'd need to check my thomson to be sure but it sounds right. The CITV channel is new and from past experience it can take 4TV several weeks to add a new channel to the EPG. And since the thomson can't handle encrypted channels such as TVX and TUTV they probably don't bother with the listings for those.

Thanks for the reply


Sorry, my TV has the following widescreen settings:

14:9
CINE
SUBST
4:3
16:9
AUTO (any of the above)

Watching E4 now with the Thomson set to 16:9, the tv selects 16:9 too but there are black bars at the sides and people are too tall and thin - this is the bug right?


What should I do now?

If I change the thomson to 4:3 full screen, the TV selects 16:9 autimatically, this means I have black bars top and bottom but is this then fixed or should I have no bars?

With the thomson in 4:3, there is a mode called CINE which displays full screen with no bars but this cuts a tiny amount off the screen bottom and left and a larger proportion off the screen top and right.

Is setting the thomson to 4:3 full screen the best starting point to fix the problem?

I can not believe how invasive this widescreen bug is, it really is a big problem. I find if I set the thomson to 4:3 to fix the problem, I sometimes forget when I change channel later so that it screws up the aspect ratio of other channels that are not affected by the bug - can't believe they have not fixed this. I was watching something the other day in 4:3 and just at the end I realised it should be in widescreen - what a nightmare.

Thanks

Pete

P.S I was just watching the channel trailer on more4 and after a few minutes i started getting terrible background distortion / random sound on top of the normal sound track, is this yet another known bug? This is not a reception problem - picture perfect and changing to other channels showned no problems, changing back gave loud random distortion again box corrected itself after 5 mins or so - can't be inteference can it as other chans ok. reception on this channel is 8-strength / 8-9 quality.

Anyone ever returned a product to tribalUK?
Last edited by tgbyhn10 : 29-03-2006 at 12:36

Yes, that's what you see with this bug.


If the workaround works when you select 4:3 FF on the thomson you should see a normal widescreen picture on the TV with no black bars. It shouldn't appear different from the normal widescreen channels. (It will have a slightly lower vertical resolution but you'd need to look closely to see this).


I've not seen SUBST before so I don't know what that does. CINE may be either a zoom mode intended for letterboxed films, or a smart mode intended to stretch normal 4:3 pictures to fill the screen. You TV manual might help identify which.

Eliminating the other more obvious from the list I'd try a combination of 4:3 FF on the Thomson with the TV on first AUTO, then CINE, then SUBST and see which looks best, but I'm afraid I'm guessing.


For me 4:3 FF works, but much depends on the TV you have. All I can suggest is try each mode on the thomson in turn, trying every zoom mode your TV has with each. You'll then need to decide which combination of settings gives you the best results.


You'll see from the forum there is a difference of opinion on how serious this bug is, which probably depends a lot on the TV you have. For some people they get reasonable results by pressing the the thomson wide button a few times, for others it's nearly impossible to get a sensible picture.

I'm lucky enough to fall in the first category, so I can live with the workaround. If however you are in the latter category I can see why you would consider this a show stopper.


It's not something I've had. Possibly the fault was at the transmission end.

SUBST....

Could it be a widescreen setting that allows subtitles to be visible on-screen?

makes sense, there's a big black border at the bottom of the screen

Hmm, what a lot of queries.

I have two DHD 4000's and the RF out works fine on both as does the digital audio with my Sony HT-BE1 Home Theater System.

You could try the RF out on anothe set also try in play mode with the aerial INPUT disconnected

Re the widescreen bug, setting the bos to 4:3 FF (ie full frame) and TV to widescreen should give the best result. Widescreen may also be labeled 16:9.

The autofil mode on my television expands a 4:3 picture to remove a small ammount of picture top and bottom but fills any other picture except where forced to 16:9 by the broadcaster, thus TCM pictures inwidescreen require manual intervention!!

Hope this is usefull?

The Thomson outputs its digital output at 48KHz so you need to make sure your amp is either switched to that mode (if it has the ability to switch) or that it autodetects correctly. 48KHz is the same type of digital output that's emitted by DAT recorders/players, minidisc players etc rather than CD players which use 44.1KHz. There've been other reports that some amps don't detect/switch the Thomson signal correctly in the past.

I went into the menus and disconnected the aerial from the Thomson and all the distortion instantly disappeared, the RF modulated freeview output was perfect. I assume this means that the distortion is coming from the main aerial input. What does this mean and is there anything I can do about it? Surely the thomson should obliterate what is currently occupying the selected output frequency and replace with the freeview output - seems a bit crapy but then I know very little about this. Don't know if it's relevant but some of the analogue channels seem to pulse quite a bit which doesn't look great but they are watchable - could this mean the signals are being boosted too much by the distibution box in the attic?

Oh and I noticed the other day that I got a small electric shock from the centre of the aerial, at least i think it was from the aerial. I just disconnected it and got another shock, then with the aerial disconnected I touched the aerial input socket on the thomson and got a shock from the centre of that too...is this normal? Shocking really. I wonder if it's getting a charge from the philips dvd player it's sitting on, the outer casing of that keeps giving me electric shocks too(prior to thomson arriving) - why can't stuff just work?

Cheers


Thanks for the info Trevor.

Try bypassing the distribution box in the attic just to the feed used by the Thomson - you can check the analogue picture at the same time -also for any spurious shocks. Temporaraly bypassing other equipment can diagnose units causing faulte eg the DVD player - Good luck!