Sony KDL46X2000, VP50, SKY HD and a Complete Novice

[troupa]

First of all can I say that I'm a complete novice with VPs, etc. and that I've looked at lots of posts that appear to be related, but which don't necessarily answer my question

Have just bought the said LCD and had SKY HD installed. HD looks great (mostly), but I've found alot of other channels to be 'soft', etc. Having read these pages, I concluded that a VP50 might solve my problem using it's PReP functionality and found someone who has kindly lent me one to roadtest - unsuccessfully thus far! The only thing I've managed to attain up to now is a blue screen. The VP50 recognises the INPUT and the LCD 'sees' the menu too, so it would appear not to be a simple HDMI cable problem. I've done numerous 'factory resets' and have trawled through the various menus changing framerate conversions, etc. with no success whatsoever and I've now got to the stage where I really have no further ideas and am close to losing the generous ration of patience that I started with! Any help would be much appreciated

Thanks

Paul

[Chris5]

Hi Troupa, at last someone with An 'X' and a vp50 (see my other thread)

It all should just work really. I presume you have set VP50 to output to 1080P. Despite what you have found, it could be the HDMI lead, as various people have had funnies with some cables. What colour is the front panel LED, is it Blue, Flashing Blue, or Green. also when you press the info button, what does it say?

[troupa]

Hi there. Output is set to 1080p-60 (-24,-25 & -50 are blanked out) and the LED is blue (non-flashing). The Info screen says as follows:

INPUT
Video Source: HDMI 1 (HDCP)
Signal Type: 576p-50Hz, YCbCr 444
Aspect Ratio: 16:9 - 1.33:1

OUTPUT (Digital)
Resolution: 1920x1080p, RGB
Frame Rte: 59.94 Hz (Unlocked)
Line Rate: 57.432 KHz
Pixel Rate: 148.352 MHz
Aspect Ratio: 16:9 Full Frame

As I say, I've messed around with the frame rate, but with no joy! How does this setup compare to yours?

[Chris5]

Hi Paul. I dont have a sony (yet) only the VP50 connected to a DLP TV.
If your source is 576i/p (or any PAL material), set the VP50 to output 50Hz Locked, dont convert it to 60 Hz. Make sure PreP is enabled assuming beta 1.01 is installed. Set your source to output 576i instead of 576p if you can. Do the Test patterns work ok?
If only 1.00 installed, then 576P is not much use as the scaler cant do that much with the signal to improve it.

[troupa]

OK - this is where it got frustrating!

Changing the Framerate from 50Hz Unlock (59.94Hz) to 50Hz Lock leads the LCD to display a blank (black) screen with the message 'Unsupported Signal. Check your device output.' Only after changing it back to 50Hz Unlock (59.94Hz) does it return to it's original (albeit not working!) state. The interesting thing you do mention which I did not earlier is that the Info screen states 'iScan VP50 - v1.00', but I initially took this to be a hardware version. I gather I am wrong though as I cannot find any reference to PReP on the menus. I'm thinking that the box needs a software update to see the improvement you mention, but whether that will solve my overall problem is another thing I suppose.....!

[Chris5]

the box can be updated from the dvdo website.

What is your source, skyHD or DVD? if its a DVD, then you should be able to output 576i instead. if it skyHD, then you are stuck with 576P

576P into 1.00 is not much use (no PReP) except for scaling to 1080P. non of the deinterlacing processing that is in the VP50 can be utilised.

As a test, try setting the VP50 to output 720P, just to see if you get a picture.

[troupa]

My source is solely Sky HD via HDMI and I'm afraid I haven't been able to get a picture from ANY output format. Do you think this is of any significance? Have looked at the DVDO website reagrding the upgrade too and it says that I'll need a USB to RS232 converter - since when did anything else use one of those! This stuff is sooooooo frustrating!

[Chris5]

you only need one of those if your pc doesn't have a serial port, but true you do need a serial cable.

So, you can feed your 576P sky ouput directly into the Sony HDMI, with no problem. Feeding the same signal through the VP50 results in blank screen.

It sound to me as thought the VP50 is faulty. Where was it borrowed from? is there any history of it working?

Some people on this forum have said they had to do a hard reset to get their boxes to work by pressing certain keys whilst powering up the vp50. I can't remember what they are. if you search the VP50 tread you should find it. apart from that, I can't think of anything else, except try differnt HDMI leads..

[troupa]

Thanks for your advice - sounds like a job for tomorrow if there's too much snow to travel to work! I'll post my feedback as soon as I know!

[Chris5]

good luck, and may the farce be with you.

[choddo2006]

You have to hold down menu & exit while powering on to do a full reset.

Have you turned on HDCP? I forget which menu it's in, but it's off by default as I recall. Very odd that the Sony doesn't like the 1080p/50 signal out of the iscan.

[Chris5]

Thats it.
Sadly HDCP is not the issue, as he is getting a solid blue LED, not a flashing one.

[Chris5]

Then again If HDCP is not enabled in the VP50, then I guess the LED would not blink Blue at all, so maybe HDCP is not Enabled in the menu. Paul, make sure it is enabled.

[Liam @ Prog AV]

Please don't take this as kicking a man when he's down, but surely your dealer should have worked most of this out for you?

[Chris5]

Not all dealers have the knowledge that you do Liam