I've got a Loewe-authorised tech coming to sort out the geometry on my Mimo 28. My 4:3 picture has slightly bowed sides, and the 16:9 picture cuts off quite a lot of image on the right-hand side (about an inch), and I think both may be vertically squashed a little.

Anyway, what should I expect from the technician? I haven't owned a "modern" TV like this before - I'm hoping he's going to come with a dealer's manual full of service menu settings and suggested geometries, and maybe even some test pattern DVDs. I expect - from what I have seen of the geometry corrections sent to me by a UK Loewe tech - that he'll do the whole procedure from scratch.

I just don't want him to turn up, take one look at the picture and (after me trying to tell him that it's not right) basically fiddle with the geometry controls like I did in the service manual.

I'm worrying unduly, aren't I? It'll be fine, won't it? But having shelled out NZ$2500 on this set, I think I'm right in expecting a decent picture! I realise that the geometry may never be perfect, but it's got to be better than what I've got at the moment.

Adam

[GaryB]

As a minimum, he should have a copy of the Service Manual and a pattern generator or test DVD with widescreen patterns. Many engineers still use their old 4:3 pattern generators and alignment will never be 100% correct if they use that. Standard settings aren't really relevant as every set is different and a decent engineer will start from whatever he finds in the set anyway.

Righto. I'll have to wait and see what he comes with tomorrow!

Adam

[lynx]

Result ?

Well, he turned up with a big metal briefcase full of tools and manuals, and an electronic test pattern generator.

I pretty much left him to it - he was there maybe 40 mins. He said the trapezium, rotation and all the E-W settings were out. The 4:3 image is now dead straight, and the odd stretching effect (things were perfect in the screen centre then stretched out wider towards either side) is gone - I assume this may have been the trapezium (wider at the top, narrower at the bottom).

I don't know whether his pattern generator did a proper 16:9 grid pattern, all I looked at was his 4:3 grid. The 16:9 is looking very nice indeed - although by fixing the overlap on the right hand side, it now overlaps a little on the left and DVD menus and text are decidedly off-centre. I tried to fix this myself by dragging the H-position over, but the left-hand side of the 16:9 image started to bend quite dramatically. I put it back to what it was as I didn't feel like undoing everything the tech did. I'll just have to live with the slightly off-centre image.

But I was quite relieved that he seemed to know what he was doing!

Adam

PS. While I'm here, does anyone have any idea about the off-centre 16:9 image? The overscan is now roughly even on both sides (slightly more on the left), but the menus etc are off-centre. By centering the menus it cuts off about an inch off the right side. I noted that the new H-pos setting was back to the original factory setting (I had previously tried to centre the menus before the tech came).

[Zaichik]

Sounds like your engineer was a bit better than the one that came to fix the geometry on my set. He used the "stepping back, squinting and saying 'does that look straight to you?'" method!