I have a RCA HD61LPW42 DLP Rear Projection TV that I've had about a year and this entire football season I've watched regular 480 broadcasts through "input A" instead of HDTV broadcasts through "input 3" (component) for the simple reason that I can't figure out how to get the whole HD picture to display in "input 3" or the 1080 mode. So, I'd rather just watch in 480 mode, where the cable goes straight to the TV, but where I am able to change screen formats at will, instead of when I watch on input 3, and am unable to switch formats, and am stuck with the zoomed picture format that cuts of heads, stats, etc.... needless to say, in spite of the better picture available on the HD formats, I'm usually watching in 480 mode just to see the entire screen.
My configuration is digital cable box to home theater to TV. The DVD player came with the home theater and works fine, no problem changing format there. I am using component video cable throughout.
Does all this make sense to anyone? Anybody know how I can solve it? I haven't used the available HDMI inputs, would that help? Thank you very much if you can help me.
RandyM
Unregistered guest
Posted on
Hi, Dave, I work for RCA in Product Development and this is the most common question that I hear people ask. If the picture does not fill the screen properly in 1080i mode, it is very likely the broadcaster's fault. Many of them are still upconverting 480i material for their HD channels or they are incorrectly scaling the video to fit in a 1080i window.
Unfortunately, when we designed the W151 and W42 models, we assumed that the broadcasters would get it right when they sent out their 1080i HD signals (we didn't allow scaling of 1080i signals). And boy, were we wrong! So, for the past two years, we have added full scaling capability in our TVs for HD, component, HDMI, and analog, even though 1080i should never need scaling. Ocassionally, the cable box is to blame (check the setup menu to see if there are different scaling settings), but usually it the source broadcaster.
So, the solution is to call or e-mail the station (i'm assuming that this is a local channel in HD on a cable system) and tell them to adjust their 1080i broadcast. I do it all the time when a local station screws up the scaling.
Randy thanks for the great input. The problem I have is on all the HD channels broadcast by Bright House, including ESPN, or especially ESPN since that's the one that usually I am attempting to view. I'll check the cable box settings and contact the local cable company. Thanks again for your reply.