I’m “in charge” of my dad’s new LCD HD TV. With what little knowledge I have (learning as I go), I have managed to get the damn thing up and running and showing HD programming. Sometimes.
The last “glitch” in the setup is that there SEEMS to be a problem with his HD DVR box (supplied from the cable company)…I wanted to run this by the Dopers to make sure I am right that the box is at fault before I go exchanging it.
Here’s the deal:
The box is a Scientific Atlanta 8300HD. They’ve had this box for a while, way before they had an HD set.
It’s connected to the TV with HDMI.
According to everything I’ve read and seen, and have been told by Time Warner customer support, if you plug the box in to your HDTV with a DVI or HDMI cable, set the resolution (on the cable box settings) to “Auto” and then reboot the box, the box will tell the TV which resolution each program on each channel is being broadcast in and the TV will display it properly.
This actually works. The front of the box says “Auto” and the program resolution is displayed (480i, 720p, 1080i, etc). Looks great.
If I turn the box off and then back on, it works still. Same is if I turn the TV on or off.
Here’s the problem: If the box is off overnight - or now, according to my “not-so-good-at-documenting-errors” parents, even if the box is left on overnight but the TV is turned off - the box still says “Auto” on the front but decides that every program is in 480i. Every channel you go to, instead of saying “1080i” or “720p” on the front of the box just displays “480i” as the resolution, and the TV displays it as such - so for example, an HD 1080i football game ends up in a small rectangle in the middle of the screen.
The only solution is to reboot the box (by unplugging it) and wait for a bit for it to be done rebooting (it’s done when the clock is shown)…and then it works just fine again. Changes resolutions with channels/programs and such.
In the 8300HD manual, there’s steps for manually setting up the resolution settings and using a wizard. I’ve done both of those things - same problem. According to the Time Warner tech guy, I didn’t even need to do those things - the “reboot” and “automatic setup” part should suffice (which is what I do every time now).
Anyway, I am pretty sure the box has a problem. But I know zilch about how HDMI works, so I wanted some reassurance that it’s not the TV or the HDMI cable.
My reasoning behind the problem being with the box is pretty simple: the box is not sending the right info to the TV, because it doesn’t seem to be able to get the right info as it is. It’s pretty clear by the fact that “480i” stays on the box’s display no matter what when it is malfunctioning.
I just want to make sure I’m right before I go turn it in. The TW tech said that he liked the 8300HD the best as far as DVRs go, and there’s no telling what brand/model of box the TW “walk in center” might give us.