Going HD with Charter - round 4, the sucking

On Thu, 13 Dec 2007 22:46:09 -0600, Dan wrote:

Both Charter and TW suck. That's monopoly. But what can you do?
Connect PC to hdtv and download content from net?

FIOS.

Dish.

Not sure what else might be available.

But are they any better???

In five years it'll all be Internet, in ten years may be no more OTA.

J.

JXStern wrote:
On Fri, 14 Dec 2007 03:09:22 GMT, Alan F
wrote:

You should double check the setup for the cabling, the TV, and the
DVR. Your parents may have gotten a tech who doesn't know much about
setting up for HD.

Yeah I should have thought to check for color settings etc on the box.

What the heck do the color settings have to do with it? There are no
color settings on the cable box. The TV has picture settings and almost
certainly needs to be tweaked using a calibration DVD, but your
description of the problems indicates that the problem is more basic.

Check what the output settings of the DVR are for the SD and HD
channels. It should be 480i/passthrough or 480p for the SD channels
(which may be labeled as 4:3 channels). The HD channels should be set
to output 720p, 1080i, or native passthrough. The 3 component cables
should be connected to the Red, green, blue connectors in the correct
order. I'm wondering if your parents really are using component and not
composite which is the single yellow cable that is normally bundled with
the red & white RCA stereo cables. Composite only carries SD signals and
is low end SD at that.

If you don't understand what I wrote, call Charter and have them send
out a tech to check the setup.

Alan F

On Fri, 14 Dec 2007 14:40:25 GMT, Alan F
wrote:

JXStern wrote:
On Fri, 14 Dec 2007 03:09:22 GMT, Alan F
wrote:

You should double check the setup for the cabling, the TV, and the
DVR. Your parents may have gotten a tech who doesn't know much about
setting up for HD.

Yeah I should have thought to check for color settings etc on the box.

What the heck do the color settings have to do with it? There are no
color settings on the cable box. The TV has picture settings and almost
certainly needs to be tweaked using a calibration DVD, but your
description of the problems indicates that the problem is more basic.

Well, that's what I thought. But on second thought, I'm wondering if,
since it has the expando option, it also has color settings.

Check what the output settings of the DVR are for the SD and HD
channels. It should be 480i/passthrough or 480p for the SD channels
(which may be labeled as 4:3 channels). The HD channels should be set
to output 720p, 1080i, or native passthrough.

I will look, and then probably call the Charter tech.

The 3 component cables
should be connected to the Red, green, blue connectors in the correct
order. I'm wondering if your parents really are using component and not
composite which is the single yellow cable that is normally bundled with
the red & white RCA stereo cables. Composite only carries SD signals and
is low end SD at that.

It's the five cables and the input on the tv has to be "component 1".

If you don't understand what I wrote, call Charter and have them send
out a tech to check the setup.

I appreciate the advice, I'll let you know how it goes.

J.



Alan F