Audio Equipment and Home Theater Audio : TV to DVD hookup, something amiss – please help!

TV to DVD hookup, something amiss – please help!

Hoping someone can tell me what seems to be happening -- weird thing is, I haven't changed anything but this problem only just started today.

My sound is suddenly not coming through when I play certain commercially produced DVDs. A wrong connection is almost certainly the problem, so I'm hoping someone here can tell me how to re-hook up things or check out how I've got things connected and tell me if there's a problem. The only thing is, things were qorking fine the way it's all connected, up until today.

The situation is complicated slightly by the fact that my DVD player is one that can handle multi region, but I have to change the AV setting on my TV depending on whether the DVD I'm playing is region 2 (my own region as I'm in the UK) or region 1.

It's a Panasonic DMR-EZ48VEB player-recorder. My TV is a Bush LCD32F1 1080p

Up until now, the Panasonic player has played region 1 just fine, as long as I select "ext 5" via my TV remote's AV select button. When viewing Freeview I set it to "DTV" and when viewing my own region 2 DVDs it works on "ext 2".

My hookup is scart plus an HDMI cable connecting TV to DVD player recorder. Everything has been fine on these up until today. I put a region 2 DVD in, and I get the picture but no sound on ext 5, and sound and picture but a rolling picture on ext 1 (the one that handles my own region dvds fine).

I didn't think anything had been changed or messed with but all I know is that a couple of weeks again the last time I played a region 2 disc, all was well. Why do I suddenly have no sound to go with the picture today? Trying RCA audio left and right's to supply the sound doesn't help.

I've just spent the last two hours going through all the onscreen menus of both devices, trying every different kind of audio setup, but nothing changed.

I've tried disconnecting and reconnecting the scart and HDMI cables, I've also made sure they are all in the right places I knew them to be the last time a region 2 played well.

Can anyone help? I'm not knowledgeable about this stuff and am comfused as to what settings or connections have mysteriously changed.


Re: TV to DVD hookup, something amiss – please help!

Why do you need more than one set of wires coming out of the DVD player? Does HDMI not support region 2? Does SCART not support region 1?

I don't have any experience with multi-region, but it seems they should all be the same discs, same recording format and same output format, just with a different bit set. But I could be wrong. Is PAL/NTSC even an issue anymore, when using DVD's and a digital TV?

Re: TV to DVD hookup, something amiss – please help!


Why do you need more than one set of wires coming out of the DVD player?
Because HDMI 1.3 (and older) is one-way. Read carefully, he says "dvd recorder" ie
- the player is transmitting to the tv via HDMI,
- the tv is transmitting to the player via SCART (to "record" tv broadcasts).

HDMI 1.4 allows two-way connections, but it's not in use (yet).

Does HDMI not support region 2? Does SCART not support region 1?
Of course they support both regions, that wasn't the point of the connections as i explained above.

while many tv's handle both formats, PAL and NTSC, some do not switch from PAL to NTSC automatically.

but it seems they should all be the same discs, same recording format and same output format, just with a different bit set.
--
Is PAL/NTSC even an issue anymore, when using DVD's and a digital TV?
Nope, you're wrong. NTSC format is 60i, while PAL is 50i - meaning that the frame-rate of NTSC is 60 interlaced frames ("half-frames") per second, while PAL is 50. so yes, PAL/NTSC is very much an issue and dvd and digital television do not change a thing.

blu-ray is another matter, as there isn't "PAL" and "NTSC" on blu-ray anymore and most blu-rays are presented in the original film fps, namely 24 progressive ("full frames") frames per second (24p).

admittedly, some european blu-rays are formatted in 25p (or 50i), often because they were originally shot at 25 fps, but they're a tiny minority.

Spider Jerusalem. Cheap, but not as cheap as your girlfriend.

Re: TV to DVD hookup, something amiss – please help!

x_jmt_x, thank you very much for clarifying, and also confirming the issues I'm having.

The strange thing is, up until I made that post, there had been no issues and my US region 1 discs had played perfectly, with both sound and audio, via my HDMI cable. The only concession I had to make for them was I found I had to select a different source channel on my TV, using the remote's "AV" button. My region 2 discs played via "ext 1" but I have to press through to ext 3, 5, or 6 to view the region 1 NTSC discs. But they played just fine with full sound and picture.

It suddenly stopped, giving picture only, and I've now had to go back to my RCA phono jacks with the left, right and video hookups just to view my region 1s. The picture quality is pretty bad and this is why I'm wondering why my HDMI stopped doing what it used to do when I'm pretty sure I haven't changed any menu setting or physical connections. Could it be the cable itself or one of it's pins has just malfunctioned?


Re: TV to DVD hookup, something amiss – please help!

when there's anything wrong with any audio gear, as a rule of thumb, the first suspect is the cables and the connectors, mainly because they're vulnerable and easy to check. try a different HDMI cable and see if helps.

whether the cable is the problem or not, i can't guess. it might be possible that a recent update to the television messed up the NTSC-side of things, i guess, but it's pretty far fetched.

Spider Jerusalem. Cheap, but not as cheap as your girlfriend.

Re: TV to DVD hookup, something amiss – please help!

Thanks for this; I will try a different HDMI cable.

The idea of an update changing something would be feasible; both my TV and my DVD recorder prompt updates on a daily basis (it's actually so annoying I've had to change it to manual option and just do it myself when convenient). But yes there are updates constantly and that is one factor of changes that could have done something.

Sorry I only just found this post; weird things have been happening on IMDb and I lost my email notifications for a while (even though I hadn't changed that setting either!)




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