Movie DVDs not playing with HDMI cables on all-new AV system

[Kafin8ed]

My apologies if this is not in the proper forum but hopefully somebody here can lend a hand...

OK here it goes, I just bought a new entertainment system - A Denon AVR-1508 receiver, a Samsung DVD-1080P8 DVD and a Sharp LC-32SB23U 32" LCD, pretty simple setup. Everything worked fine in analog mode using component video interconects playing DVDs. Then I bought HDMI cables because I wanted to watch 720dpi video. Here's the problem - some of my DVDs play, but most of them do not??? If none of them played I'd know something was set up wrong, but I can get 5 DVDs to play but about 30 wont. THe DVDs that play are all music video/sport vids/non-hollywood stuff, old and new. None of the hollywood movies (Fight Club, Fast Time at Ridgmont High, Apocalypse Now...) will play. WTF?

When I play a movie the screen sometimes show the start of the FBI warning for a split second, then the screen starts flipping back and forth from all black to all blue and back again, a few seconds each color, that's all it does, it won't even show the menu. The audio track plays while this goes on because in addition to the HDMI cables I have a fiber optic audio cable (so I know the DVD is playing properly).

I understand HDMI has some sort of hardware handshake protocols - maybe this is the problem (since everything worked pre-HDMI)? Both the DVD and the TV are set on the same HDMI input at 720 dpi - the settings should be correct or else non of my DVDs would work right? Could it have to do with different dolby encoding or something like that? COuld it be my Samsung DVD player is more compatible with a Samsung TV? There are different audio and video settings in both the DVD and TV but for now they are just at factory defaults until I figure out what they do - any ideas? Any help would be appreciated, thanks!

-Alan

[pixelthis]

My apologies if this is not in the proper forum but hopefully somebody here can lend a hand...

OK here it goes, I just bought a new entertainment system - A Denon AVR-1508 receiver, a Samsung DVD-1080P8 DVD and a Sharp LC-32SB23U 32" LCD, pretty simple setup. Everything worked fine in analog mode using component video interconects playing DVDs. Then I bought HDMI cables because I wanted to watch 720dpi video. Here's the problem - some of my DVDs play, but most of them do not??? If none of them played I'd know something was set up wrong, but I can get 5 DVDs to play but about 30 wont. THe DVDs that play are all music video/sport vids/non-hollywood stuff, old and new. None of the hollywood movies (Fight Club, Fast Time at Ridgmont High, Apocalypse Now...) will play. WTF?

When I play a movie the screen sometimes show the start of the FBI warning for a split second, then the screen starts flipping back and forth from all black to all blue and back again, a few seconds each color, that's all it does, it won't even show the menu. The audio track plays while this goes on because in addition to the HDMI cables I have a fiber optic audio cable (so I know the DVD is playing properly).

I understand HDMI has some sort of hardware handshake protocols - maybe this is the problem (since everything worked pre-HDMI)? Both the DVD and the TV are set on the same HDMI input at 720 dpi - the settings should be correct or else non of my DVDs would work right? Could it have to do with different dolby encoding or something like that? COuld it be my Samsung DVD player is more compatible with a Samsung TV? There are different audio and video settings in both the DVD and TV but for now they are just at factory defaults until I figure out what they do - any ideas? Any help would be appreciated, thanks!

-Alan

Your Samsung is probably outputing 1080p.
YOU NEED TO SET IT AT 720P.
Dont worry about any res loss, you cant get "more" res from a format than it already is,
and while DVD is 480i you can get 480p outta it by deinterlacing.
But you wont get any more.
BTW you can see 720p (and 1080i for that matter) using componet just fine.
Only prob you have is that your 720p set wont "downconvert" 1080p to 720p, its native format.
So set your dvd player to either 1080i or 720p (preffered)

[Woochifer]

Try directly connecting the DVD player to the TV and see if this still happens, and try it with both HDMI cables. Probably not a resolution issue if it the problem does not crop up with all DVDs. It might be an issue with the receiver relaying the signal or a defective cable. In general, HDMI is not an especially reliable signal carrier, as the signal degrades over long cable distances.

[Kafin8ed]

That's a good suggestion, I eliminated the receiver from the equation and voila - it works, I think. But this raises a few more questions:

1. SHould the DVD route to the receiver first and then to the TV? I understand this is probably ideal for audio AND video but if I already have a fiber optic line then is there any reason not to bypass the receiver? (Aside from that's the only way it seems to work)

2. With both the DVD and the TV telling me they are working at 720dpi I still am getting letterboxed movies. Is that right? I was under the impression that would go away with a 720dpi HD set. Should I be looking for some setting somewhere? (at least i eliminated the receiver so I know it isn't there).

Thanks for the help

-Alan

[Woochifer]

That's a good suggestion, I eliminated the receiver from the equation and voila - it works, I think. But this raises a few more questions:

1. SHould the DVD route to the receiver first and then to the TV? I understand this is probably ideal for audio AND video but if I already have a fiber optic line then is there any reason not to bypass the receiver? (Aside from that's the only way it seems to work)

It's always better to have a direct connection. The only reason to have the receiver in the chain, if you already use an optical audio connection, is the convenience of using the receiver to switch your sources. But, that convenience is not worthwhile if the receiver does not relay the full bandwidth from your DVD player, and right now you only have one HDMI source anyway.

2. With both the DVD and the TV telling me they are working at 720dpi I still am getting letterboxed movies. Is that right? I was under the impression that would go away with a 720dpi HD set. Should I be looking for some setting somewhere? (at least i eliminated the receiver so I know it isn't there).

Your TV is natively framed at 1.77:1 widescreen. Movies are all filmed using either a 1.85:1 or 2.35:1 aspect ratio, so the black bars will inevitably show up if the DVD is framed to show the full screen image ("full screen" DVDs are mislabeled because those images are actually panned, scanned, and cropped to fit within a 1.33:1 frame). Just make sure on your DVD setup, that you specify 16:9 widescreen as your default screen format, and everything should display properly.

[Kafin8ed]

Awesome, thanks for the response.