All posts by MikeB
Below are all of MikeB's postings, with the most recent are at the bottom of the page.
John: I've just realised why you might be having such problems - your connecting things up as though the Philips PVR was a Sky box. A Sky box is just that - its the central point for everything else, incvluding any DVD recorder, etc. And if its Sky plus, you'll use scart.
However, your now using Freeview, and thats far more flexible. The PVR does apparently have a an aerial coming into it, but remember that your TV and the Panasonic recorder also have digital tuners, and you can connect them all up to the aerial, and use them totally independently of each other.
The simplest way to do it (which I'm sure is in your manuals) is to put the aerial lead into the back of the Philips PVR, and then take another aerial lead, connecting one end to the 'out' connection on the back of the Philips PVR, and the other to the back of the TV. Its called 'looping through', and thats totally standard. That way, you can watch the Sony without anything else on, and if you want to watch something you've recorded earlier, or just want to use it to watch HD (your TV just has a SD digital tuner). At the moment, your using just the Philips, which means your not getting your moneys worth.
You have no need for scarts at all. HDMI tends to be more reliable, and has extra functions, like upscaling. The only time you might use scarts is if your using the Panasonic recorder (which is SD), and your tight for HDMI connections on the TV.
The same goes for the RCA's - why use them when you have something better?
I'm slight confused as to whats being plugged in via Ethernet, but its good that your using Iplayer. However, even if your streaming using your laptop, why use VGA when you could use HDMI? If your laptop is 4 years old or less, it should have an HDMI port on the side (mine does). Use that, its better.
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IAN MOORE: You are pretty close to the transmitter, although I'll leave it to someone more knowledgable as to whether the aerial should be horizontal or vertical.
The aerial is in the loft, but even so, you can get problems with corrosion, moisture, etc. Since its both TV's that have a proble, start by checking back from where the signal splits to the two TV's, and go back to the aerial itself. I suspect that you've got a break or fault somewhere along that cable, and perhaps water has got in. If its then dried out, your signal comes back.
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jb38: 'as the reason for the reception returning to normal during the early hours doesn't really fully equate as being the result of part of an aerial having blown down.'
Indeed. I'm still trying to figure out how the aerial had a 'tube' to blow, but at least its getting sorted.
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John: Good stuff. I'm not sure what you mean by a 'loopback aerial', but if you mean a bog standard aerial lead going from the back of the Philips PVR (keep thinking of it as a PVR, not a Freeview box - it will make life easier for you) into the back of the Sony TV., then thats exactly right.
Yes, clear out all the scarts, you dont need them, and just use the optical from the Sony to the Denon (make sure that the Sony knows thats its outputting audio to it).
And yes, use HDMI to connect your laptop to the TV. The PVR is smart, and so connecting to the net via Ethernet is excellent.
I'm not sure what you mean by HDMI 4 & 5 - I suspect its the numbers the Sony describes them as inputs. Think of it this way - the PVR is the most often used thing, so have it as the first HDMI the TV finds. The Panasonic will be used next, so have it as the second one. The Sony, like a lot of TV's of its age, will generally find (or number) scarts or other analogue connections first, rather than HDMI's. In fact Panasonics only changed over to starting with HDMI about 2-3 years ago. However, since there are no scarts etc in use, it should go straight to a live HDMI.
Leave the extra opiticals alone! Seriously, all the audio, from whatever source, should all come into the TV, and then go to the Denon. If you output from the PVR, etc, you can possibly set up a sync problem, where the audio gets slightly ahead of the video. Actually, people do it a lot with Sky boxes, and its not normally a problem, but its not best practice, and its gains you nothing.
The only thing I would add is what do you want to do with the Panasonic recorder? The way you connecting it up is fine as a DVD/VCR player, and if thats all your using it for, leave it as it is (I'd replace it with a blu-ray in the long term anyway). If you want to record with it, your going to have to connect to an aerial. Yo just need to add an extra link in the aerial chain from wall socket, to PVR, to Panasonic, to TV.
However, if your happy as you outlined, leave it be, and enjoy watching everything!
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Richard Wood: Its a bit of a nightmare to diagnose, but the first thing to ask is - does it happen when they are playing a video, dvd or anything else? You said the test worked fine, although really the signal strength should be nearer 80% (quality 100%). If its only Freeview, then thats points to the tuner, cable, etc. If its on everything, then that points to a system fault or something more general.
Is it a 3D TV? A couple of years ago two old ladies said that their 6 series Samsung looked odd. After a while we figured out they had pressed the 3D button by accident, and could figure out how to undo it. Since you can make 2D into 3D, the screen looked a bit odd. It should say on the screen if its done that, but...
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Rachel: At a basic level, your setup is fine, and not much different to mine (I also have a scart only TV) - Sky in scart 1, and DVD in scart 2. All you need to do is to use the source/input button the Sony, or more normally, you'll just use the Sky box and the TV will pick it up automatically.
I'm wondering why you've got an HDMI between the DVD player and the Sky box. If it was a DVD recorder, then you could use it to record from the Sky box, but if its a player, you have no need of it. I'm wondering if its messing up the default inputs on the Sony. Just unplug it at both ends, and see if it makes any difference.
Since you've had a blue screen experence with the Sky box already, it might be worth changing the scart cable connecting to the TV. Try Poundland for a replacement - its an old technology, so the fancy Belkin ones are really cheap.
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Rachel: I think what happened is that the Sky bloke connected the HDMI (they give you the cable free!), although since you've got a CRT TV with no HDMI, I cant figure out why. Connecting it to a DVD player is just plain daft. You could use a DVD recorder thats connected to a Sky box, but this would be via scart.
The HDMI will be used when you upgrade the TV - I assume you got a really good deal on Sky HD, hence the upgrade, even though you cant use the HD at present.
I suspect there will be one or two comments about Sky installers now...
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Ian: It depends....
OK - assuming you've got a standard soundbar with digital optical input, then whatever audio signal comes into the TV via Sky, DVD etc should all come out to the soundbar via the optical. On a lot of TV's (make model of both TV and soundbar would help), you need to tell the TV that you want to use the digital optical, rather than internal speakers, etc. Digital Optical is a good sound, but its not very smart, so you'll probably need to use the soundbars own remote to change the volume, although a decent TV will allow you to use offsets for each device, so that the volume from the Sky box, DVD etc are broadly the same.
If your soundbar has both HDMI and digital optical, then you've got more choices. You can link the TV and the soundbar using HDMI, if you have ARC on the TV (if its 3D, then thats a yes). This means just one cable (its should be 3D capable), a better quality sound, and potentially, you can just use the TV remote (at least for volume control). If its the same brand, then they should work fine, using whats called HDMI-CEC HDMI-CEC standard: How to find out if your device is HDMI CEC capable? . Even if its not the same brand, you might as well have a go!
If its not ARC, but you have HDMI on both and they are the same brand (or possibly even not), then you can try the same thing, since you get the better remote control. However, although in theory the HDMI should be able to take an audio signal with no problem, the blokes at work reckon its easier to have both an optical and an HDMI connected. This shouldn't make sense, but think of it as the opitical handling the audio, and the HDMI handling the control.
Anyway, start with the optical. You cant go wrong, and if you want to get more complex later, you can always revert to it if things dont work out. BTW - your Sky box and possibly your DVD player also have optical outputs, and you can use those instead, but everything goes in, and everything goes out is normally seen as best practice, and less likely to cause a problem.
If you tell me the make/model of the TV, bar and DVD, then I have abit more to work with.
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Thursday 6 November 2014 1:59AM
John: I'd start with the basics.
Your TV is the most important thing, and you have the advantage of 3 HDMI's, optical, and even 2 scarts. Its got Freeview built in, so I assume your using the Philips as both a PVR and Freeview HD box (I assume you meant PVR, not VCR - which kind of threw me for a moment!).
Your right in having the Philips feed into HDMI 1. The Panasonic also has HDMI, so use it!
The HDMI also upscales. HDMI2 will be fine, and why bother daisy chaining it to the Philips via scart? The Panasonic has its own Freeview tuner, and you gain nothing by feeding it via scart from an HD source. Yes, you could archive from the PVR in theory, but do you actually need to do that? I'd simply leave both devices to feed into the TV, and record what you want to either recorder, just using the source button on the Sony remote to flick between the two. If you do connect them, get everything else working first.
You are of course daisy-chaining the aerial via the Philips, via the Panasonic to the Sony? Personally, I'd shorten the chain by splitting the signal, but whatever works.
Lastly, the sound bar. I like Denon gear, and didn't know they had made a soundbar, so thats taught me something! The Denon seems to have two opticals, a coax, plus RCA's. Your lucky enough to have RCA imputs on the Sony (which went a couple of years ago), but why go for RCA when you could use the opticals? In fact, why are you using both?
The normal advice is to have everything come in and go out of the TV together. So the best thing would be to have the optical come out of the Sony, and into the Denon. The opticals should be inputs (or at least one of the should be), since the Denon produces no audio of its own, and therefore shouldn't have an output at all.
That way, when a video/audio signal comes into the TV, either from Freeview, the Philips, or the Panasonic, it will flow out to the Denon, no matter what the source. You should be able to setup the audio output in the setup menu, but being a Sony, you can normally split the audio signal, so you can offset volumes for different sources.
Hopefully that should improve the sound quality, and I suspect that part of the problem was that the audio was via the Philips, with no output via the optical - you often need to tell the TV to use the optical - its a dumb connection.
You have a spare HDMI (and lots of leftover scart leads, which can go to the loft), so think what you want to do with it. Yes, you have Freeview HD, via the Philips.
If your lookinging for smart capacity, then that HDMI would be perfect. A Smart Sony/Samsung Blu-Ray can be yours for as little as £50. Not wifi at that price (£85 for the award winning Sony 5200 if wifi will make your life a lot easier), but you will get at least Iplayer and Ch5, you can perhaps replace the Panasonic if your just using it as a DVD player, and of course you can use it to play Blu-Ray's, so your TV's 1080 spec (and I'm not sure I want to know how much you paid for it) can be used properly.
If you just want to stream, then there is Chromecast (Android and cheap), Apple TV (if you have Apple products, this is perfect), Ruku or even Now TV. Very cheap, and works pretty well for getting streaming TV. My 7 year old has no problem using it!
Obviously if your looking to replace the set, then hold off a bit, since the smart features should be standard. Your current 46in is slightly larger than Sony's 50in W8, which is an excellent set, and is currently around £740.
Let us know if it works!