HD300 Black and White via Composite

[HokiePerogi]

I have brought my HD300 with me down to Oz along with a 2TB drive full of TV shows and my dvd's.

When I hook it up to the SD tv in my corporate apartment, I am only getting black and white. The TV only has old-school RCA composite cable hookups. I made sure to change the settings to the Video and Audio setup in the HD300 menus. I even restarted the HD300 to see if it would help. No luck.

The dvd player in the room works perfectly fine on the same RCA inputs that I have tried for the HD300. This leads me to believe there is either an issue in the HD300 or the breakout cable provided with the HD300.

The TV I have connected to the HD300 supports both PAL and NTSC, and I have tried both settings on the HD300. Same result.

Any suggestions?

[paulbeers]

Originally Posted by HokiePerogi

I have brought my HD300 with me down to Oz along with a 2TB drive full of TV shows and my dvd's.

When I hook it up to the SD tv in my corporate apartment, I am only getting black and white. The TV only has old-school RCA composite cable hookups. I made sure to change the settings to the Video and Audio setup in the HD300 menus. I even restarted the HD300 to see if it would help. No luck.

The dvd player in the room works perfectly fine on the same RCA inputs that I have tried for the HD300. This leads me to believe there is either an issue in the HD300 or the breakout cable provided with the HD300.

The TV I have connected to the HD300 supports both PAL and NTSC, and I have tried both settings on the HD300. Same result.

Any suggestions?

What firmware are you running?

[HokiePerogi]

Originally Posted by paulbeers

What firmware are you running?

When I first tried, it was the out-of-the-box version of the firmware. I tried updating the firmware last night to the last beta, but get the same behavior.

I took the unit into the bedroom of my corporate apartment and tried it there via HDMI, component, and composite. All showed up fine.

I'm certain the fact that the bedroom TV is a wall mounted LCD while the living room TV is a non-digital CRT with only two sets of RCA (composite) inputs is ultimately to blame. But what it the world is the HD300 doing differently on its composite video out signal then the DVD player which shows color just fine via the same inputs on the CRT TV?

[GKusnick]

Originally Posted by HokiePerogi

But what it the world is the HD300 doing differently on its composite video out signal then the DVD player which shows color just fine via the same inputs on the CRT TV?

My guess is that it's an overvoltage or undervoltage situation on the composite out. My HD300 works fine when connected to the composite input of a CRT TV, but gives distorted color when connected to a PVR500 capture card. There seems to be something just slightly out of spec with that output that makes it difficult for some devices to sync the color properly.

Again, just guessing, but that's what it smells like to me. Unfortunately I lack the tools and the expertise to do a rigorous diagnosis of it.

[spike5884]

Was there any solution to this issue?

I just hooked up a HD300 with latest firmware via Composite cables and can only get black and white. Same unit hooked up via HDMI shows color.

Tried different Composite Ins on the back of the TV and get the same B&W results.

Thanks,
Scott

[HokiePerogi]

Originally Posted by spike5884

Was there any solution to this issue?

Not that I've heard. I'm sure some engineers out there might have some kind of workaround based on parts from RadioShack.

For now, I'm relegated to watching my HD300 in the bedroom on the only tv in my corporate apartment with modern-day video hookups.