Help with Panasonic Blue Ray player!

[dcubed]

I bought a Panasonic DMP-BD70 because we have a lot of VHS tapes still. We also just bought a Samsung LN32B530, which is 1080P.

When I first got the player, the HDMI cord (Mediabridge Ultra 1.3b category 2) wasn't here yet, so I connected using the red, yellow and white component cable. The picture looked great for our Seinfeld DVDs, standard 4:3 format!

When the HDMI cable got here, I plugged it in, turned on the Panasonic HDMI connection and set it to 1080P. Now the picture is grainy.

Am I missing something? I expected the picture to be better than component, not worse. Is there a setting I should check?

Help!! I'm lost! This is our first HDTV and Blue-ray.

[MrBoylan]

I bought a Panasonic DMP-BD70 because we have a lot of VHS tapes still. We also just bought a Samsung LN32B530, which is 1080P.

When I first got the player, the HDMI cord (Mediabridge Ultra 1.3b category 2) wasn't here yet, so I connected using the red, yellow and white component cable. The picture looked great for our Seinfeld DVDs, standard 4:3 format!

When the HDMI cable got here, I plugged it in, turned on the Panasonic HDMI connection and set it to 1080P. Now the picture is grainy.

Am I missing something? I expected the picture to be better than component, not worse. Is there a setting I should check?

Help!! I'm lost! This is our first HDTV and Blue-ray.

Hi and welcome to the forum!

There are three possibilities - a defective HDMI cable (if you see "sparklies" on the screen, like random white noise, then you probably got a bad cable), or the settings on the TV are very different between the composite input and the HDMI input, or you got a bad (defective) unit. Check to make sure that the picture settings on the HDMI and the A/V (composite) inputs are both set similarly. Then swap out that cheap HDMI cable with a different one. You don't have to spend an arm and a leg on a cable but "Media Bridge" is not actually a name brand and their QC may be less than ideal. I've had excellent luck with the Amazon Basics cables recently. Inexpensive but decent quality. I've bought a few and hand them out to friends so they don't get ripped off buying unnecessarily expensive cables. Here's a link:

Amazon Basics HDMI cables

If you still see a major decrease in quality when going from composite to HDMI, and swapping HDMI cables has no effect, then the actual player might be defective.

We've actually tested two samples of the BD70V. The first had some minor tracking issues, but when it tracked the tape properly, the image looked exceptionally good. On the second sample, the tracking was better so most of our VHS tapes look remarkably good through this player. Some tapes that are in good shape can approach DVD quality.

Before sending the player back, you also might want to try at least one Blu-ray Disc on it. If this also looks bad or grainy then you definitely have a bad cable or bad player.

Good luck and let us know how it turns out.

Regards,

-Chris

[dcubed]

OK, I'll see if someone has an extra HDMI cable I can borrow. We haven't tried a tape yet, just regular DVD. I'll also see if we can borrow a Blue-ray disc. We don't have one of those, either.

Thanks for the advice for Amazon Basics cables. I'm going to see if someone has one I can try now, instead of waiting for a week or more.

[dcubed]

Well, I've tried another HDMI cable and the same thing on standard DVDs. Blue-ray looks gorgeous. I've tried 2 different TV show (4:3) DVDs, an older movie DVD and a brand new DVD (Star Trek). All look smoother, though a bit 'soft', in component, changing no other settings but turning off HDMI in the BD-70 and source on the TV.

Maybe the upconverting chip is bad?

[dcubed]

I talked to Panasonic and they couldn't help. I had someone over to assess the difference in the HDMI (1080P) and component (or is it composite? - the yellow, red, white cables) and agree that the HDMI looked worse. So, I guess I'll box it up and return it to Amazon for an exchange. I sure hope the next one works well, I'd love to see the good upconversion that I've read about for the BP-60/70/80 DVD players.

[MrBoylan]

I talked to Panasonic and they couldn't help. I had someone over to access the difference in the HDMI (1080P) and component (or is it composite? - the yellow, red, white cables) and agree that the HDMI looked worse. So, I guess I'll box it up and return it to Amazon for an exchange. I sure hope the next one works well, I'd love to see the good upconversion that I've read about for the BP-60/70/80 DVD players.

It's composite. Red/White/Yellow is stereo audio (red/white) and composite video (yellow). Component would be the red/green/blue cables and jacks which are video only (no sound). Component would be higher quality than composite but not as good as HDMI as most blu-ray players (including the Panasonic) do not upconvert DVDs over component video, but they do de-interlace the content (480i to 480p) which is part of the process.

It is possible that the player is partially defective at the chip level, though I admit that is fairly rare. I can tell you that on a good 1080p TV, the 2009 Panasonic Blu-ray players (including the BD60, BD80 and BD70V) do upconversion very well. It's never going to look as good as Blu-ray, but it is pretty darn good. When you use the composite (or even component) video output of the player, you're sending a standard definition signal to the TV and then the TV is doing the upconversion. So no matter how you slice it, the image is getting upconverted to 1080p on your TV - it's just a question of whether the player does the upconversion (HDMI) or the TV does it (component/composite).

Another thing you could try is to use an actual COMPONENT video cable between the player and your TV. Leave the HDMI cable hooked up for Blu-ray Discs but use component for DVD and VHS. In this case, switch the TV to component for DVD/VHS and to HDMI for Blu-ray. this way the player will output DVDs and VHS at 480i and the TV will upconvert to 1080p, but Blu-rays will be shown at their native 1080p over HDMI.

But really, at this point, your best bet is probably to get a replacement player and try again. Don't expect miracles though - Samsung TVs are pretty good at upconversion. On this smaller screen size (sorry but we spend most of our time at 50 inches and above ), the difference between a properly functioning BD70V and the Samsung TV doing its own upconversion is not going to be that dramatic. But in any case, HDMI should not look WORSE than composite and also the Panasonic player has some specific processing in there for VHS tapes that optimize things for that format, so definitely try out a replacement player and let us know how that goes.

Regards,

-Chris

[dcubed]

Thanks, Chris, for the expansion on what is going on and the correct terminology. I've put in for a replacement player and I'll see if that one is better. I'll also try a VHS tape at some point. I do understand that it won't look as good as Blu-ray, but when I noticed the poor quality of picture, I hadn't ever seen Blu-ray except in a store. I've now watched my first Blu-ray movie, and it is incredible. But, the old TV shows that I often watch (Twilight Zone, Seinfeld, etc) aren't going to have that resolution anyhow - so I just want them to look as nice as possible. Same with my old DVDs and VHS tapes. I'll also see if my friend has component cables that I can borrow. But, if they are video only, does audio go through the composite red and white cables?

Interesting, that the BD-70 may not look much better (via the upconversion and HDMI) than a plain old DVD player and composite cables - after all, using the composite cables makes the BD-70 a plain old player because it's not doing the upconversion.

I bet things look better at 50"+ vs. my little 32". But, it's all I could afford and we put it in the bedroom, so it's not too small. Especially considering we upgraded from a 24yo 13" TV ;-)

I'll post how the new BD70 does with plain old DVDs next week.