Help! Xbox 360 in 1080i Not displaying!

[Mr. Furious]

Hi -

I purchased the Xbox Elite yesterday and was trying to configure my HD settings. I'm connected via the component inputs on my Marantz PV6111W 61" RPTV HDTV. Unfortunately, when I move it from 480P -> 1080i, the image gets scrambled on the display.

I've done some reading on the Internet and it seems to be an issue with some TVs which are expecting a 50Hz 1080i image.

Is there any hope for me?

[Iguana Man]

This may not help, but I'll throw it out there. The plug that goes into the back of the 360, is the little slide switch set to HDTV? Hell, does the Elite cable still offer this switch?

[Ruined]

Originally Posted by Mr. Furious

Hi -

I purchased the Xbox Elite yesterday and was trying to configure my HD settings. I'm connected via the component inputs on my Marantz PV6111W 61" RPTV HDTV. Unfortunately, when I move it from 480P -> 1080i, the image gets scrambled on the display.

I've done some reading on the Internet and it seems to be an issue with some TVs which are expecting a 50Hz 1080i image.

Is there any hope for me?

Assuming you moved the switch Iguana Man mentioned above, if you can't get 360 to work 1080i via component, why not try the Marantz's RGB/VGA input:
http://www.gamestop.com/product.asp?product%5Fid=802129

[umainebearman]

Originally Posted by Iguana Man

This may not help, but I'll throw it out there. The plug that goes into the back of the 360, is the little slide switch set to HDTV? Hell, does the Elite cable still offer this switch?

Yeah try that slider switch. But from my experience of taking my 360 to friends places that have HDTVs when we went into settings and upped the consoles resolution to 720 or 1080 and didn't slide the switch to HDTV it would just boot back up with having the changes made.

[Mr. Furious]

I played with the selector switch, and it didn't do anything. I called Xbox tech support and they're 0/3 questions. Quite frankly, Xbox Tech support (aka Outsourced tech support to India who can barely speak English) sucks.

Question 1: How do you change a wireless controller postion from quadrant 2 to quadrant 1 (move controller positions)?

After being only hold for nearly 20 minutes, she finally said it couldn't be done. She'd come back on the line for about 10 seconds, ask the EXACT same question over and over (and I'd respond over and over) - put me on hold for about 3-4 minutes, then come back and repeat the process. Eventually she tells me that it "can't be done without having another console."

I found the answer in Xbox support in about 30 seconds.

Question 2: Resurrecting my old Gamer Tag. Apparently it can't be done because I cancelled my account in spring 2006... So, I created a new account (Mr Furious 2K7)

Question 3: I can't get my HDTV to display 1080i through the component cables.

Comments from tech support -
1) You must not have an HDTV (False - I have a Marantz PV6111W 61" CRT RPTV HDTV).
2) You have the wrong cables hooked up (False - I have the HD AV component cables hooked up)
3) You must select 1080i in the console settings (I did, it scrambles the picture)
4) You're missing options in the console settings - display because your TV does not support them (No idea - do more options appear when you have different cables connected?) I have only HDTV Settings, Screen Format, Black Level. That's it.

I finally got frustrated with tech support after he put me on hold for about 5-7 minutes while he researched the problem and came to the conclusion that I didn't have an HDTV...

I despise the trend of outsourcing. Especially terrible techs like this.

I'm buying a VGA cable today, I'll let you guys know how it goes.

[Ruined]

Originally Posted by Mr. Furious

I'm buying a VGA cable today, I'll let you guys know how it goes.

Yeah, see if you can dig up the manual for your TV and find out what resolutions the RGB port supports natively so you can get best quality. Also, if the game looks washed out/black level too bright, change the black level settings (which are unlocked along with the resolution settings when you insert the 360 VGA cable). As a side bonus, the 360 will upscale DVD over the VGA output, which isnt possible due to studio DRM agreements over component.

edit: found it online, the RGB input on the Marantz should accept 720p/1080i. You probably will have to use 720p (1280x720) because I'm pretty sure the 360 can't output 1080i over VGA (I think it only does progressive via VGA, so that would mean 720p/1080p only). That being said, virtually all of the 360 games are internally rendered in 720p - including the most graphically impressive ones like GoW, Halo3, etc - anyway so it shouldn't matter; your TV will simply be scaling the 720p to 1080i instead of the 360.

HD input (INPUT 3) R, G, B, H, V
(RGB) INPUT jack: Dsub 15 pin × 1
Input signal: 480P, 540P, 720P, 1080I
RGB: 0.7 Vp-p/75 Ω/no sync
HD, VD: TTL level/positive and negative

So VGA cable set to 1280x720 resolution in the 360 dashboard should do the trick. If that still doesn't work, I'd try another 360 to ensure that yours doesn't have a defective GPU.

[MooglePorn]

Originally Posted by Mr. Furious

I despise the trend of outsourcing. Especially terrible techs like this.

I don't mind outsourcing when it makes sense and does not prevent good service for the consumer... This is a prime example of when it doesn't meet that criteria.

I have called Xbox support a few times and each time got a completely useless and barely understandable person like you did. The one time they told me to try my HD DVD disc in my DVD player to see if it worked on another machine... arg.

[Mr. Furious]

Well - I hooked up the VGA cable and the Xbox wouldn't even start up when connected to my TV. It just sat there and turned on, but nothing happened (I couldn't even hear the startup sound). So, I brought my PC monitor and hooked up the VGA cable. Xbox started up, displayed fine (though it apparently doesn't support 1600x1200 ), and played a bit of Halo 3 like that.

So, apparently there is something really wrong with my HD. I'm going to call Marantz today to see what they say. It was manufacturered in October of 2001, so I'm afraid I'm just totally out of luck. This doesn't bode well when I get my HD-DVD player today or tomorrow. :\

As a few side notes:

LIVE for the x360 is really cool. Overall it has some really, really slick features. I really like the friends list, the integration with Live messenger, and the ease of inviting friends to games. It's all very smooth. On the downside, audio quality sucks compared to ventrilo and I haven't found a way to fix voice activation so that it's not so sensative. I also tried a standard DVD just to see what the quality was like on that and found that it isn't particularly good as a DVD player. If I can work out the issue with Marantz (converter box?), I may give it a try again.

BTW - what's up with Microsoft points and what's the difference between Gold memberships and Silver Memberships?

[MooglePorn]

MS points are used to buy arcade games (cool) and additional content for games (not cool) as well as gamer pictures and backgrounds (really, really not cool). MS makes you buy points so that instead of spending exactly what you want you have to round up, then maybe use those points later, but probably have to buy another batch of points... it's anti-consumer bullshit, but no one seems to care.

Gold members can play online games, silver members get everything but that. Gold members pay to use their own Internet bandwith since very, very few 360 games use dedicated servers. More anti-consumer bullshit, but again, no one seems to mind.

[Mr. Furious]

Solution First
Okay - for those of you who just want to get the details, I found that I could get the TV to display a 1080i native image and it was amazing. The solution was that the TV could not switch from SD to HD resolutions once it was already displaying an SD image. I could go from 1080i to 480p, but not 480p to 1080i. I could reset the display by turning off the monitor and turning it back on. After a restart, it would then resync and display properly. Moral of the story, don't change from SD to HD resolutions without restarting the TV.

The Story
Okay - now that I have the conclusion out of the way, here is what happened.

Yesterday, I called Marantz tech support. Considering their exceptionally small user base, I figured it wouldn’t take long to speak with someone. I was wrong; I was on hold for about 20-25 minutes. However, once I spoke with someone, I was pleased to find out that it was a call center here in the United States. Obviously I didn’t have to get over the language barrier and that was really nice for once.

I gave him my relevant info:

Marantz 61” PV6111W RPTV HDTV (CRT)


Marantz is more known for their audio than their video, but I bought the TV at a custom home theater shop when I saw how beautiful it scaled SD DVDs. That was back in August of 2002. Back then, Plasma TVs were about $10k and most rear projection televisions had troubles with viewing angles. This Marantz has a huge field of view and the picture still looks better than most current sub-$3,000 TVs.

Anyway, I was starting to regret my purchase as the technician commented, “Hmmm, that’s certainly an older model. Let me find the manuals for that.”

That basically indicated that:
A) He wasn’t familiar with my TV.
B) He wasn’t likely to know what to do to fix it beyond what I had already read in the manual

I started to conjure thoughts of selling the TV on Craig’s list as a really expensive SD set (pennies on the dollar).

After about ten minutes of talking with the tech, it was his conclusion that the display had a mechanical defect and we should hire a technician to come out and fix it. He gave the number of a local repair shop in Minneapolis and bid me a good day.

I called the repair shop who thought the symptoms were odd. However, they couldn’t go onsite and would require the TV to be brought on site to them. They had a minimum fee of $110. I’d have to hire a moving company to take this 300lbs gorilla (literally 300 pounds) to their repair shop. Again, I began to wonder about the wisdom of keeping a set without HDMI and spending $350 to MAYBE fix it. They suggested I wait until I plugged in my new Toshiba HD-A2 and report back.

When I got home last night, I unboxed my new A2, plugged it in, and booted up. I performed the firmware update, reinitialized it, and noticed the settings were defaulted to “up to 1080i”. The menu was being displayed in 1080i. I was thrilled. I popped in an HD copy of Transformers and… WOW. HOLY FARKING SHIP! It was beautiful.

So right then, I knew the HD hardware was working and that the TV was fully capable of HD. I began to believe at that point that there must be an incompatibility between the Xbox and the TV. Although I was saddened by this, I figured the image quality on HD DVD was so stunning that playing my Xbox in 480P (scaled then by the TV to 1080i) wasn’t that bad. But it gnawed at me. My expensive Marantz TV was only going to play HDDVDs.

After watching my new HD copy of 300 and Transformers, I popped in a SD copy of Star Trek TOS (Corbomite Maneuver). I watched the indicator on the A2 switch from 1080i to 480p. A message was displayed on the screen indicating that the content was protected and being reduced back to 480p. Again, not a big deal since my TV’s internal scaler is pretty good. What difference did it make if the DVD player or the TV did the scaling?

I noticed that the sound was fairly low from the player (compared to my old Pioneer Elite) and that it required me to turn up the volume more on my preamp than I had in the past. So, I thought I’d go into the setup menu. I stopped the movie, hit setup… and then it happened. See, the A2 displays its menu based on my settings… 1080i. It had been outputting 480p, but now it switched back to 1080i. My TV scrambled just as it did with the Xbox. The light bulb turned on. I turned off the TV and turned it back on. The picture cleared immediately.

What if…?

I booted up the Xbox. It defaults to 480p so the TV was now displaying the 480P signal. I switched to 1080i and picture scrambled. I turned off the TV and turned it back on. It was clean….and pristine! The picture was beautiful! More importantly! It was working!

Apparently this older set was like the old PC monitors. It had difficulty switching resolutions without resetting. It’s a minor nuisance, but it can do it. I’m thrilled that I’m not going to have to upgrade to a new TV. Especially since I’ve noticed that the cheaper flat panel TVs just don’t have the image quality (black levels and color quality especially) that my old CRT has. It’s just so entirely noticeable. I don’t really have the money I once did before I had children (I’ve had four kids in a span of 6 years – I’m good at what I do). So, I didn’t relish the idea of spending $5k on a TV.
Net result, I’ll be happy with a 1080i set for a while.

[Ruined]

And if you're not, you can get the 120hz/true 1080p24 60" Sony KDS-60A3000 LCOS RPTV for $1700 from CC w/ free delivery. But I won't tempt you there .

Anyway, do you have to switch the TV on/off every time the XBOX boots then?

[Mr. Furious]

Originally Posted by Ruined

Anyway, do you have to switch the TV on/off every time the XBOX boots then?

No, apparently once you make a switch in the Xbox, it starts in that display mode. After I switched it to 1080i, it displayed the Xbox logo (on startup) in 1080i. I imagine the only problem would be games that only display in 480P. The problem only seems to exist switching from 480P to 1080i.

[Ruined]

Originally Posted by Mr. Furious

No, apparently once you make a switch in the Xbox, it starts in that display mode. After I switched it to 1080i, it displayed the Xbox logo (on startup) in 1080i. I imagine the only problem would be games that only display in 480P. The problem only seems to exist switching from 480P to 1080i.

There are no games that display in 480P. The 360 has a hardware scaler that scales everything to your display's native resolution (even XBOX1 games & arcade titles). So it will send your set 1080i for everything from now on.

[ganthc]

Originally Posted by Mr. Furious

I noticed that the sound was fairly low from the player (compared to my old Pioneer Elite) and that it required me to turn up the volume more on my preamp than I had in the past.

Yeah, the A2 does have a low audio output. You get used to having to jack up the volume big time when playing an hd-dvd.

[Ruined]

Originally Posted by ganthc

Yeah, the A2 does have a low audio output. You get used to having to jack up the volume big time when playing an hd-dvd.

The lower than DVD audio output is simply to allow for greater dynamic range transients - similar to how standard DVD has lower volume than CD.

From the DVD FAQ:

Originally Posted by DVD FAQ

[3.6.4] Why is the audio level from my DVD player so low?

Many people complain that the audio level from DVD players is too low. In truth the audio level is too high on everything else. Movie soundtracks are extremely dynamic, ranging from near silence to intense explosions. In order to support an increased dynamic range and hit peaks (near the 2V RMS limit) without distortion, the average sound volume must be lower. This is why the line level from DVD players is lower than from almost all other sources. So far, unlike on CDs and LDs, the level is much more consistent between discs. If the change in volume when switching between DVD and other audio sources is annoying, you can adjust the output signal level on some players, or the input signal level on some receivers, but other than that, there's not much you can do.

We see the same thing occuring between HD DVD's new highres codecs and DVD.

[Iguana Man]

Good for you Mr. Furious! It's not unlike having to power up certain projectors last after firing up all the other equipment (dvd player and receiver).

YAY for you!

[Mr. Furious]

I played Gears of War and Guitar Hero last night in HD on the x360. It was incredible for a gaming system. It was simply a treat.