Component Video for Wii

I was doing a quick calibration of an HDTV today and I noticed the Nintendo Wii was hooked up using the Composite Video cable (yellow/white/red) that comes standard with the game.  The Wii video will look a lot better on an HDTV if you use the optional Component Video cable (red/green/blue, red/white) available just about anywhere Wii’s are sold.  Fry’s had one advertised this weekend for $14.99.  After you hook up the cable, use the Wii’s settings menu to enable 480p and 16 x 9 aspect ratio.  Thank me very much.

No HD!

I was doing a quick calibration of a TV today and I noticed the picture from the Dish Network receiver looked a little soft.  I checked the cable and the installer had used HDMI so that was good.  I brought up the video settings menu on the satellite receiver and it was set to output 480p!  I switched this to 1080i and the picture sharpened right up.  I see this all the time.  I wonder how many HD cable and satellite boxes are installed with HDTVs and aren’t set to output HD video?  I had one customer that had been paying for HD for over a year and had never seen real HD before.  They were amazed when I changed the setting to output 1080i.

Room Heater

A new customer called recently about a problem he was having with a new 50″ Samsung plasma TV.  He had it installed in a dedicated theater room and it was putting out so much heat that they had to leave the door to the theater open and put a fan in the door to stay comfortable.  He said he couldn’t hold his hand on top of the TV for more than 30 seconds.

That is very unusual.  These TVs consume about 480 watts when operating, but I didn’t think that was enough to heat up a room.  I stopped by to check it out.  The Contrast control determines how bright the brightest areas of the screen are, and to some extent how much energy the TV consumes. This is usually turned up pretty high from the factory so it will look “brighter” in a showroom display compared to the competition.

On this TV the Contrast control was turned up to 95 out of 100 on all the inputs.  I changed the Picture mode to Movie and then calibrated the Contrast control with a 100/95/90 IRE test pattern by turning it down until the 100 IRE patch just started to dim.

We ran it for almost an hour after that and the room never warmed up.  I could hold my hand on top of the TV indefinitely; it wasn’t very hot at all.  The picture looked better too.  Problem solved and I have another happy customer with a lower energy bill!