# Not sure if this is a "feature" or not.



## HarryS (Mar 6, 2005)

I had my 921 hooked up to my Mitsu with S video for SD and component for HD/digital, when switching from SD to digital, all I'd have to do is switch inputs on the TV, everything followed(921 would change to 480, and then back) when switching back to digital. I purchased a DVI-I cable, installed it (and removed the component cables) and switched the input on the TV. Now when I switch from digital to SD on the 921, it switches to 480, but when I switch back to digital, the 921 will not switch to 1080, and my TV will not see the input. Is this normal?


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## HarryS (Mar 6, 2005)

This can't be that difficult to answer, can it???? With component cables hooked up, the 921 acts normal between digital and analog, with DVI cable hooked up, it freaks out? You mean to tell me no one here can help?? :eek2:


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## Ron Barry (Dec 10, 2002)

No this does not sound like a feature. I don't have a DVI cable hooked to my 921, but I have not read any reports of this behavior. I would expect it to work the same as component. 

Anybody have this configuration and seeing the same thing? might be a 921 bug or could be the TV/DVR combination.


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## tnsprin (Mar 16, 2003)

HarryS said:


> I had my 921 hooked up to my Mitsu with S video for SD and component for HD/digital, when switching from SD to digital, all I'd have to do is switch inputs on the TV, everything followed(921 would change to 480, and then back) when switching back to digital. I purchased a DVI-I cable, installed it (and removed the component cables) and switched the input on the TV. Now when I switch from digital to SD on the 921, it switches to 480, but when I switch back to digital, the 921 will not switch to 1080, and my TV will not see the input. Is this normal?


The following is one possibility. For those TV's that completely shut down, you must have your TV on before switching your 921 to "power on" status. Otherwise it may not realize you have a DVI connection and instead try and send the output over the component connections.


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## tom921 (Jan 21, 2005)

I'm a little confused by your description of the problem but I think I have a similar hookup. I have the 921 connected to a Sharp HDTV via DVI, and Output 1 connected to a channel modulator via composite cables. In my case, there is no need to switch the 921 between HD and SD for the TV. I leave it in HD and both SD and HD content are correctly received by the TV. Are you sure you need to have both cables connected to the Mitsu and switch inputs? 

As for SD on Output 1, when the 921 is in HD mode, Output 1 has no picture. When the 921 is in SD mode, DVI has no picture. When I put the 921 in both HD and SD output, DVI has 480p but I want higher resolution. I have not had a problem with the 921 returning to 1080 when I switch back to HD output. However, there is a known bug if you turn off the 921 in SD mode at the end of the day. The automatic reboot will screw things up such that you will need to fix your display settings to output HD properly.


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## Rovingbar (Jan 25, 2005)

HarryS said:


> I had my 921 hooked up to my Mitsu with S video for SD and component for HD/digital, when switching from SD to digital, all I'd have to do is switch inputs on the TV, everything followed(921 would change to 480, and then back) when switching back to digital.


I don't understand how this can possibly work. My 921, and as I understand it all 921s, does not have both SD and HD active at the same time. You can only get one or the other. In safe mode, you can get 480i and 480p simultaneously, but that is it. The possibilities are something like this,

SD Mode: 
- S-video and composite active with 480i
- Component and DVI deactivated

HD Mode: 
- S-video and composite deactivated
- Component and DVI active with 480p, 720p, or 1080i

Save Mode: 
- S-video and composite active with 480i
- Component (and maybe DVI) active with 480p

Do you have some special setup that allows the 921 to generate both 480p and 720p/1080i simultaneously?

Confused in Dallas,
Jeff


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## Mike D-CO5 (Mar 12, 2003)

I liked Safe mode for viewing hd in the living room and sd in my computer room. I did till the latest software update and now I get nothing but jitters in sd in the safe mode. Safe mode is now unusable for me. I used to get jitters in hd mode so I guess they just moved the jitters to the other side for a while. 


I can't wait till my new 942 comes in. At least it is meant for both hd and sd at the same time. This will work so much better for my needs.


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## SimpleSimon (Jan 15, 2004)

Mike D-CO5 said:


> I liked Safe mode for viewing hd in the living room and sd in my computer room. ...


I assume you mean you liked it for viewing "slightly enhanced SD" in the living room.  The 480p coming out of the HD ports in safe mode is a FAR cry from HD.


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## kspeters (Aug 12, 2003)

I'm not following,,,how do you get to safe mode? I thought the button on the remote just switched from hd to sd?


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## HarryS (Mar 6, 2005)

tnsprin said:


> The following is one possibility. For those TV's that completely shut down, you must have your TV on before switching your 921 to "power on" status. Otherwise it may not realize you have a DVI connection and instead try and send the output over the component connections.


I'm not shutting the TV off for this to happen.


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## HarryS (Mar 6, 2005)

Rovingbar said:


> I don't understand how this can possibly work. My 921, and as I understand it all 921s, does not have both SD and HD active at the same time. You can only get one or the other. In safe mode, you can get 480i and 480p simultaneously, but that is it. The possibilities are something like this,
> 
> SD Mode:
> - S-video and composite active with 480i
> ...


Sorry to confuse. When I had the 921 hooked to the TV with component and S-video, I would switch the 921 to SD, and change the TV to the S-video input, the 921 would output 480, when I switched to HD and the TV to component input, the 921 would output 1080. This works as I expect it would.
When I hooked up the DVI-I cable from the 921 to the TV, in lue of the component cables, when I switch the 921 to SD, and change the TV to the S-video input, the 921 would output 480, when I switched to HD on the 921, and changed the TV input to DVI, the 921 would not switch to 1080, it would remain in 480, I would have to switch input back to SD and S-video to change it to 1080.


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## Mark Lamutt (Mar 24, 2002)

Safe mode - press and hold the OUTPUT button on the front of the 921 for abuot 5 seconds or so. Both the blue and yellow lights will come on.


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## Mike D-CO5 (Mar 12, 2003)

SimpleSimon said:


> I assume you mean you liked it for viewing "slightly enhanced SD" in the living room.  The 480p coming out of the HD ports in safe mode is a FAR cry from HD.


 This might sound funny to ya'll , but I find the majority of tv I watch is from the satellite and the picture looks better in 480p . Especially on my locals. I don't see much of a difference between 480p and 1080i on my ota channels. When I do watch the ota channels in hd I can easily change the option to 1080i. Some of the sat channels look quite awful in 1080i. It seems to blow up all the defects and compression artifacts in the picture. In 480p it seems to hide the flaws. That is why I watch most of my sat channels in 480p.

When I could use the safe mode without jitters, it gave me a good colorful picture for my hd tv and a good sd picture for my 20" tv in the computer room. Using the s-video out to my supervhs vcr with s-video in and out gave me a more bland washed out picture. Now I am back to using the vcr for sd in the living room if I want to watch sd in the computer room. The safe mode feature was broken for me in the latest software update.

Thanks Dish.


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## David_Levin (Apr 22, 2002)

Harry:

When you say it remains at 480, to you men 480p or 480i. You must be clear here. The is a bug where the HD/SD button stops working.

Are you sure the button was taking you back to 1080i with the component connections? Is it possible that you were watching 480p and that your TV doesn't support 480p over dvi?

There is a bug in that if the 921 is left in SD mode and the overnight reboot hits, the HD mode forgets it's resolution setting. When you switch back to HD mode you'll get 480p. Mark might know if this is being addressed.



> it would remain in 480, I would have to switch input back to SD and S-video to change it to 1080.


Do you mean you have to use menu-6-9 to change it? That's the stuck HD-SD bug. A power button reboot will get it working (temporarily).


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## Slordak (Dec 17, 2003)

Mike D-CO5 said:


> This might sound funny to ya'll , but I find the majority of tv I watch is from the satellite and the picture looks better in 480p . Especially on my locals. I don't see much of a difference between 480p and 1080i on my ota channels. When I do watch the ota channels in hd I can easily change the option to 1080i. Some of the sat channels look quite awful in 1080i. It seems to blow up all the defects and compression artifacts in the picture. In 480p it seems to hide the flaws. That is why I watch most of my sat channels in 480p.


You may need a better television. If you're finding that, say, HD.Net looks better to you in 480p than 1080i, then your "HDTV" is doing a pretty poor job with true HD content. Admittedly for some content, where the content source itself isn't true HD and is just being upconverted, I can see why 1080i wouldn't look any better, but if true HD material doesn't look better in HD resolutions, then obviously there's some issue with the TV.

Of course, if your main issue is with the Dish SD channels, then you can instead blame the 921 for having inferior 1080i up-conversion hardware, which is why we've been asking for a resolution pass-through since day #1


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## tom921 (Jan 21, 2005)

Harry,

I've got to ask the question again; why do you have two cables from the 921 to the Mitsu? It seems the DVI cable should handle everything. Set the display settings on the 921 to the aspect ratio and resolution you want, set the 921 to HD output, the TV to DVI input and then everything should work. I have my settings to 1080i, 16:9. When a 4:3 SD program gets sent to my 16:9 TV, the 921 displays it as 4:3 (assuming the aspect ratio bug doesn't rear its ugly head).


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## Ron Barry (Dec 10, 2002)

tom921 said:


> Harry,
> 
> I've got to ask the question again; why do you have two cables from the 921 to the Mitsu? It seems the DVI cable should handle everything. Set the display settings on the 921 to the aspect ratio and resolution you want, set the 921 to HD output, the TV to DVI input and then everything should work. I have my settings to 1080i, 16:9. When a 4:3 SD program gets sent to my 16:9 TV, the 921 displays it as 4:3 (assuming the aspect ratio bug doesn't rear its ugly head).


Tom,

It is possible Harry is finding that with SD content svideo is a better choice allowing the TV to do the scaling. That is my guess why he is using a two input solution.

The question is does this work when going from DVI to svideo?

The quesiton is is there another user with DVI and svideo hooked up that is having trouble toggling back and forth.

As to the Safe mode jitters, Yes it would be nice to be able to work in this mode but based on its description I don't think Dish intended people to use this mode and I would see it as a Cool if it works.. Too bad if it doesn't feature. Kinda of like the dual output on Component and DVI with the 811 and the 921.


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## Mike D-CO5 (Mar 12, 2003)

Slordak said:


> You may need a better television. If you're finding that, say, HD.Net looks better to you in 480p than 1080i, then your "HDTV" is doing a pretty poor job with true HD content. Admittedly for some content, where the content source itself isn't true HD and is just being upconverted, I can see why 1080i wouldn't look any better, but if true HD material doesn't look better in HD resolutions, then obviously there's some issue with the TV.
> 
> Of course, if your main issue is with the Dish SD channels, then you can instead blame the 921 for having inferior 1080i up-conversion hardware, which is why we've been asking for a resolution pass-through since day #1


 I only have ONE ota channel that does true 1080i: CBS. The others , ABC, NBC are only doing 480p, so again I say I watch most of the programming in 480p. When I do watch CBS programming I set the 921 to 1080i. I also watch HBO hd and SHowtime hd in 1080i. THat is 3 channels out of all the channels I get from AEP. I don't have the hd pack since I don't see any "compelling content" there. So when I said I don't really see any difference in my ota channels I meant the ABC and NBC stations.

The real plus I get from watching in 480p that I didn't mention, is that I can adjust the aspect format of my television to the proper aspect which eliminates the squatty picture that makes everyone look fat and short, on the sd channels. With the 1080i channels I mentioned and using dvi cable I don't have this problem. Trying to watch sd channels in 1080i using the stretch mode makes the picture look way to weird for most people who first see it. I perfer the 480p because of this added perk.


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## HarryS (Mar 6, 2005)

Ron Barry said:


> Tom,
> 
> It is possible Harry is finding that with SD content svideo is a better choice allowing the TV to do the scaling. That is my guess why he is using a two input solution.
> 
> ...


Ron, I wish this were the case. I don't know if I have a bad DVI cable, but I just tried it again. With the DVI cable hooked up, it doesn't matter what other cable is connected, it only works in 480P or 1080I, when I switch to SD, I get no picture. When I switch back to HD, it's hit or miss if I get a picture back even tho the 921 shows a "blue" light. I have what I presume is a DVI-I cable, there are 4 pins surrounding the flat pin at the end. I even tried it with the S-video and component cables removed. The only way I get HD and SD is to have the component cables and S-video cable hooked up. Could I be doing something wrong?????


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## Ron Barry (Dec 10, 2002)

Know I am confused.  

Might be overloading some terms here. 

Lets first take the svideo totally out of the pictures. Can you get SD content and HD content through this DVI cable at 1080i? Does you SD show? If so, is the reason you are doing both the reason I described earlier. 

If you can get both SD content (example Disney Channel) and HD Content HD Discovery, can you get both of these just using the svideo? 

I am assuming that answer is yes to both...... 

So the issue is that you have trouble toggling between the two using the SD/HD button on the remote. 

HOwever when you use svideo and component you can toggle with not problems. 

Is this correct?


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## HarryS (Mar 6, 2005)

No. I can't get SD out of the DVI cable. And I can't get HD out of the S-video cable. With the component, I can't get SD either from them, I have to switch to the S-video input.


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## Ron Barry (Dec 10, 2002)

By SD I mean SD content. Can you view Dish channels that are not HD through your DVI with the blue light on? That is what I mean by SD content. 

That is what I meant by SD Content.


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## HarryS (Mar 6, 2005)

Sure, I'm talking about switching the 921 from SD HD.


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## Rovingbar (Jan 25, 2005)

Wow, talk about a confusing problem. I used to switch SD/HD on the Sat and switch inputs on my TV. However I kept having problems keeping them in sync. Then I discovered that 480p looks better than 480i (with my setup anyway) so I wrote macros to do the Menu-6-9 display output switch. Life is much better now: One component cable and two long macros with discrete buttons! 

So you have problems when you press the SD/HD button. Sometimes you get a picture, sometimes you do not.

Questions:
1. Do you experience the same problem if you use Menu-6-9 and manually switch between SD and HD?

2. Do you have the problem when viewing Sat HD content (i.e. HD-Net, HBOHD, etc.)

3. Do you have the problem when viewing Sat SD content (i.e. Disney, Discovery, HBO-W)?

4. Do you have the problem when viewing OTA HD content (i.e. Prime Time ABC, NBC, etc.)

5. Do you have the problem when viewing OTA SD content (i.e. most OTA programs)?


Some thoughts on possible responses for #1:

If yes - If you have problems switching, it may be related to your TV's ability to sync through DVI. I don't use it but I understand there is a handshake protocol with DVI, maybe one of the components isn't communicating as expected.

If no - maybe you have some form of the 'SD/HD stops working' bug.

Jeff


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## Ron Barry (Dec 10, 2002)

Rovingbar said:


> Wow, talk about a confusing problem. I used to switch SD/HD on the Sat and switch inputs on my TV. However I kept having problems keeping them in sync. Then I discovered that 480p looks better than 480i (with my setup anyway) so I wrote macros to do the Menu-6-9 display output switch. Life is much better now: One component cable and two long macros with discrete buttons!
> 
> So you have problems when you press the SD/HD button. Sometimes you get a picture, sometimes you do not.
> 
> ...


Good Post Jeff, that was exactly where I was going with the possibilities. I was just having a hard time trying to narrow into the problem. I think it was related to a definition overload.

My gut is telling me it handshake issue, but it could also be a bug in the 921.

Expected a few more posts of people using both outputs (s-video/composite, and DVI) and switching between them with the 921. If that was the case I would starting to think might be TV/921 combination related.


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