in need of someone with knowledge of sony TV's "service mode"

[Guest bigsack]

i have a 34in sony Wega HD flat screen tube, yes it's a heavy Edited to Remove Profanity ----Edited to Remove Profanity ----Edited to Remove Profanity ----, it appears to be missing part of the picture. on an HD channel it appears like its trying to put a 40 in picture on a 34 in screen. on standard def, the the picture it vertical letterbox which is fine, how ever the edge of the picture is curved in at the middle like an hour glass. this is a problem particularly while playing playstation

last week we had to get a new cable box from charter and according to my wife the cable guy had to "stretch the screen." but thats all the info she can offer. i have been though all of the standard menus in the settings and haven't been able to come up with anything. after a bit of google fu, ive come across "service mode" they have all kinds of warnings about messing with it if you don't have a manual or know what your doing.(which appearantly the cable guy had neither)

on the back of the tv there is a plug behind a cover flap that looks like a usb and says "service only"

so what do i need to do? i'd like to fix this before i have to call the cable company back and give them a piece of my mind for messing with things they shouldn't be.

[mcurrier]

I assume you've tried the Aspect Ratio / Zoom button on the remote first? Pressing progressively cycles through the different aspect ratios and zoom options. Depending on what you're viewing, different movies, broadcasts and media are conformed to different aspect ratios. It's akin to the curtains on the sides of the movie screen at the theater adjusting to fit the current movie.

That's about all I can offer on your problem.

[Guest FiddleDog]

The hourglass bend on the bottom and top sounds like it could also be an overscan issue. Do you have any speakers close to your TV? That can also cause the image warp. Most of the HD CRT boxes are limited to 540p/1080i. 720p is often scaled back to 540p and then doubled. This is sometimes screwy with HDMI cables (but not with HD Comp cables).

Aspect zoom is the usual suspect, as mcurrier mentioned, but if it is not that issue, check to see if you can manually pick 720p vs 1080i on the box. if so, set it to 1080i. If not, check your output on your ps3 and cable box and try setting those to 1080i and suspend the 720p setting (I know that the ps3 will give priority to 720p if left to its own devices.

Hope that helps. If you can possible take a picture of what the screen is doing, I can get a better idea of where the problem lies. Those CRT monitors are stone simple, so you should have no reason to update the firmware. It is nearly guaranteed that something unforeseen will occur in that process.

Edited February 26, 2011 by FiddleDog

[Guest buttonhook]

is it the silver cable box?

[Guest bigsack]

Thanks for the reply's guys.

first off i have noticed something else about this new cable box. it appears to up convert everything to 1080i. previously when you would change the channel from a standard def to hd channel the tv would go black for a second or two while the tv would reformat the picture. i noticed this when i was changing channels on the cable box while the tv's channel display was on, in the old way it would show 480i, 720p, 1080i depending on what you were viewing from the cable box.

i have been all through the standard menus and tried all of the options within those and those just make it worse.

i have some pictures i have taken of the tv with various imputs.

straight cable standard def

cable box standard def progam(but up converted to hd)

cable box HD (menu screen to show curve)

ps3 hd

now previously i had this thing set up so that on standard def i had vertical letter box(i can't stand stretched and distorted picture.) and on hd the screen would be full with no cropping. the Tv would do all of this automatically.

Edited February 28, 2011 by bigsack