picture problem - telly or skybox?

[Stu R]

Morning all.

I've got a bit of a problem with one of my TV's, or the (new) sky HD box that's connected to it. Bear with me and I'll try and explain.

The TV is a few years old which I got in Dubai, it's a 46" Samsung LCD (I know, terrible). Recently been re-doing the house and after a couple of months of standing gathering dust I've just got round to setting it back up.

Now, ages ago I noticed when sat close up playing some Xbox the colour would flicker ever so slightly, not the picture itself, almost as if the RBG settings were being altered instantaneously. Thought nothing of it and haven't seen it happen since, even on the only game I noticed it on.

I've since had Sky+HD installed and aside of the odd F1 race it's not been used, just sat disconnected for the most part whilst decorating etc gets done.

Anyway, tonight I played a little xbox, and watched some sky. The colour etc seemed fine on the xbox, but when watching Sky I noticed the colour begin to flicker and get progressively worse. I can only describe it as... well take the RGB inputs, it was like someone was turning the green off, then it'd flick back, then the red would go off. Something like that anyway. Cue the blue of the sky menus going purple, then black and white etc. Getting progressively worse and more annoying. But the Xbox seemed fine.

Pre-emptive answers to questions:

• The xbox is connected via the standard cabling (component? RGB and a red and white for audio)
• The Sky+HD is connected via HDMI
• I've tried swapping the supplied HDMI cable for one of mine which I know is fine and is of high quality.
• I switched the Sky box to a different HDMI port to no avail, same result
• The Sky box is a samsung one I think, well that's what it says in the techy stuff in the sky menu.
• signal strength and everything else is bang on

I've got a feeling it's the Sky box, as it's new and hasn't really been used for more than an hour at a time before tonight, I've got other TV's but can't be dragging them across the house to test this theory. Aside of being a rubbish samsung and the aforementioned flickering when playing xbox months ago which was only a couple of times and never for long, I've not had any problems with it. As much as I'm itching to replace it with something nice like a panasonic or even a pioneer, I'd rather spend my money on other stuff and replace it at the end of summer when I stand a chance of getting some free time to enjoy it.

Any guesses before I get on the blower to Sky and risk making myself look an idiot when they replace the box only for the same problem to re-appear?

Cheers,
Stu

[headcase]

If the xbox used to do it on the component input now sky is doing it on the HDMI inputs it would sugest to me that its a fault in your tv and not sky.