Samsung 32" Picture problems PLEASE HELP!

[dave144]

I have a 32" flat screen Samsung, When I play a dvd or watch normal TV the picture is really dark. The odd thing is the set top box gives a brilliant picture.

So far i've:
swapped dvd players over
tried different scarts
swapped tv aerial cables
spent hours adjusting colour, darkness, etc on the tv

Im going crazy trying to work out why the tv and dvd picture is dark but the freeview is fine?
I'm sure it's something very simple but I cannot get to the bottom of it! PLEASE HELP

[headcase]

How is it wired? I presume the STB in on SCART? Have you tried plugging the DVD player into this to see if it makes a difference?

[OldSkoolRS]

Not sure about Samsung, but with Sony LCD TVs the backlight (and other menu settings) is on a 'per input' basis. It might be that for scart input the backlight is set higher, the gamma lower or that the brightness or contrast controls are turned higher. If there is a colour temp control this can make a big difference to perceived brightness too: Vivid on my conservatory TV looks horrible, but it is certainly bright, standard using 'Warm 2' is much better but dimmer. In a direct comparison the Warm 2 mode looks dull, but it is in fact closer to accuate.

Some modern TVs have so many adjustments that it can take a while to work them all out. Ironically all of the 'advanced' items on mine are turned 'off' for a much more natural image.

EDIT: It might also be that your set top box is outputing in 'Video' rather than RGB. Although RGB should give a better picture I have noticed on an older PACE recorder that RGB always looked much darker, so required different settings to suit. Using 'video' (aka 'composite') to view on an LCD will give a pretty horrible picture full of fuzz and blury motion, so even if it's brighter, I'd readjust and use RGB if this isn't the case already.

Edited by OldSkoolRS on Saturday 23 October 11:06

[dave144]

Thanks for the info.

The set top box is set up on RGB. I bought a new set top box as the other remote was caput, this has two scart sockets so have now put the LG dvd player through the set top box and guess what? same dark picture!!!

[headcase]

Try switching it to composite video if you can and see if you can make the digibox go dark, at that way your getting to the bottom of the problem. If that isnt an option then its aux SCART will output composite so basically connect the aux to the TV then manually switch the TV to the AV input you just connected it too.
Sometimes you can get an issue where RGB signals are dark and composite is ok, seems that yours may be the other way around. Weird

[dave144]

Finally got to the bottom of the saga! unplugged the set top box and plugged the areial into the tv direct and retuned the whole thing from scratch, turns out the TV has digital already built in but needed to be tuned in under DTV. It is possible to tune channels 1-5 without even going through the built in set top box.

So that sorted the dark TV picture. The DVD player was then plugged back in via scart lead and the picture was still dark. Went into the set up menu selected 16:9 picture turned the LNA on and selected RGB and Fanny yours aunt it sorted it.

3 years ive had the TV and never knew it had freeview built in


Just need to take the freeview back to Dixons now.
Thanks for all the tips