I just purchased a 46" Samsung LED LCD and upon initially trying to connect to my Fios STB via the HDMI ports, I quickly became acclimated with the communication issues between Samsung and Motorola equipment. No signal on any channel - a quick google search yielded numerous messages about documented issues between the Samsungs and Motorola/VZ boxes.
I understand the best way to refrain from pulling all hair out of your head is to concede and just use the component cables, but this is a PITA for me as I'm behind the times and still have a DVD player with component output only - problem here is that this TV only has one input for component, so it's either buy a new DVD player, or no DVD for now as the component will be occupied by the STB.
So I go out and buy a sony bluray player for $130 bucks, and before connecting the bluray I use the supplied bluray HDMI cable (that came with the sony player), and give another shot to the connecting the TV to the STB via HDMI. There is a noticeable lag and initially the TV reads 'no input', but finally after some moments it identifies the signal from the STB, and I'm now watching TV through the HDMI port.
So the questions are:
-The system seems unstable, is my box going to start crashing in the near future?
-Right now the non-HD channels through Fios are 4:3 ratio, should I leave alone or can I go into the STB menu and adjust the conversion ratios when switching between HD and non-HD channels (I've read this can lead to add'l issues).
- Are either Samsung or Verizon/Motorola working on a fix for this? The messages I found on google were dated 2007/2008 - it's been three years and no solution has been found. That's unacceptable if so, these TVs need to have disclaimers on the boxes saying "this delicious technology may not work with your STB, be prepared for headaches". Definitely some **bleep** here.
@trahsub wrote:So the questions are:
-The system seems unstable, is my box going to start crashing in the near future?
-Right now the non-HD channels through Fios are 4:3 ratio, should I leave alone or can I go into the STB menu and adjust the conversion ratios when switching between HD and non-HD channels (I've read this can lead to add'l issues).
- Are either Samsung or Verizon/Motorola working on a fix for this? The messages I found on google were dated 2007/2008 - it's been three years and no solution has been found. That's unacceptable if so, these TVs need to have disclaimers on the boxes saying "this delicious technology may not work with your STB, be prepared for headaches". Definitely some **bleep** here.
1. No, you may still have problems with the communication. it likely will be intermittant. I would still suggest using the component cables to avoid future hair pulling
2. That should cause no issues but moving to the stretch mode will reduce the picture quality. This is a constant source of fights in my house. I prefer a quality picture so I leave it on 4:3. But my girlfriend prefers size (enter joke here) so she has it stretched but I hate the lower quality picture.
3. Both have been working on it. Verizon has pushed several updates that have fixed a majority of the issues but there are still some with issues. Samsung has also made some firmware updates available for a lot of their TV's but there are going to be a few that will never get fixed. Does your TV have internet access? If so, it should be able to check to see if there are any updates availabe. If not you may be able to go to the Samsung website and see if any are available for your tv and download to a stick drive to install to the tv.
Make sure you set your TV to its HDMI input channel. When you say "no signal on any channel," that makes me think you're trying to use the TV's tuner instead of the STB's tuner. The TV is just receiving the video input from the STB; you're not actually changing the channels on the TV.
That could be your problem, but maybe not.
(Reading your post a bit closer it seems like you know better than that, so just ignore what I wrote)
If you want your non-HD channels to be stretched, go into the FiOS menu, settings, video settings, and change "SD override" to "stretch." The other option is to change SD override to "480i" and then set your TV to stretch a 4:3 (480i) picture. Most TVs will allow you to have separate stretching settings for 4:3 and 16:9 inputs.
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