Weird issue on DTV 720p and 1080i mode

[Devezu]

I would just like to start off by saying this is an awesome program - love it to play downloaded video on my TV. I was playing around with the display modes when I found - HDTV MODES! YES! Finally, my component cables would be put to good use. Both 720 and 1080 looked fine when I set them, but when I play a video... there is this annoying bar at the bottom of the screen that seems to be a squished version of the video that's playing! Is this a problem with my cable? PS2? SMS Version (I can't find any changelogs...)? TV?

[dlanor]

I would just like to start off by saying this is an awesome program - love it to play downloaded video on my TV. I was playing around with the display modes when I found - HDTV MODES! YES! Finally, my component cables would be put to good use. Both 720 and 1080 looked fine when I set them, but when I play a video... there is this annoying bar at the bottom of the screen that seems to be a squished version of the video that's playing! Is this a problem with my cable? PS2? SMS Version (I can't find any changelogs...)? TV?

I'm not sure exactly how it works, but there are some advanced settings in SMS that you can use to tweak the video timing so as to eliminate that problem. I use the program the same way you do, using component cables to make it display HDTV modes on my LCD TV. Tweaking it to work with 720p was quite simple, though it took a while to find settings that work for 1080i.

In the main menu of SMS, first open the submenu "Display Settings..." and then its submenu "Advanced Settings..." and then look for the entries named something like "Synch. parameter 1" etc. There should be three of them, numbered 1 through 3 (how obvious was that ) These numbers can be tweaked and then you can use the 'Apply Settings' command on the same page to see how the changed numbers affect the display.

For me the values I currently use for perfect operation of 1080i are 506, 506, 480, while the values that I use for 720p are 684, 684, 648 (not a typo!).

Generally speaking numbers 1 and 2 should be appx the same, with number 3 a bit lower, like the numbers I used above. But for traditional SDTV modes you probably won't see the problem anyway, as their timing is not as critical.

Apparently SMS memorizes these numbers individually for each of the video modes it supports, so experimenting with these numbers in one video mode will not ruin the setup for any other mode, so that's one less issue to worry about. If you do mess up, it should only affect the mode you are currently working in.

Also, when you have found settings that work well for you, don't forget to use the main menu command to save settings before you exit the program. Else you'll have it all to do again next time.

Best regards: dlanor

[Devezu]

Thank you very much! That did just the trick!