Conecting a Panasonic Plasma

[admin_exported]

I finally did it and my new TH42PX70 arrives Friday

. Initialy I will be using my HDD/dvd recorder and Panasonic Digibox to watch and record satelite. There is a component o/p on the back of the HDD/dvd recorder, three rca jacks which I hope to use. I presume these give red/blue/green so do I need an audio conection as well, as there are the two l & r outputs with the composite signal o/p so do I need to conect those? If all else fails I will be using a scart for now.

Will the normal aerial coax give me freeview using the tuner in the TV?

Do I need to buy an upscaling dvd player or can the TV do it for me from my HDD/dvd recorder?

 

[professorhat]

Yes, the component connections (which are the red, green and blue connections on the back) only output video (ironically not in RGB format, but don't worry too much about that!). You will also need to connect the audio left and right connections (red and white) to your TV audio inputs to get the sound.

The TV aerial connected to your TV should be enough to give you Freeview, though it depends if the signal is strong enough in your area. Use this website to check this.

Finally, on the upscaling DVD player, if your HDD/DVD recorder is a standard player with no upscaling, then yes, the TV will upscale the image by itself to fit the screen. However, you may want to consider getting a dedicated upscaling DVD player - these often will produce a much better picture than just leaving the TV to do this and usually come with an HDMI connection which also improves the picture quality over component.

*Edit - on the upscaling question, you could consider a Toshiba HD-EP30 HD-DVD player. HD-DVD as a format may be dead now, but these players are incredible upscalers for standard DVDs for the price (as discussed in this post).

 

[Anonymous]

Thanks for that Prof, I have a good quality scart lead and audio lead but did not want to pay for a component one if not necessary. Do you think there would be any syncing problems with using two separate sources? I have seen a couple of posts referring to lip sync problems but can't remember the context.

I will certainly look at the DVD player you recommend mine is getting old and doesn't like dual layer disc's, in fact some movies freeze after playing for an hour or so. Worst culprits were Pearl Harbor and strangely enough Calender Girls.

Thanks again

 

[professorhat]

[quote user="Chicken_George"]Worst culprits were Pearl Harbor and strangely enough Calender Girls.[/quote]

For some reason this made me laugh out loud! Anyway, a component lead should make a big difference, but if you are thinking of buying one, I'd think again about the Tosh player I mentioned. It's now £78 on Amazon and a decent component cable would not much less than that. Even if you use a really cheap HDMI cable, I'm confident the picture will be much much much better on this than your standard HDD/DVD recorder.

 

[professorhat]

[quote user="Chicken_George"]Do you think there would be any syncing problems with using two separate sources? I have seen a couple of posts referring to lip sync problems but can't remember the context.[/quote]

Just re-read your post after posting - I'm not sure what you mean by this I'm afraid... i.e. "two separate sources"

Also, I'm guessing your HDD/DVD recorder is a freeview one? In which case, my original post was slightly wrong and you should input the coax aerial lead to this, then there should be an output from this to your TV. This will allow the recorder to record Freeview broadcasts.

 

[Anonymous]

Sorry I seem to have confused the issue. My HDD/dvd Recorder doesn't do freeview I subsribe for the basic Sky package through a dish and Panasonic digibox. My thought was that with a built in freeview tuner in the tv I could view/record freeview simultaneously to a different channel on Sky or terrestrial. I am probably getting ahead of myself!!

The two sources issue was just that the audio signal will be from the L/R of the composite o/p and the video signal from the Component o/p. Perhaps I am looking for problems that are not there so I guess the thing is to try it. The tv is not arriving till Monday so I have time to get the cables organised.