Sony RDR HXD870 and the Denon AVR1610

[admin_exported]

Hi, just bought a Denon AVR160 A/V Receiver after your excellent review of the 1910. I didn't need the 7.1 outputs of the 1910 and the spec and price of the 1610 fitted my budget nicely.

However, despite the 1610 claiming to be 1080p compatible I've found a small problem.

I've rigged the receiver up with my Panasonic TH-50PZ70B (50" full HD 1080p plasma) and my Sony RDR HXD870 DVR.

If the Sony is connected directly to the TV it does it's own upscaling of DVD's to 1080p. Nice.

However if I route the HDMI through the receiver I only get 1080i. There is a section in the menu for the HDMI output settings but these are greyed out and can't be changed.

I did some reading and of course discovered that the 1610 doesn't do upscaling as that is a feature on the 1910, but I'm not asking it to! I want the Sony to do it's own upscaling and just feed the 1080p to the receiver and then through to the TV.

Is there a way I can achieve this?

I have also ordered the Sony BDPS360B Blu-ray after reading that review as well so I'm hoping that the upscaling here also works correctly? I presume any native 1080p output should be ok but I will have to wait and see on that one.

Obviously I can get around this to an extent by just connecting the HDMI out from the DVR to the TV and taking the Coax digital output to the receiver for sound but I had hoped that the Denon 1610 being 1080p capable would be ok.

Could it be the cable I'm using? I have a 1.3a cable but I'm not sure about the one I use from the DVR to the receiver. But then would you expect the DVR to upscale to the TV if it wasn't?

Many Thanks in advance.

 

[Anonymous]

Darn. I hadn't been able to find the answer in the manual so posted here.

Then had a play with the settings while not actually running a DVD. Can now alter the default HDMI output to be 1080p. Once this was set I can then run the DVD and get the upscaling to work.

It would appear that you just can't change the settings when running a DVD although why it automatically upscaled to 1080p when connected directly and didn't when going via the AV is anyone's guess. I rarely use the DVR to actually watch TV so I guess I just never noticed it was set to 1080i.

Wall-E now looks as clear and beautiful as it did when connected directly.

Please ignore me I just needed to fiddle with it a bit more 🙂

 

[Anonymous]

There's nothing wrong with posting your own solutions to your own problems after a 'fiddle'. Somebody else may have the same problem. Share your experiences.