How do you handle displays that won't change input w/o vid signal?

CT-Dallas

I am currently coding a project in which a client has supplied a Samsung HL61A750A1F DLP television. This display will not switch to the proper input unless there is a video signal present.

Without purchasing a video sync sensor for this small project, are there any tricks you have found to get around this annoyance?

I presume we could turn the source on first, pause a second, and then power on the display, but what do you do?

Jimweir192

Not the answer you want

This "feature" is poorly thought out and annoying in the extreme...

I'm afraid I'm returning to a job this week, completed the week before last to re-code the 5 LCD's for an alternative manufacturer...

The Samsung products are crap, there are many strange "features" and they can keep them all!

Sorry

DHawthorne

If you are absolutely stuck with the display, there is only one thing you can do: make good and sure it has a video input before switching to it. I've had to deal with that once or twice, and it is annoying to the extreme; as I recall, both cases, we talked the customer into changing it eventually.

Joe

We've had similar problems with the new Samsung 57" LCDs. If there is no video signal on the composite input when it is powered up, it won't recognize a new signal until the main power is cycled. We wasted an enormous amount of time tracing signals and checking lines. Also, no settings for a black screen when no signal present, which caused us to buy 5 blackburst generators to prevent the annoying blue screen with 'No Signal' bouncing around it.

TurnipTruck

Samsung.... bah humbug! Accidentally swing a sledgehammer into it, then recommend a Sony or Panasonic.

Darkside

No simple way out other than blackburst generators (suggested already) or code the devs in question to play/pause in the case of a vcr or power on in the case of most dvds to place sync on the silly screen. Slow and goofy. Of course you'd have to make sure all the users and their laptops are setup and outputting properly too!

A TBC at the output of the switcher would be the only other way - it remains synchronous with no input, which would fool the 'cleverness' of the screen. It's an expensive bit of kit though.

<rant>
The dollars the sales guys saved by using this screen are far out weighed by the time and/or bits required to make it work.

You'd have to ask why on earth any manufacturer would ever do this...they've had to write code to make it do that! Who cares where the users send the input!! Bah!
<end rant>

chill

CT-Dallas wrote: »

I am currently coding a project in which a client has supplied a Samsung HL61A750A1F DLP television. This display will not switch to the proper input unless there is a video signal present.

Without purchasing a video sync sensor for this small project, are there any tricks you have found to get around this annoyance?

I presume we could turn the source on first, pause a second, and then power on the display, but what do you do?

Apatrt from what others have said about making sure it has a signal... sometimes there is a setting in one of the menus to turn off "power save" or whatever they call it. I've only ever used the "professional" displays from Samsung, and they have this feature - no problems once it's set correctly.

HTH.

def90

Some of the new LG sets have a "Feature" that automatically recognizes that a video signal is active on another input and then pops a box up on the screen asking you if you would like to view it.

Darkside

def90 wrote: »

Some of the new LG sets have a "Feature" that automatically recognizes that a video signal is active on another input and then pops a box up on the screen asking you if you would like to view it.

Well that's handy in the middle of Top Gun!

:P

DHawthorne

def90 wrote: »

Some of the new LG sets have a "Feature" that automatically recognizes that a video signal is active on another input and then pops a box up on the screen asking you if you would like to view it.

Manufacturers really have to pull their heads out the sand (or whatever other dark place they have stuck them) and realize that many of these features designed to make the set easier for the end user, in the end make them harder. If you have to have an option like that, it has got to be able to be turned off.