KD-27FS170 HD or NOT?

phatrat1982

Ok here it is in as plain english as I can manage. I have this Sony Set KD-27FS170, according to the book and Sony Rep it is 1080i "HD-Ready" TV set. Now I know it does have ATSC and it also has component inputs BUT according to the book and Sony rep that port is limited to 480i only and the ATSC is the only way to receive HD signals. I am confused because they first told me it "was" hd in that if it picked up an HD signal OTA it would display it 1080i but last time I called them they told me it had a 'native' resolution of 480i but the book says otherwise and also I thought CRT sets don't have a "native resolution"anyways?

The guy at Best Buy told me that there was in fact a way to go from my DirecTV box component OUT and hook into the TV ATSC IN and get the HD picture that way, IS this true? If so where do I get this box? I asked if it was the same as the converter boxes they sell but they said no it isn't and also since the TV already has ATSC that that box wouldn't work anyways.

This is not our primary set it is the one in the bedroom and don't get me wrong it looks pretty good already especially with the 16:9 enhanced mode on, so it isn't a major issue where I want to spend a lot of money to get a better picture but if the set is capable of a better picture I sure would like to know how to go about seeing it. I can tell that if I set the DirecTV to 1080i it will say "if you see this message your TV supports this resolution" but it ONLY does that when I use the YELLOW cable and ALWAYS after I select 1080i there is a flicker and then setting drops back down to 480i.

It does allow me to view the HD channels and I can see that from HD channels and SD channels there is more picture being shown but it doesn't look better it looks like it is squeezing the HD picture somewhat. if I set the TV to 16X9 enhanced it does look better but it is a smaller picture. I guess I am just sorta confused.

davecramer74

Your tv does 480I. use componant (green, red and blue) cable. Your tv downconverts the signal to 480I which is the best your are going to get.

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Vizio 42" LCD
Phillips 50" plasma

BrianO

The Sony KD-27FS170 is nothing more than an analogue TV with an ATSC tuner added. Its component-video inputs are limited to 480i analogue signals and it lacks a digital QAM tuner. It can accept HD (1080i, 720p) OTA signals via its antenna input but they get downconverted to 480i before they are displayed. The FD Trinitron picture tube in that model is simply not capable of displaying HD resolutions. The only reason Sony included an ATSC tuner in this model was to comply with the FCC mandate, that was in effect at the time the TV was introduced, on digital tuners for TVs with that a screen size . Less than 1 year later Sony stopped producing TVs with CRT picture tubes altogether.

The Best Buy guy simply doesn't know what he is talking about. (Big surprise, huh?). The ATSC tuner in your TV does the same thing as the coupon eligible converter boxes. The difference is that it is built into the TV itself. He is also wrong when he says a converter box will not work with your TV. It will, but why would you want to use one when the TV itself already has its own ATSC tuner?

The type of box that the BB guy is talking about would be an RF modulator that would convert the HD signal coming out of the DirecTV box to the 8VSB modulation form used for OTA digital broadcasting. That is the only form of modulation that an ATSC tuner can handle. I doubt that such a box even exists, but even if it did there would be no point because the support circuitry for the ATSC tuner in the TV will downconvert the signal to 480i before passing it to the display.

The "yellow" cable is a composite-video cable and it can only handle 480i. The signal being passed by the DirecTV box via its composite-vdeo output is always 480i regardless of the resolution you set the box to send.

phatrat1982

so why does the manual say native Resolution 1080i? That is what confuses me the most. but you make good points.

270degrees

Heh ... phatrat1982.
I have that same TV. It was my main TV for a couple of years, but now it is also in the bedroom. Never paid much attention to the manual. But, I agree with what brianO said. It's just a standard 480i TV with an ATSC tuner in it. You can't get any more out of it.

The most annoying thing with that TV is the sound. Seems like they left out the DTV sound decompression. In DTV mode, you can't turn the sound down. The sound works fine on Analog mode.

Thing I really liked about that TV is the Tuner. I don't know how sensitive it is, but it is great for DXing. Because you can put in the channel number directly, and it goes there.

Unlike some other TVs and converter boxes that tell you:
"You're STUPID! ... You can't possibly want to go to that channel.
My programmer is smarter than you. I can't obey your command.
Please pick a channel that my previous scan liked."
What idiots program this stuff?

Anyway, if past performance is any indication, that TV may be working fine 30 years from now. But it will still only be 480i.

BrianO

On what page of the manual does it say that? I performed a search for "1080i" in a pdf copy of the manual and found only 1 reference to 1080i and that had nothing to do with the resolution of the picture tube.

It does say 1080i display resolution in the marketing specs but that is an error. It should have read "1080i display capability" which only means that the TV can accept a 1080i signal. However, the TV's ATSC tuner converts all inputs to NTSC-compatible analogue before displaying it. The TV definitely does not have a 1080i HiScan picture tube.
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