An FYI: BDP-BX1 Blu-Ray Showing in 480i Resolution

jaykayd

I bought a new Sony Blu-Ray player (BDP-BX1) to use with a Toshiba 42XV540U (42" 1080P) TV and connected them with the included HDMI cable. I put in a few of my new Blu-Rays and, upon pressing the "display" button, noticed the DVD player display said it was running 480i instead of 1080p. If the picture looked horrible, I would have immediately thought that the settings were wrong, but the picture actually looked like it could arguably be HD (albeit a very disappointing HD), so I thought the display was just showing incorrect 480i resolution. One DVD looked stunning (Wall-E) but another looked not so good (Blackhawk Down). However, I also know that the TV up-converts, so when I put in my normal DVDs and the picture was similar to the Blu Rays I knew something was up. Keep in mind all this happened when I finally got my player hooked up last night at about 3am (sure it's a workday, but a toy is a toy)... with me suppressing my curses while trying not to wake my gf, and trying to find the manuals in the dark.

Anyway, it turned out that the video settings were incorrect by default-- the proper settings can be gleaned from pages 35 and 43 in the BDP-BX1 manual-- in my instance, the Output Video Format (under "Home Menu"/"Setup"/"Video Settings") had to be set to HDMI (from the default Video/S-Video). Keep in mind that the Picture Quality Mode has to be set to Standard (under "Options"/"A/V Settings") or else that Video Settings menu won't even be a choice (according to page 36 of the manual). So Sony actually, purposely ships these with default settings most people are unlikely to use... I don't know why Sony does that (or a lot of things, for that matter-- such as implementing a totally lame menu system), but I'm guessing it's so that the player will have the highest probably of showing a decent picture regardless of the TV it's hooked up to... the "bare minimum" setting instead of the "most likely to be the case" setting.

Anyway, this post is for those of you that search for this problem in the future, since in my effort to be stealthy last night (and not turn a light on to read the manual) I just did a quick search for "BDP-BX1 showing Blu Ray in 480i" and found nothing. Now, hopefully, when I do that search I will find this reminder to always read the manual first.

zabsie

You just helped me fix a problem I've never addressed for 15 years.

Thank you!

zabsie

jaykayd you just helped me finally watch my Harry Potter blu-rays in 1080.