Hi,

I live in Australia. I own a Pioneer DVR-520H. I have the unit connected to a NextWave TDR-3190 SD digital PAL TV receiver and I have been able to record time shifted programming from free to air TV without any problems. A few days ago I upgraded to a new widescreen television set from my old 4:3 set.

Problem 1 - YUV / Y Pb Pr Not Working with 3 metre component cable

I purchased a Sony KD-32DX51 76 cm widescreen set with a built in digital tuner. The back of the Sony TV set has two SCART terminals which support YUV (component) & composite, and S-Video & composite inputs respectively. I have connected my Pioneer DVD recorder OUTPUT 2 via composite cabling and video is supplied to the television set OK. I have used an S-Video cable through OUTPUT 2 to view vision from the Pioneer output to the TV set, this works OK.

However, I wish to use the superior component Y Pb Pr for the best possible picture. I purchased a new 3 metre long component cable with good shielding and connected the correct colour coding from the Pioneer to the Sony-supplied 21-pin Euro connector (CENELEC standard) SCART adaptor which has the Y (green) U (blue) and V (red) connections. I made no errors in connecting the cables. I set the Sony TV to the the correct input selection to receive component video from the Pioneer DVD recorder, but I am not getting any picture. The screen stays blank and the on-screen-displays become slightly distorted on the TV set. I then took the new cable off and tried a good quality RCA composite video/LR audio canble with gold connectors. This works. Was the purpose designed cable faulty? Is 3 metres too long? Can anyone recommend a good brand or is the composite video/LR audio cable I am using OK? It gives a perfect picture.

Problem 2 - Aspect ratio 16:9 not recognised by TV set

If I watch a DVD movie through the new 16:9 TV, then the correct aspect ratio auto configures on the TV and I can watch OK. However, if I record to the Pioneer HDD from SD digital TV a program in widescreen and try to play it back to the TV, or even just have the SD set top box running through the Pioneer set, then the TV auto defaults the image to 4:3 aspect ratio. The image is obviously squashed and should be viewed in 16:9. I have Initial Setup>Playback>TV Screen Size set to 16:9 in the Pioneer menu.

It seems to me that all recorded programs viewed from HDD or all programming sent through from the SD digital box is being received by the TV as 4:3 content, and the auto-configure keeps switching the screen display to 4:3. Is this supposed to be the case? I would apreciate comments on this.

Thankyou.

Steve

PS I have had the Pioneer DVR-520H since last November and I am very happy with it thus far.