CurtPalme.com Home Theater Forum

[tri_joel]

Okay, so here is the story:

I picked up this ECP 4100 off Craigslist knowing it had a synch problem. I hooked it up to a laptop and I tried combining the H&V synch with a BNC T-connector. It didn't cure the problem so I sent the cards to Curt and he worked his magic. When I got the cards back the ECP still didn't synch, Curt asked me to take a photo of the CPU board. I pulled the CPU for the pic and noticed one of the chips was partially out. I re-seated the chip and all was well, or so I thought. While the cards were at Curt's, I took the time to ceiling mount the ECP, I built a rack for the other equipment, and bought a cheap transcoder to run until I could find a good scaler. The transcoder works okay, does 1080i from YPbPr inputs, but it is not great. The short of it is, the sources now are the FIOS HD DVR and a Sony DVD player through this cheap transcoder.

Yesterday my wife wants to play a computer game and asks if I can connect the laptop to the ECP. Sounds like fun so I do and guess what? It goes into the same horizontal roll as it did before Curt changed a couple of chips in the CPU. I tried changing the resolution and refresh rates in the laptop, nothing would stop the roll. I hooked it back up to the FIOS box and cheap transcoder and all is well again, the ECP is working with 1080i. I grabbed my other laptop hooked it up, the ECP goes into a horizontal roll. I connect the DVD player and the cheap transcoder, works just fine at 480p.

Now, if you have read my other post about the Philips E-Box plasma receiver I purchased and tried to use as a scaler on the ECP I had the same horizontal roll problem. I thought the E-Box was sending out a 90hz refresh which the ECP will not synch to. What I didn't put in that other post was that the E-Box has a VGA passthrough, one night last week I connected the laptop to the E-Box and set the resolution and refresh down to 800 x 600 @ 60hz, the ECP would still go into a horizontal roll.

So now I am very curious, why will the ECP only synch with this cheap transcoder?

Curt, what do you use as a source when you test?

[Andrew Low]

ECP series wants a 4-wire connection - and they are very fussy about the sync signal.

You may not be able to succeed with the laptop if the graphics card/drivers are limited. In the past I've used powerstrip to fiddle with the graphics setup to make the ECP happy - as I mentioned, laptops can be limited.

So the good news - it will work, if you get it the right sync signal. Problem is that its fussy.

Some have used the external "Extron" box (others here may comment with more details) to help resolve this type of problem.

Roo

[tri_joel]

Got a wild hair last night and decided to clean the BNC connectors on video inputs. It worked, I no longer have issues with the laptop, and even better, the Philips E-Box is working without issue.

It is unbelievable the picture I am getting from this PJ now. The E-Box has digital natural motion, line doubler, 3D comb filter and I don't know what all. I'll see if I can get some screen shots this weekend.

Thanks for everyone's replys and those of you that have helped others in past posts.