We just bought the last one of these at Target for a great deal, RCA HD44LPW62, 44in RCA HD DLP. I got this mostly for playing nintendo Wii. It was open box and didn't come with the remote. I hooked it up to the Wii and a DVD player set to widescreen. You get a miniture widescreen image with black bars on all sides. I went to the menu, preferences, screen format. They have several options listed from normal to stretch, zoom etc. Mine was set on normal, which in the diagram shows a normal widescreen image and a normal 4:3 image. There is also a stop to select Automatic Format Switching. Selecting that with normal, made the widescreen image fill the TV. However, if I switch to a 4:3 broadcast it is stretched out and not "normal". Does anyone know what Automatic Format Switching really does? Can't seem to figure this out.
I bought the same set (gotta love clearance sales), and found this forum because I have a similar question.
The answer to yours: Automatic Format Switching is supposed to automatically display the signal in your chosen format (Normal, Cinerama, FlexWide, Zoom). You have to set it up for each input source(cable, antenna, Input 1, Input 2).
My question: With my DVD player set to display 16:9 widescreen via component cables, my 'Madagascar' and 'Batman Begins' "anamorphic" DVDs (all I've tried so far) need to be displayed in FlexWide to fill the screen, otherwise they have black bars all around. I thought an anamorphic DVD movie was supposed to be displayed fully from left to right with no distortion, but some black top and bottom. Is there some other step I'm missing, or is it my player or cables? I should mention the TV doesn't tell me what ratio signal it's receiving via the component cables, like it does from cable and composite signals.
I've wrestled with this for over a week. I wish I new why but this is that I know. I talked with RCA, as they said AFS simply fills the screen. They seemed like idiots though and didn't understand what I was talking about. From some amount of testing, I have found that AFS does not pick the format that you have preselected, I'm not sure why. For example, with my Wii hooked up and AFS and normal selected it actually displays flexwide.
Here are some of my other observations. I when and got component cables for my older DVD player (never needed them before), this is a non-progressive scan DVD player, and I got the same thing you did. When I hit info the TV says its getting a 4:3 480i image, not a 16:9 480i image. Same story for Wii and DirectTV. I have to use some type of stretching. I thought that perhaps the TV was broken since it wasn't seeing the 16:9 image. I was totally freaked out. So I went and got a HD conversion DVD player, which outputs in three formats 480p, 720p and 1080i (Costco, $70). I hooked it up with the HDMI jack. On 480p which is that I think you are broadcasting in from your DVD, the TV info showed 480p, but no aspect ratio. WTF! Again, I had bars on each side, and top/bottom. Changing the output to 720p to my relief I saw a widescreen image (with normal screen format and no AFS selected). Info showed 16:9 720p. Same for 1080i setting.
So my conclusion is that 480 images, I or P are not really sent in 16:9, but instead in a squished 4:3 format that needs to be stretched. I haven't been able to get any confirmation on this but some other observations. On my Wii its easy to switch its outputs from 4:3 to 16:9. On the normal screen setting you can totally see how the image in squished when you switch to 16:9. (although the TV doesn't see it).
Other observations, my old DVD player the image looked the most "unstretched" with Cinemera, while the Wii old looks normal in Flexwide. I'm not sure why this it. By the way I have tried 10s of DVDs all that are anamorphic, both ratios and had the same result with all.
Any observations or input you have would be appreciated. I'm new to widescreen TVs.
I'll have to mess with AFS a bit and see if it acts the same for me.
I do have a progressive scan, but not upconverting, so my TV info shows 480p but no ratio, like you were seeing. The confusing thing is I've read that anamorphic movies actually draw those black strips top and bottom on 4:3 tvs to preserve the picture, but outputting in 16:9 removes those. My DVD player's instruction manual (another RCA product, go figure) doesn't mention that it's 480p picture will be "boxed".
Being new to widescreens myself, I'd like to hear from someone here more experienced.
Funny story: I bought a cheapy progressive scan (not upconverting) DVD player at BestBuy last night to see if it was the TV or my current player.
First, I tried using my old player in the other component jacks, Input 3, just to check. Same problem.
Hooked the new player up to the same component cables I'd already been using in Input 3, told it to display in 16:9 progressive and wow! It worked. Normal mode filled the screen, Flexwide squished the picture, and Cinerama wasn't available, just as the TV's manual stated. Still won't tell me the ratio, but it was receiving a 480p signal.
So, I decided to hook up this old non-progressive player I had in a box (I'd forgotten all about it, else I might not have bought a new one), to see what kind of picture it would output. Hook to component Input 3, set it to 16:9, and ummm... Normal looks squished, but Flexwide fills the screen with a non-stretched image. At least there's no black bars top and bottom. Did the TV somehow reverse the two? Maybe, but Cinerama mode is available, and shouldn't be if the signal is 16:9. All I know is that Normal, the middle of the Cinerama picture, and Zoom are all squished left/right. Odd.
I decide to hook up the cheapy again before hooking up my original player, but in Input 2, and now the new player is doing the same thing. Normal and Flexwide are apparently reversed. Hmm.. I hook up my older progressive player and now it's doing the same thing. At least my movies (except the 2.35 movies like Batman Begins) don't have black bars at top and bottom any more.
I really don't know what to think about this. I might unplug it overnight Friday (unplugging for a while is supposed to 'reset' everything) and see what happens Saturday.
I also played with AFS last night and had it all figured out, but then it did something I didn't expect and threw my theory out the window. I honestly have no clue what it does.
Another question: I'm curious how to get into the Setup Menu, which I'm sure the TV has to have. Just out of curiosity, to check lamp hours and all that.