I own, well, my FATHER owns a Sony KV-30HS420. I was bored one day and decided to mess with the service menu thinking I could make the picture look better. Long story short, some resolutions (input 6, 1080i) don't look right anymore. The screen is a little off-centered and the colors are crap. I noticed that when I set the SYNP setting which is under 2170P-2, to 1 instead of 0, the colors display correctly. When I turn the tv off, the colors display correctly but the problem returns after about 2 seconds. Also, at the bottom of the screen, about an inch of it is going to the left. It's like the image is being stretched to the left side of the screen. Can anyone help? My father does not have money to have it fixed and is no longer under warranty. It is the only tv we have in our house. If I don't get it fixed soon, I'm pretty much dead... =(

What settings did you change?

I second the previous question. There are probably hundreds of settings and millions of possible combinations, so you need to narrow it down just a bit.

Another thought: did you try unplugging the set for a few minutes to see if the original settings return? Worth a shot.

Maybe this thread should be stickied as a warning for why people need to write down their original service menu settings.

A final thought: if worse comes to worse, Circuit City is featuring the 34" XBR970this week at an outstanding price. You may want to check out that thread for the specifics.

I reset the service menu back to the factory settings and that is when the problems showed up. I used the service menu codes that are provided in this forum but the problem is still there. The crap colors go away once i change the SYNP setting to 1 instead of 0. It's just that whenever I turn the tv off, the problem comes back after about two seconds. It's as if the tv forgets the setting or something. Can anyone link me to another service menu guide for the Sony KV-30HS420 or maybe e-mail me the service menu codes for their KV-30HS420?

Resetting to factory settings is a death wish. It doesn't reset to how it came out of the box; it resets to how it came off the assembly line, before being tweaked and sent to the store shelves. You are in for long nights of messing with your set. Completely resetting everything takes hours and hours and hours to repair.

On that note, you are saying it reverts even after writing the changes to memory?

My advice: Look for posts on calibated settings and try to match them.

Are you using component/composite inputs? From the description of your problem SYNP probably stands for sync +. Why turning it off doesn't reset it I don't know. Have you tried both a full TV reset and/or the video reset? The owners manual describes how to do this on page 65, given that this is a troubleshooting step in the owners manual I can't see that it would hurt.

Zoyd, yes I'm using component. The problem rears its ugly head on input 6 via component/1080i.

Zoyd, yes I'm using component. The problem rears its ugly head on input 6 via component/1080i.

Do you have the manual handy and have you tried to do a video reset?

I don't have any type of manual. We bought the TV from a relative. How do I do a video reset? Do I press 7, 9 and then enter?

http://i64.photobucket.com/albums/h173/prairie_2006/reset.jpg

That is the regular menu reset.

It sounds like what you need to do is adjust the geometry settings and the color decoder settings.

To re-center the picture, use horizontal position (HPOS).

That should at least fix that.

You then need to download the service menu geometry settings guide from the Sony Service Codes thread, display a crosshatch pattern from a calibration disc and redo the sizing and geometry. This will take some time, but isn't that hard to do.

Then you need to go into 2170P-4 and adjust the color decoder settings. You may also need to do the greyscale as well....that could be what's causing the way off colors.

For the greyscale try this with Neutral selected (Group 2170P-1):

RDRV = 45
GDRV = 35
BDRV = 30
RCUT = 45
GCUT = 35
BCUT = 30

Are you sure all those adjustments are necessary? He gets correct color and geometry when he changes SYNP from 0 to 1 while the set is on, it just won't maintain it through a power reset.

Zoyd is correct. The color decoder settings are set correctly. It's just that when the tv switches to certain resolutions (1080i), it's as if the screen tries to auto center itself and the color turns to crap (looks like the color blue mixes in with the other colors). When I set SYNP to 1, everything looks great. When I turn the tv off however, the problem comes back but SYNP is still set to 1. If I change a sinple video setting like contrast, brightness, or color, the problem goes away, till I turn the tv off.

Wow! I don't know what did it but, THE PROBLEM IS FIXED!!!! It might have been the video reset or something who knows. All I know is that the colors are now perfectly fine. I guess my dad will not get another chance to beat me this time!! LoL! Thanks to everyone that tried to help, especially Zoyd. Only one more problem remains though, it's not a huge problem but it's kinda annoying. When in 480i/480p mode, there are a bunch of tiny black dots on the screen. I tried turning the sharpness all the way down but the tiny black dots remain. Again, this is only in 480i/480p mode and not in 720p/1080i modes. Anyone?