I'm aware that there may have been previous posts like this, but being new here I figured my best bet at getting help would be to make my own thread.

I own a Sony XBR970. As far as vertical its perfect, but my picture is too far horizontally left. So I'm asking if someone can tell me the names of the service menu settings that will effect the horizontal aspect of my picture, both placement and stretch, so I can adjust them and see if I can get my picture centered correctly.

Thanks!

yea there is a official topic on here with the problem answered. Should have posted in there so everything is all in one place, plus it's pretty much the only topic i check on here, i see your new tho so no worries! i had the same problem and these basic tweaks didn't help! had to change other stetings but first try these and let me know if they help or not, if they don't then we will get to the scary settings.

What you want to look for ifor now and see if these help is

First thing to do is turn HBLK to 0 and see if opening up the blanking helps if not then keep it at 0 and change these:

HPOS- Horizontal position
HSIZ- Horizontal size/stretch
HCNT- Horizontal centering.

Now before doing this make sure HBLK to 0. This way you can see the very edges of the rasters. But dont forget to turn it back to 1 when your done! Then after you put it back to 1 you may notice that the sides you just fixed are black again! in that case adjust RBLK and LBLK to a number where nothing is being cut off.

Thank you very much, I was able to correct what I wanted to correct by using those settings. Though one thing I'd like to note is that I didn't really see a difference between adjusting HPOS and HCNT, they appeared to do the same thing?

Would you also happen to have the setting for flexing the screen outward? It appears to have a slight inwards bow on both sides.

yea HPOS and HCNT is more of the same, 'cept one moves the screen more than the other. PLUS HCNT moves the "whole" picture as one piece, where as HPOS moves the picture on the raster. LOL i think? something like that! i'm just wording it wrong i think. As long as when you have a image thats in 4:3 mode, like say when a commercial comes on and the bars are equal on both sides you should be all good. Don't forget tho 4:3 has it's on HPOS setting, so you may need to go in and adjust that as well.

For fixing the geomtery there is a bunch of settings. What you want to try first is;

PIN- Pincushion
MPIN- middle pincushion
maybe even HTPZ.
also maybe VBOW /LBOW to fine tune any additional bowing.

Try just PIN first as that will fix outter edges. MPIN will make everything bow out from the center and really mess up the center of the image.

The two pin parameters should help you fix any flexing issues. When you're done with that tho make sure the top corner and bottom corner are lined up with

UCP- upper corner pin cushion
LCP- lower corner pin cushion.

yea HPOS and HCNT is more of the same, 'cept one moves the screen more than the other. PLUS HCNT moves the "whole" picture as one piece, where as HPOS moves the picture on the raster.

Whoa that is way incorrect. HCNT is a horizontal center linearity adjustment. It's best to leave this one alone along with SLIN. If you must play with it, record before you play with it because you will want to set it back. Sony usually has this set to the best it can be already. Use HPOS, VPOS, HSIZ, and VSIZ only for adjusting global picture size and registration.

Incorrect in what sense? My set seems fine after tweaking that?

is it going to explode soon? also what if i have to adjust slin? what if they were set incorrectly at the factory? Every set is different! right? So if i have to adjust any linearity issues i can't?

how do i get into these secret menus and do i want to? :eek:

Whoa that is way incorrect. HCNT is a horizontal center linearity adjustment. It's best to leave this one alone along with SLIN. If you must play with it, record before you play with it because you will want to set it back. Sony usually has this set to the best it can be already. Use HPOS, VPOS, HSIZ, and VSIZ only for adjusting global picture size and registration.

I'm not denying any of your knowledge about this. but it always seems like you post when something like this " shoudln't be done" and you never give any explanation, cept " it's fine at the factory" LOL do you work for sony? What settings do you have? why don't you post them up to help some people out.

I'm not denying any of your knowledge about this. but it always seems like you post when something like this " shoudln't be done" and you never give any explanation, cept " it's fine at the factory" LOL do you work for sony? What settings do you have? why don't you post them up to help some people out.

The fact is that the factory isn't as stupid as you think they are. Believe it or not your tv was atleast roughly calibrated by the factory. If it wasn't, you'd have alot more problems with your picture than little overscan and registration problems. Some displays come more finely tuned than others from the factory depending on how much work that employee decided to do that day. Picture linearity is one of those calibrations that must get done at the factory or the picture results can be devastating. SLIN and HCNT concentrate on the left and right horizontal size in relation to the center of the image. Since the tube is flat, the electron gun is not at an equal distance on the left and right side in relation to the center. Consequently, the beam passes the screen at a faster rate on the left and right of the screen. Since the beam moves faster, the image stretches on the left and right side. SLIN and HCNT are adjustments to help compensate for this issue. Sony has already done this adjustment for optimal linearity. If you fool with either of these adjustments, you may not notice right away depending on how anal you are, but you will screw with the linearity an perhaps find that actor's heads stretch horizontaly when they are on the left or right side of the screen and return to normal when in the center of the screen. Granted, you may have that issue right now and not even notice it, but if you use HCNT to adjust horizontal position, you will have problems. However, you claimed to have adjusted it and it looks great to you. You probably still haven't noticed how much you F'ed it up yet. Pop in a side scrolling video game like Castlevania and you will be able to see your mistake plain as day.

No, I don't work for Sony and I don't work on televsions. However I am a technician who works on other electronics with service modes and the same fundemental rules apply to no matter what you work on. For every action there is a reaction. Any adjustment you make could be and probably is effecting another adjustment indirectly. Record every setting before adjusting something you don't know about and adjust sparingly. These are just some.

I have another project for you clay. Grab your Avia or DVD Essensials disc and put a white crosshatch pattern on the screen. Enter the service mode and go to HCNT and adjust it up and down and tell me what happens to the pattern as you adjust it. It doesn't just move from side to side like in HPOS, does it? Then do the same with SLIN and tell me what you see happen. It doesn't expand the image horizontaly the same way HSIZ does, does it?

Lastly, I do not post any of my values for any of my adjustments simply because it's totaly useless. While some values may be around the same number, they are still different from yours. You cannot plug in the same values in all your service mode settings into somebody elses tv and expect it look the same as yours. Your service mode adjustments are made to customize your picture tube and your circuit boards and compensate for your tv's imperfections and enviroment. If they could all be the same values, there would be no need to calibrate the tv at the factory and definately no need to get a ISF calibration. My service mode values mean next to nothing your tv. You could have HSIZ adjusted to 45 and have no overscan while mine has to be adjusted to 29 in order not to overscan. Even our tvs look the same, they are still different. Have I explained myslef enough?

So after adjusting things a little more to see their full range I discovered that the left side does not have all of the available picture. I'm judging things using Halo 3 on the Xbox 360.

Their should be about two inches more of picture on all 4 sides outside of the HUD Display which usually marks the 4 corner boundaries. I know this because I've seen it on LCD, and when adjusting HPOS I could see that my right side does offer the full signal; if I moved the screen to the left there is two inches more picture available outside the HUD on the right.

This is not the case with the left side. When using HPOS to move the screen to the right, it appears that the picture blacks out right at the edge of the HUD! So whats up? Where are those other two inches of signal on the left side?

The fact is that the factory isn't as stupid as you think they are. Believe it or not your tv was atleast roughly calibrated by the factory. If it wasn't, you'd have alot more problems with your picture than little overscan and registration problems. Some displays come more finely tuned than others from the factory depending on how much work that employee decided to do that day. Picture linearity is one of those calibrations that must get done at the factory or the picture results can be devastating. SLIN and HCNT concentrate on the left and right horizontal size in relation to the center of the image. Since the tube is flat, the electron gun is not at an equal distance on the left and right side in relation to the center. Consequently, the beam passes the screen at a faster rate on the left and right of the screen. Since the beam moves faster, the image stretches on the left and right side. SLIN and HCNT are adjustments to help compensate for this issue. Sony has already done this adjustment for optimal linearity. If you fool with either of these adjustments, you may not notice right away depending on how anal you are, but you will screw with the linearity an perhaps find that actor's heads stretch horizontaly when they are on the left or right side of the screen and return to normal when in the center of the screen. Granted, you may have that issue right now and not even notice it, but if you use HCNT to adjust horizontal position, you will have problems. However, you claimed to have adjusted it and it looks great to you. You probably still haven't noticed how much you F'ed it up yet. Pop in a side scrolling video game like Castlevania and you will be able to see your mistake plain as day.

No, I don't work for Sony and I don't work on televsions. However I am a technician who works on other electronics with service modes and the same fundemental rules apply to no matter what you work on. For every action there is a reaction. Any adjustment you make could be and probably is effecting another adjustment indirectly. Record every setting before adjusting something you don't know about and adjust sparingly. These are just some.

I have another project for you clay. Grab your Avia or DVD Essensials disc and put a white crosshatch pattern on the screen. Enter the service mode and go to HCNT and adjust it up and down and tell me what happens to the pattern as you adjust it. It doesn't just move from side to side like in HPOS, does it? Then do the same with SLIN and tell me what you see happen. It doesn't expand the image horizontaly the same way HSIZ does, does it?

Lastly, I do not post any of my values for any of my adjustments simply because it's totaly useless. While some values may be around the same number, they are still different from yours. You cannot plug in the same values in all your service mode settings into somebody elses tv and expect it look the same as yours. Your service mode adjustments are made to customize your picture tube and your circuit boards and compensate for your tv's imperfections and enviroment. If they could all be the same values, there would be no need to calibrate the tv at the factory and definately no need to get a ISF calibration. My service mode values mean next to nothing your tv. You could have HSIZ adjusted to 45 and have no overscan while mine has to be adjusted to 29 in order not to overscan. Even our tvs look the same, they are still different. Have I explained myslef enough?
This is an outstanding post with good info and good advice.

I find that lately I often offer advice/constructive criticism without in-depth explanations because it just flat-out takes too long, and most folks don't understand or want the details anyway. PMing can solve that.

So after adjusting things a little more to see their full range I discovered that the left side does not have all of the available picture. I'm judging things using Halo 3 on the Xbox 360.

Their should be about two inches more of picture on all 4 sides outside of the HUD Display which usually marks the 4 corner boundaries. I know this because I've seen it on LCD, and when adjusting HPOS I could see that my right side does offer the full signal; if I moved the screen to the left there is two inches more picture available outside the HUD on the right.

This is not the case with the left side. When using HPOS to move the screen to the right, it appears that the picture blacks out right at the edge of the HUD! So whats up? Where are those other two inches of signal on the left side?

Depending on what your other sources look like, you need to adjust something in either MID1 or MID2. If all your other input types look good, then you need to do some work in the MID2 service mode. If you find this problem with all your input types, then you need to globaly adjust in MID1.