Official JVC HD-xxFH97 HD-xxFN97 HD-xxFC97 Owners Thread - Page 172

Anyone got a screen shot of pc on tv for lookin?

Anyone know a good online store to get a ups surge protector??

here ya go

Looks pretty good,now I gotta try for myself!

Without going through all 172 pages of this thread and looking, has anyone had any serious reliablilty ussues with the JVC HD56FH97? I purchased mine in September of 06 from Best Buy. I am on my second serious issue already. In July of this year the "digital light engine" died and and my tv sat at a repair shop for 3 weeks while they got a replacement from JVC. This last Friday(Black Friday) my projector bulb died. This set has always been connected to a Pure AV/Belkin UPS just so it would not get a powerline jolt or black out that would shock the projector bulb. I called BB and it will be tomorrow before someone can come out and look at it(I did buy the warranty). I hope it dose not need to be carted off and set at the shop for another 3 weeks. I have just bought a bunch of Blu-ray and HD-DVD disks in the past month with all of the deals going with both disks that I need to set down and watch. I really love this tv's picture. It really blows all others away(DLP's, LCD's, Plasma's). I setup a 32" Sharp LCD for now until the JVC is repaired. Even though its a good looking tv it's just not the same as the big JVC. Sucks to be me, I know. Has anyone else had major issues?

Your light engine was an issue. The lamp going out is not considered an issue.
So you had one major issue.


But alas. I am only at 6 months with mine, It's on all the time though, just about all the time anyways.

I've had my 56" for 11 months and have just under 1500 hours on it. No problems and still on the original bulb. As soon as the one-year warranty runs out, I plan to buy a backup bulb.

I thinking its the projector bulb that died. It went from normal viewing brightness to complete darkness in about a 15 minute time period last Friday morning. Just after I came back home from standing for 2 hours in line at Walmart to get a $448, 32" LCD TV for one of the kids room. I thought it would go nicely with the $98 Toshiba HD-A2 that I picked up at the first of the month.

Last weekend I had the opportunity to spend some time with a Sony Wega LCD projection set, don't remember the model, but it's a 2005 or 2006 model. The user interface was a thing of beauty compared to my JVC FH97. Much more intuitive menus and features, more useful information, better channel and input labelling, easier to use, better remote layout. I was really amazed. The JVC is lousy in comparisson.

I apologize if this has already been discussed, I was just surprised by the dramatic difference, and most reviews don't seem to mention this. Given the complexity of these sets, the UI can make a big difference in the usage experience, particularly if you use multiple input sources. This may be something to consider for those who are still shopping. The new new JVC 98 series appears to have essentially the same interface as the 97 series.

With that said, my JVC does have better picture quality than the aforementioned Sony, and it was about $500 cheaper than a comparable SXRD, so I'm not complaining too loudly.

Many reviewers do factor in the user interface. I guess I don't remember which reviewers mention it and which one's don't.

But to be honest. Most of us have JVC's becuase of the lower cost. The UI isn't going to have much bearing on that one.

I received my 61fh97 back in May. Since then I have had the set completely freeze up. By that I mean it wouldn't take any commands from the remote or even shut down when directly pressing the power button. Called the service branch in my area. I was told to unplug the set, wait 3 seconds and plug back in. It worked, but I am afraid of what deterioration may have occurred.

Second issue, much worse, my ATSC digital tuner died 2 weeks ago. Part still hasn't come in. When the tech was here he said that optical engines and bulbs going prematurely have been the main problems. Optical Engine: $1800.00.

I will be getting my warranty extended.

Chris

Not that many optical engines have been replaced in this entire long thread though.
I am not to concerned about it. If It happens, it happens I suppose.

I am not going to get an extended warranty though. I can't bring myself to do it, I work in the Insurance Industry.

Very true. The great price and PQ is what got me in the door, and despite a few shortcomings like the UI, I'm still happy given the price.

I have an Oppo 970 feeding directly into my FH97 via HDMI. Does anyone have a recommendation on which output setting on the Oppo (480i, 720p, 1080i) will give the best overall results? Thanks!

How stable is the voltage in your area? I had similar problems (with my receiver not TV) until I installed a uninteruptable power supply.

1080i should be best into a 1080p display.

If the source is 1080i or p, then yes. But for upconverting regular DVDs, it depends on which component does a better job - the DVD player or the TV. I have not been able to see a difference between outputting 480p and 1080i on Oppo 981 and this TV. I am having problems with 1080p from the Oppo (seems to be cable- and/or switchbox-related), so cannot comment on that.

You notice I did say.. "should".....

Even it the source is not 1080i.

The voltage blows in my area. I lose power(I am not kidding) several times a week. So obviously the first thing I got was a UPS for the set.

I think I'll be getting an Onkyo 805 soon and a 5.1 setup - just wondering if anyone out there has the same. Any problems? Anything I should be aware of when passing through signals?

I have an HR20 box (HDMI) set to Native currently, an Xbox 360 (set to 720p) hooked up via component, and plan on adding a PS3 soon.

I take it that by leaving the HR20 in Native mode, it will pass the signal through to the Onkyo 805 and it will handle both the upscaling and deinterlacing of 480i/720p/1080i sources instead of the TV (which handles it now). How does the scaler/deinterlacer in the 805 compare to the JVC's?

If I understand correctly:

PS3 = 1080p native over HDMI / signal will pass through

HR20 = HDMI, should pass through all sources but I'm not sure whether the Onkyo will touch the signal or pass it through to the TV (or if this is an option you can choose)

Xbox 360 = component over 720p, not really sure what happens here

Any help is welcomed.

I know I've seen this info somewhere but can't find it now....I just replaced the original lamp in my 56FC97 and reset the lamp timer in the user's menu, but when I go to the service menu the timer value is unchanged (0650 btw, how many hours is that?)

How do I reset the timer in the service menu?

gw I just took a look at the service manual and it says to use the user menu reset. No service menu needed. The four digits are hexidecimal I used a converter here: http://www.statman.info/conversions/hexadecimal.html which says 0650 = 1616 hours

Did you see a confirmation after reset: THE LAMP TIMER IS RESET SUCCESSFULLY?

if thats right, my 081D comes out to 2077 hours since march on the bulb

say 40 weeks, thats about 55 hours a week, or just shy of 8 hours a day lol
lol my jvc has a full time job with OT!

Thanks for the input. Yes I was asking about upconverting regular DVDs. I tried to compare the various output modes and was unable to see much difference, but the fact that it takes a few sec to switch modes makes the comparison difficult.

The obvious choices with the Oppo 970 are:
- 480i: TV handles both scaling and deinterlacing
- 480p: TV handles scaling, player handles deinterlacing.
- 1080i: TV handles deinterlacing, player handles scaling.

Anyone else have any experience to share? Thanks.

What is the life expectancy of a projector bulb for this family of tv's ?

I got 6100 hours on my last lamp. It hadn't failed but was getting dim. That seems to be fairly typical. Frequent on-off cycles will hasten its demise.

I recently received the Toshiba HD-A3. I just wanted to give my initial, non-extensive or technical thoughts on pairing an HD DVD player with the 56FN97. I figured it'd be more useful for us JVC owners to post here and not in the HD DVD forums. The player is set to 1080i through HDMI through a low level Sony HDMI receiver (the 910). TV was calibrated by me using Avia.

Set-up
The Toshiba manual was very easy to read, follow, and understand (I'm a technical writer/usability geek so these things matter to me). The firmware update and other set up steps were painless. Firmware update (1.3) took about 35 min to download and install. No issues there. No issues with handshaking or any other blank screen issues.

Complaints of slow boot up time is way overblown, IMO. It's not that slow. Slower than a regular DVD player, yes, but a non-issue as far as I'm concerned. The player's display does look kind of lame; reminds me of an old VCR or an alarm clock my dad had. Anyways, the OS menus are easy to follow and fairly responsive. Basically, I don't sweat these little details.

Viewing
The first movie we watched was Bourne Identity. Immediately we noticed a sharper picture when compared to the SD DVD. Things just looked crisper and more detailed. I could not detect any deinterlacing issues with the JVC. Watched Knocked Up as well but I don't think that HD DVD is anything special picture wise. It looked as it should, I suppose. Transformers will be our next one. I'm really looking forward to that. And King Kong.

I watched Total Recall SD DVD to compare it to my Oppo 981. Not the best movie to show video quality but that was my point. I had the Oppo set at 1080p and the HD-A3 set to 1080i (I know...not a straight comparison, but I wanted to compare the best each has to offer). Basically I thought the Oppo looked better but I figured that would be the case. Not by much but it had more punch in the colors, was cleaner, and maybe had a tad more detail; not by much but I could notice it. Which is fine...I got the HD-A3 for HD movies; the Oppo still kicks ass for SD, SACD, and DVD-A.

Conclusion
This is a great player and works well with the JVC. I wasn't expecting the same "wow factor' as going from SDTV to an HDTV and watching HD content, so my expectations were realistic. But when both my fiancée and I could immediately see the improved detail, I knew it was worth it. And I think that's what these players and HD formats bring - a more detailed, clearer picture. And better sound of course.

Other Thoughts
I haven't tried any of the known discs to stress the JVC's deinterlacing but I have them in the Netflix queue. But as others have said and reported, the deinterlacing should be fine; I'm just curious to see it myself. That was main concern with going with a 1080i player but I couldn't detect any issues in the discs I've viewed so far. I plan to do a comparison between the SD version and HD versions of discs I have just to see the differences. But aside from that, the player works as advertised in the video dept.

Also, no issues with any of the HD DVD Netflix discs...they were in decent shape so I didn't feel the need to clean them but no skips or errors. Also, I use Verbatim DVD+R DL discs for my SD back ups and all have played w/out issue on the HD-A3.

Been enjoying my 56fn97 since February. The only problem I have with it is the whites appear yellow and times and have a green tint at others. Depends on the source. I have read about going into the service menu and adjusting the RBG. My question is do I make the adjustments in the sm by eye, or using AVIA.

Also is there any way to display or at least check to see what resolution I am getting from what source I may be watching. I see it pop up on the left top of the screen once in a while.

Hey Monstermile, if you have the display in theater pro mode I think the whites look really yellow, so I don't even use that mode. I usually stick with Standard mode with color temp low.

You can tweak grayscale a little bit with avia I think...if you have ramping gray pattern use that and tweak RGB until white is white. The service manual suggests keeping one of the levels at 132, not sure if that is necessary though...

how can i get a service manual?