Zenith (LG) DTT900 CECB - Page 81

Well, it requires a rescan to find those missing channels. They are using connected to rabbit ears antennae. Why rescan so often?

My computer's HDTV tuner cards and dTV Pal did not require rescans since they remember them. BTW, we live in Los Angeles area.

Don't know about your tuner card, but the DTV Pal picks up and adds in new channels automatically (I've heard of at least a few CECB's that doing that - both my Pal and CM7000 do). I don't recall the Zenith ever doing that when I had one.

No way ! I can't imagine going through the tedious pain of having to redo my user settings every time.

I had a similar thing happen with a Zenith DTT901 that I set up for someone else.

It only happened once during a day when I know that the station was off the air doing antenna work.

That channel disappeared from the channel list and required a rescan to get it back.

A rescan does not undo your other settings, unless instead of a simple rescan you redo the initial setup.

They said "rescan" which made me think of a total scan vs an update/add scan. They being the poster with the problem Zenith and the first replier.

Of course both scan methods will depend on the box*, some being more forgiving than others. My Zinwells add back my deleted channels and mess up my Favorites even on an update scan. My Artec is fairly new to me, I just tried the update and it did as you described (deleted channels stayed deleted but it has no favorites function); Artecs are thought to be Zentih clones. I think my CM brings back deleted channels on an update but keeps my Favorites intact.

*I know it's a Zenith thread but the replier was speaking in general terms.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Turbo DV8
Damn, the same DTT901 just did it again. It didn't respond to the initial power-on command. On second attempt when it turned on, it didn't lose it's channel memory, but all the zoom settings were once again panned out, forcing me to zoom every single channel again.



Nope. It just did it again. When you go into the menu and change the aspect ration, it only changes it for the channel being viewed at the time. Real PITA, these things just keep spontaneously turning on/off by themselves, unlocking blocked channels and resetting zoom modes.

My Durabrand tv once misinterpreted very bad reception as encryption and therefore autodeleted the channel. A rescan (after adjusting the antenna) was required to get it back.

My Dad's DTT-900 box stopped working a couple of days ago. Are there any ways for a user to diagnose and repair a "dead" DTT-900?

How dead?

1) If you are using RF out could it be as simple as the TVnot tuned to Channel 3/4?

2) Does the power light come on? If not probably bad power supply. Try plugging it into a know good outlet.

3) Could it just be the remote? Dead battery?


4) The box has both RF and composite outputs. Try the other one.

If you've tried all the above then I'd suspect either a fuse or electrolytic capacitor in the power supply. The fuse probably wouldn't be too bad to replace but the cap would require some soldering, generally caps are <$5 and closer to a couple bucks. Look for any bulging or leaking caps.
Wow, this thread hadn't been posted to for almost 1 1/2 years

Here are photos of the power supply and main circuit boards found in a DTT900:

I just acquired two Zenith DTT900 (3/2008 & 4/2008) for my two old TiVo Series 2 connected to my old standard def CRT TV.
The Menu > Option settings have two prefs: "TV Aspect Ratio," which I set to "Normal TV (4:3)," and "Aspect Ratio," which can be set to one of four options:
- Set By Program
- Letter Box
- Cropped
- Squeezed
...when a widescreen program is broadcast, but when a 4:3 program is broadcast, it says "Aspect ratio cannot be changed on this channel."
My problem is that when it lands on a channel with a widescreen program being broadcast, it often, but not always, selects the wrong one, such as "Squeezed" instead of "Letter Box." I hate, hate, HATE the horizontally compressed distortion, and I'm usually not there to change it manually when my TiVo records. If I go into the Option settings and choose "Letter Box," it doesn't stick, and the next time, a channel with a widescreen program will go back to "Set By Program" and it'll often be wrong again. (Does the AFD signal from the local TV station distinguish a widescreen program between Letter Box and Squeezed?) In any event, how do I force my Zenith DTT900 to always use "Letter Box" for widescreen broadcasts?

With my Zenith DTT900's and their Best Buy twin from Insignia, if I set a channel on Letter Box (or Squeezed), it stays that way forever - UNTIL I do a complete rescan. At that point all channels scanned are reset to "Set By Program."

If I just "Add Digital Channels", the ones already scanned remain as I had set them.

Harry

I recently dusted off and used my DTT900 CECB while evaluating the Mohu Leaf antenna, and wanted to mention that this converter box really has a great combination of functionality and performance. The 480i picture quality is very good. If you are looking on the used market for a converter box, the Zenith DTT900 and DTT901 (and their Insignia counterparts) remain among the best performing units made.

Thanks, HGN2001, you seem to be saying that the Aspect Ratio setting is by individual channel, not overall. That didn't occur to me. I've just excruciatingly gone through all channels on both of my boxes and set the ones I could (widescreen programs at the time) to "Letter Box." It'll probably take at least a day to see if they hold in practice, and I'll come back here and report my findings. (Sheesh, the instruction manual is useless!) ...
Thanks again, HGN2001!

I have an Artec which is a Zenith clone, from what I've seen on these forums the menus are identical. Having said that I've been able to make the aspect stick for all channels in the main menu. There was something weird about making it stick and I don't know exactly what it was but I do remember I had to try it in the main menu on a few different stations before it took hold (the different stations previously had different aspect settings using just the remote's aspect button so that may be clue). Afterwards I could go back and change individual stations without affecting the other stations by using the aspect button on the remote (i.e. don't go into the main menu on a station by station basis). The manual for the Artec was useless as well.

It would be greatly appreciated if anyone could come-up with what hoops must be jumped through to get the "Aspect Ratio" setting from the main Options menu to apply overall to all channels.

Right now, if you just set it, it only affects the single channel one happens to be on at the time, which really threw me for a loop because I naturally thought, being in the main settings menu, that it was a global setting, so I was setting it to "Set By Program" aaarrgghh! (And thereafter, as Floydage pointed out, the setting applied from the "Zoom" button on the remote control would stick only on a channel-by-channel basis.) This would greatly reduce the tedious burden after a full rescan as a starting point for reapplying the aspect ratios of the individual channels. What's the trick?

OK, the "Aspect Ratio" setting for sure gets remembered by individual channel, whether set in both the main Option settings or with the "Zoom" button on the remote control.

Still would like to know the trick how Floydage was somehow able to force an overall global setting for all channels in one fell swoop in the main Option dialog, e.g., set all channels to "Letter Box." But I guess I still would have to go through and set all the channels one-by-one, anyway.

Anyway, glad I've got it all working on a practical level now. Academically, however, I'm still curious as to why, when a channel's "Aspect Ratio" setting is set to "Set By Program," it often chooses the ugly "Squeezed" instead of "Letter Box" when a widescreen program is running. Does the AFD (Active Format Description) signal from the local TV station distinguish a widescreen program between Letter Box and Squeezed? Or does the Zenith DTT900 think it's "doing us a favor" by choosing the "Squeezed" setting for us so we don't have to "suffer" the black bars on the top & bottom of letterbox?

My guess is this is the case. Squeezed is 16:9 for a widescreen, it's just squeezed by the converter box. Letterbox is generated by the converter box, as well as all of the settings, to fit onto a 4:3 set (i.e. letterbox isn't a widescreen mode). I think the reason they did squeezed was because some widescreen monitors did not have ATSC tuners either (although I have seen a few movies on non-network stations that reformat properly when I used squeezed). I recently acquired a Panasonic widescreen CRT and the best fit I got was when I used squeezed and set the Panny to Full; letterbox works but I can't get as good a fit and geometry.

Aha, they had to make it fit the media:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anamorphic_widescreen