RF / Tuning

[overlord uk]

Yesterday my TV's only scart socket decided to stop working, leaving me with a standard aerial connector (it's a PAL colour TV, nothing special) and nothing else. Now this means the only way of connecting my XBox to the TV is through this aerial plug, and luckily I had an RF cable I'd got at christmas (a Joytech one). After finding it, I used the TV's autotuner to find the right signal, and it came up nicely... until a couple of seconds later, the sound tuned in too. Suddenly, every bright colour on screen creates a white flash that stretches right, and a very loud buzzing noise, making it impossible to actually hear the console behind it. I've tried the different channels (BG, I, K-something, not exactly sure what it means by channels, but they only seem to affect the sound, not the picture), with no effect.

This is incredibly annoying, as I've got Soul Calibur 2 arriving (hopefully) on Friday, and I'll only be able to play it on the living room telly, which my parents won't particularly like. The TV's only 9 months old (though the line has been discontinued), so it's still under warranty, but I have to find the receipt first, and with it being a 20" model, it's not going to be easy to get it back to Dixons where I bought it from, 'cos it's huge.

Normally I'd blame this on the TV not tuning in properly, or the lead itself. However, I had almost exactly the same problem with my Dreamcast, a loud buzzing noise when there was any white on the screen, a year ago on a different TV (which is about 10 years old). I got around that problem by getting a VGA box, but in this case it isn't so easy. Surely this is more than a coincidence? Are PAL TVs unable to properly receive RF signals from modern consoles, or is it just that the two I've got aren't of high enough quality?

And why hasn't Gameplay dispatched my Soul Calibur 2 yet?

[Lyris]

Can't say I'm an expert but it sounds like some sort of Automatic Gain Control (AGC) problem? Whatever it is it sounds like it's gonna need replaced. If you call Dixons they'll probably come round to your place and take it away for you.

As for the different channels that affect the sound, that's because other European countries transmit the sound at a different level (5.5mhz vs UK's 6mhz, I think).

[MD]

Okay lets explain how RF works...

The console normally produces a RGB video signal (or at worse an S-Video one) and this needs to be converted to composite so the RF encoder can encode it.

RF works by turning the composite signal and audio into a radio frequency broadcast signal, so your TV thinks that the console is in fact a TV station.

Once the TV gets the signal it splits the RF into Composite video and Audio and splits the composite into S-Video then into component video then finally to RGB. So from encoding to decoding it goes through a lot of changes so hence the picture degrades...

Now first make sure that your TV encoder is set to PAL-I as this is the UK PAL signal the letters are mainly to tell where the sound sub carrier signal is. Make sure it is plugged in firmly if it's not grounding correctly you may get white streaks on bright colours.

Make sure you turn of AGC if you can, if you can't or it doesn't help then try to manually tune the TV. You should find that the TV is picking up the strongest signal but it may be too strong, so an adjustment could fix it. If you don't have manual tuning then skip past the signal and if possible tune backwards and you might find you get a better picture.

Buzzing when you have a bright picture is normal as RF sometimes sends noise to the Audio subcarrier.

Failing all else try the Xbox and RF on another TV as the RF encoder could be ****ed too.