Ever want to watch widescreen movies (enhanced for 16x9 / anamorphic) IN Anamorphic mode, yet have them display properly?

In short, got a Sony WEGA tv that doesn't have the ultra-cool vertical compress feature? Wish you had it too?

Well, a while ago a stumbled across how to enable this feature when doing something that probably voided my warrantee. (I entered the service mode. Yes, i know, shock, gasp, how could I?!?)

The steps to do this on an older WEGA are not "simple" but are easy enough once you memorize it. (Takes me less than 10 seconds).


Follow these steps carefully and precisely, and everything should be fine. I take absolutely NO liability for the things you may do to your tv set as a result of reading the following information, though... and I'm sure Sony doesn't either. So do this AT YOUR OWN RISK... By even reading this you agree to absolve both myself and Sony from any legal liability, yadda yadda ya, you get the point.


Okay, now that that is over with, let the games begin:

1) turn OFF the tv. You should have a little red standby light flashing at you from beneath the tv's display. If so, continue to step 2.

2) press the following keys on your Sony TV remote, one at a time:

[Display]
[5]
[Volume +]
[Power]


3) the TV should come back on, and there should be a bunch of green text you've probably never seen before superimposed over the picture. if this is the case, go to step 4. if not, go back to step 1.

4) pay attention to the four letters in the upper right hand region of the screen. At first they should read HSIZ. We'll call this the 'variable.'

Press [1] on the remote.

The variable name should change. If you press [4], it will change back. To the right of the variable name is its current value. if you press [3] or [6] you will increase or decrease that value, respectively.

By using [1] and [4], you can scroll through all the wonderful (and cryptic) values the WEGA's cmos has to offer. These control all of the programmable functions of the set, including such familiar things as brightness and contrast, color, sound volume, bass and treble levels, etc. It also controls things familiar to computer monitor users, such as trapezoid, rotation, width, height, and position of the image on the screen (very handy for elminating the warps and defects the WEGAs seem to ship with, as well as decreasing (or increasing) overscan, per your preference. You can also individually turn on or of the Red, Green, and Blue guns from inside this menu, for doing low-level calibrations that discs like Avia can lead you through.

BUT... that's not why we're in here. After you've digested that, proceed to step 5.

5) Press [1] repeatedly (or hold) until you see the variable VUSN. (It's right after HBLK, RBLK, and LBLK) If you pass it, you can always press [4] to scroll back to it.

6) VUSN should be set to 0. Press [3] to change it to 1. (Once VUSN is 1, your screen will appear to shrink vertically... this is what we're after).

7) Now that we've successfully enabled vertical compression (don't ask me what VUSN stands for, i haven't the foggiest), we need to save our changes. If we don't, when we turn the TV off and back on (to exit service mode), we'll lose any change(s) we made thus far and the TV will still be in 4:3 mode.

To save our changes, we need to WRITE them. Press [Muting] on your remote. The screen should now say WRITE in the upper right hand corner.

8) Press [ENTER]. The WRITE will turn to WRITE and then you should be back to seeing VUSN 1 again. Congrats, your changes were successfully saved.

9) Turn off the TV, wait a few seconds (go easy on that power supply!), then turn it back on.

10) Viola. If you did everything correctly, your TV image should be nice and squishy. 4:3 will look... strange to say the least... so go tell your DVD player that it's connected to a 16:9 / wide tv, then pop in an anamorphic title and enjoy.

You'll definitely notice a more solid picture... what you're really seeing is a lack of the thin black "scan lines" that permeate the normal picture. (The very things a line doubler / quadrupler eliminates). We've told the guns to "compress" the vertical range of the picture, to 16:9. Why they didn't expose this feature on the remote is beyond me... maybe they hadn't fully tested it yet.

In any case, DVD on your WEGA now looks frightfully close to an interlaced HDTV... enjoy it ;)

-jer

P.S. to change it BACK to 4:3 mode... repeat all the steps above, except step 6 changes to:

6) VUSN should be set to 1. Press [6] to change it to 0. (Once VUSN is 0, your screen will return to normal 4:3 mode).

...Although the only glitch is that some sets will show thin angled red/green/blue lines at the top of the screen.

Daniel,

Thanks for applying my corrections... (I assume it was you who did it. ;)

In any case, I hadn't heard of the thin angled red/green/blue lines at the top of the screen. It is possible one could adjust the VSIZ variable to "fix" that... or did you mean at the top of display region?

I suppose you could adjust VSIZ, but then again that would practically cancel out the whole Anamorphic point. :-) I had that on a Sony 27" set ('98 or so); after researching it I found many others had it as well. It's in the black screen region "exposed" by enabling anamorphic mode.

Jeremy
Will this method also resolve the geometry problem with 36XBR200

Thx

Geometry problem?

i have a sony wega tv i tried it and could not find the vusn. give me a call phone number is 518-566-2097 my name is noah.

*chuckle*

Well, Noah, i'd be more than happy to help you out... though, if you can't find VUSN following the directions above, chances are... you may not have that setting (don't ask me why, i don't work for Sony). I just know that i have one of the first WEGAs out there, and it has it. More recent models (XBRs especially) have a button on the remote to enable vertical compression. If you can't find it in either place, I doubt there's much I can do to help.

I'm not one for calling long distance much, but my MSN Messenger passport is umopapisdn@hotmail.com. ping me sometime and maybe i can talk you through it online.

Irfan... dunno about geometry problems. There is a host of options for tweaking geometry issues (such as UPIN and LPIN for upper and lower pincushioning (the largest problems I had with my set), as well as vertical / horizontal overscan size adjustments, etc.) Play around with the settings all you like, just don't EVER save them unless you're ABSOLUTELY sure you didn't mess anything up ;) (once again, see my legal gibberish in my original post).

-jer

I have geometry promblems with my 36 inch v series too, and I could not correct the promblem with that menu. Some of the names adjust things but just did not want mess up anything. So the question is does anyone know of a service that will come to my place and adjust this and know what they are doing. The place where I bought this came out and replace the yoke, and did not help. They said the TV has to go into thier shop to fix. I want to aviod this hassel, very heavy and possible damage. Have had my WEGA for almost 2 years, great TV but the little geomerty problem is anoying.

HOW DO YOU SET IT BACK TO NORMAL STATE ONE OF MY FRIENDS CAME OVER AND WAS TRYING TO WATCH A CHANNEL INSTEAD HE PUSH A COUPLE OF BUTTONS ON IT.

I found the problem.