Why do I have floating lines on my HDTV from my Playstation 3??

Question

I have a Samsung 55inch 1080i HCM5525W, It does not have any HDMI input, So I bought the cheap and expensive component cables for the PS3, when using either I get these floating lines from the bottom to the top of the screen. What the heck! My X-BOX 360 works GREAT in 1080i, but the PS3 does not.

Answer 1

The reason you have the line is the same reason that at BestBuy we recommend you use an HDMI cable with an HDTV over components: inteference.

And this is what is happening to you.

Component cables have digital ends with gold connectors, but the cable itself is a standard analog cable, using a RF transmission over the cord.

So if there are a ton of other cables behind your TV, be they coaxial or component or standard RCA cables (red, white, and yellow), then they are causing a lot of RF interference.

The reason other stuff probably doesnt freak out is due to good shielding and such. Or just dumb luck, as sometimes it will just not happen. I've seen extremely high-end systems using analog cables do fine, just by luck the cables were not sending out interference in a way that caused a problem.

So here are your fixes:
1. you said you bought the expensive ones, were they Monster cables? You called them "cheap and expensive," so did you buy two? You needed to get the more expensive ones, with teh better shielding. AGain, I recommend anything Monster. Monster only uses the highest quality stuff, the best shielding and best connections, in their cables.
2. Also, turn off your DVD player, satellite or cable box.
One more thing: your TV has a DVD component slot that only does 480p and a HDTV slot that does 1080i. Your problem is you may be hooked up to the DVD player slot. So tis trying to do 1080i, but has no capability of doing so on the screen.

You may now have to suffer the fate of changing where your cables are plugged in. But! Never fear, for I have a solution:
A component video input switcher. They are rare, but what they do is allow you to hookup multiple component cables (usually four or so) through a single component output. All you do is hookup your inputs to the back of this box, then take its output to your HDTV slot. To switch between slots, you will use the remote that comes with it.

At the BestBuy I work at, we have a few from Psyclone that are going very fast. I dont know when we will get more.

Also, one more thing: try rotating the connections around the ports themselves. Sometimes that seems to work. And remember: try everything I said, turn off all other electronics hooked up to the TV, make sure you have the best cables (Monster makes those), hook the PS3 into the HDTV slot instead of the DVD 480p slot, and if all that fails just contact me ok?

Answer 2

If you have an old HDTV that only supports "I" that could be the problem. The PS3 supports "P" tvs and does not downscale for any tv of lower status. So you'll run into problems eventually if you don't have the right tv.

The Xbox 360 does downscale.