Lately I’ve been building a “HTPC”, or media PC if you want. A mini-ITX system designed to replace my aging XBMC XBox, which though works perfectly, alas can not handle HD content.
While waiting for the parts to arrive, I tried getting a borken screened Acer laptop working as a media center. Installed Ubuntu 9.10 and XBMC just to check if it could do the job. It couldn’t – it keeps switching off by itself, even after vacuuming it good. Not to mention the fullscreen display was SLOOOOOOOw.
AFTER I got the media-PC up and running pretty much flawlessly through HDMI, I noticed something wierd: there was a redness, a reddish hue (double to pick up googlers) in the picture. Strange. Didn’t think much about it, but tried everything on the samsung controls to correct this, and also Windows calibration. No go.
Some googling later, I found some people with the same symptoms on cnet.
Didn’t really relate it to my problem, as I’ve not used the VGA por…. Wait a minute! I did the exact same thing earlier – Ubuntu through VGA?
As of yet I haven’t bothered to replace the TV (or try a different cable), as the VGA output of my HTPC gives an excellent picture in full HD.
I’ve sent a mail to Samsung support, and they said what I expected: try a different HDMI cable, and try to reset the TV (Hold “Exit” for 15 seconds).
So take this cautionary advice: stay away from the VGA port on your Samsung LCD TV. It may just be that some connection in the HDMI ports are fried when you plug in the VGA connector.
