Samsung 4080 fades to B&W

[barkster99]

First off, forgive me for asking questions I could probably find if I dug enough as I imagine this is all old news.

I have a Samsung 4080 DirecTivo. The color on TV will be fine for while then fade to B&W. If I cycle power to the Samsung (and it goes through reset), color returns - for a while. Other input sources, color is fine.

I called DirecTV. They want to send me reconditioned R15, 2 year contract, $20 s&h. (Let me add that I'm a 10 year DirecTV subscriber without a single late payment.) I told them I'd have to consider cable and the guy I talked with didn't blink. Some questions...

1) Any hope for my Samsung, short of replacement?

2) Will I really miss the Tivo compared to R15? Keep in mind, I'm not into hacking or anything non-standard. I use the standard features and that's it.

3) Does that sound like a routine deal, i.e. reconditioned unit and 2 year commitment? Silly me, I though they'd just send me an R15, no charge, without an extended contract.

To complicate this a little, I would like to go HD sometime in the next 12 months (or when DirecTV expands their offering ("early 2007"?). I'd seriously consider a jump to cable now except the locals are analog (via cable) and they look like crap on my HDTV (and I have an earlier HDTV without an integrated HD tuner so OTA isn't that easy either).

I appreciate any input. Thanks.

[goony]

How does your DTivo connect to the TV? S-Video?? Try a composite connection instead for now. I've had issues before with a bad S-Video cable causing B&W to occur, but since you said it is a fading issue it may not be a bad cable.

[John T Smith]

1-See previous answer

2-Read http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=330109
Also - http://www.dbstalk.com/forumdisplay.php?f=82

3-Replacement receiver is almost always a new committment

Last-Future HD from DirecTv is going to be via MPEG-4 which is not compatible with the DTivo receivers, only DTv's own brand of DVR box

[samo]

First off, forgive me for asking questions I could probably find if I dug enough as I imagine this is all old news.

I have a Samsung 4080 DirecTivo. The color on TV will be fine for while then fade to B&W. If I cycle power to the Samsung (and it goes through reset), color returns - for a while. Other input sources, color is fine.

I called DirecTV. They want to send me reconditioned R15, 2 year contract, $20 s&h. (Let me add that I'm a 10 year DirecTV subscriber without a single late payment.) I told them I'd have to consider cable and the guy I talked with didn't blink. Some questions...

1) Any hope for my Samsung, short of replacement?

2) Will I really miss the Tivo compared to R15? Keep in mind, I'm not into hacking or anything non-standard. I use the standard features and that's it.

3) Does that sound like a routine deal, i.e. reconditioned unit and 2 year commitment? Silly me, I though they'd just send me an R15, no charge, without an extended contract.

To complicate this a little, I would like to go HD sometime in the next 12 months (or when DirecTV expands their offering ("early 2007"?). I'd seriously consider a jump to cable now except the locals are analog (via cable) and they look like crap on my HDTV (and I have an earlier HDTV without an integrated HD tuner so OTA isn't that easy either).

I appreciate any input. Thanks.
You are right. This is an old issue. About a year ago I had the same problem on a box that I just bought. I did extensive search on this and help forums and majority opinion was that it is a hardware problem (you may want to search yourself, but I don't think that anything changed in a last year). I exchanged the box and problem disappeared with exactly same cables and connections.So answer to your first question is NO.
Answer to your second questions is tricky. It depends on how addicted you are to TiVo interface and how open minded you are. Personally, I like R-15 UI better than TiVo, but you will find plenty of posts here from people who hate it. If you are considering to get HD from DirecTV in a near future, you may want to get HR20-700 now. It will work just fine as SD DVR (you'll get about 250 hours of SD recording time on it) and when DirecTV expands their HD offerings you'll be ready to go. If you can receive OTA HD signal in your area, then you can use HR20 OTA tuner to watch local programming in HD.
As for a commitment, you can't avoid commitment even with cable. According to most users here cable DVRs are really bad (I don't have personal experience with cable DVRs), so you may have to spend $650+ for S3 TiVo and commit yourself to TiVo service for at least a year ($20 a month for 1 year, gets cheaper for longer commitment). If you have problems with S3 (see S3 forum for description of problems some users have) - you are stuck.
If I was in your shoes, I would get hold on customer retention department (tell CSR that you want to cancel - they will switch you to RD right away) and try to get a best possible deal on HR20.
Of course you can always try to buy used DirecTiVo on e-bay, but how do you know that your are not going to get another lemon?

[JimSpence]

The first step in troubleshooting is to reseat all connections.
This is especially true for the s-video connection.

[barkster99]

Thanks for all the great feedback. That helps.

[tas3086]

I have the exact same problem with the exact same unit. Once a day it goes to B/W for about 30 minutes on all channels and menu's. Other times, it is fine.

Let me know what you find out!