No picture I hooked up my new sony bravia adn have been watching it a couple weeks now. tonight we finally had time to watch a dvd adn we have no picture. I guess something is hooked up wrong but have no idea where to start

Hey motherann,

If your TV has only been having problems displaying a picture when using the DVD player (and normal TV stations are unaffected), you may only need to check the connections between your TV and DVD player to resolve the issue.

Most DVD players will connect to a TV using component video cables, an HDMI cable, a composite video cable, or an S-Video cable. HDMI and S-Video ports generally have a unique enough shape that the cables used to make those connections cannot be used anywhere else, but the same unfortunately does not apply to component and composite cables. Component and composite video cables share a similar shape, and can often be confused if the identifying marks on the cable itself, TV or DVD player have been removed. Composite video cables are traditionally a single connection that transmits the entire video signal from the DVD player to the TV, while component cables are a series of three cables that each transmit a portion of the same image.

The first thing I would suggest checking is that each cable is correctly connected to both the DVD player and your TV. Make sure that the cable(s) connected to your DVD player is plugged into the appropriate "Video Out" port, and attached to the TV at the corresponding "Video In" port. These ports should be labeled on both the TV and DVD player for easy identification, regardless of where the connections are located. Additionally, many manufacturers will even color-code both the connection ports and the cables themselves, to ensure that the right cable is used at any given time.

In the event that everything has been set up correctly but the TV still does not pick up a video signal from the DVD player, there could be a number of other potential problems: the cable being used could be defective, one of the connection ports used (on either the DVD player or TV) could be defective, or they may even be a loose connection inside the TV or DVD player.

Replacing a defective cable is generally the easist possible solution to this type of scenario, but if the problem still persists after doing so, you may wish to consult a repair technician to determine the cause of the problem.

Hope this helps you out.

Sincerely,
Aaron
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