There is a large black rectangle in the middle of the screen. It goes away for a second when I press the EXIT button on the remote and for about 4 seconds when I press the RECALL button on the remote. Any idea how to get rid of it?

Hi,
most times a black rectangle pops up when closed captioning is on. sometimes there will be gibberish in it sometimes not. See if you have button on remote labeled "CC" . Also if you have a cable or sat box make sure closed captioning is switched off there too.

you inadvertantly turned the cc feature in the tv set on. look for the cc key on your remote control, press it repeatedly, tv will go through cc1,cc2,txt1 and so on... keep pressing till you get to where it says off. this should do away with the block

your closed caption system is turned onn to its TEXT FUNCTION use your remote to find the CC or closed caption option and turn it off and the block will go away . good luck

Try and turn off the closed captioning. I had the same problem and it turned out that the closed captioning was on t1 instead of OFF. Hope this helps!!!!

It sounds like the closed captioning background.

Press Menu on the remote
Press Up or Down, Ch + or C- to get to Closed Caption
Press right side button or Vol+ and Mode will be highlighted
Press right button or Vol+ until it says Off on the right hand side of the Menu
Press exit and that should do it.

Hope this helps.

I signed up for the "chat" and the problem was solved very quickly. Thank you - great service!

My mother-in-law had this problem on a Quasar for two years before she finally mentioned it. The rectangle is a text box for closed captioning or for a demonstation list of features, but without the text. I restored the factory presets and poof... problem solved.

Look in the manual and find how to restore the factory settings - it will probably be some weird combination of buttons that you would never guess. On her set, which has a built-in VCR, it was simultaneously pressing "play" and "FF" (on the set, not the remote) for five seconds until the set powered down. Yours will probably be something different but equally odd. That should get rid of the black rectangle. Then you go through the initial setup and you're back in business.

Try pressing the "View" button on the remote control a couple times -- it sounds like you have the picture-in-picture mode turned on but with nothing showing on the second input.

It's the closed captioning. The reason it doesn't go away when you press the "caption" button is because there are four option for closed captioning: Text 1, Text 2, Text 3, and Text 4. The fifth option, which has no designation, is the "off" option. Using the remote, just click on the "caption button until the option has no designation.

Mine was a large black rectangle in the middle of the picture. It's not like Nina3's problem.

I'm not sure what type of TV you are using,, but most all Large Screens have a reset button someplace. You should be able to reset the TV and fix the problem. Its not the remote, making the image appear, but a command from it was misinterpeted. Sometimes turning the set off will work, but most often it needs to be reset.

EXCEPTION... if you are using a cable box. Disconnect it from power, wait 1 minute and then see if the problem exists. If the cable box is on even with the DVD you may still have this issue. Please reset the cable, and if that doesn't work, reset the TV.
Thanks! //D