Only getting half of the sound on our TV/DVD?

MissShal

I've got a strange problem with out TV (built in DVD).

Put a DVD on last night (Transformers), thought it was fine as sound was working, until the first scene comes on where the soldiers are talking in the plane. You can hear the background noises but not the voices, if that makes sense? I've tried other DVDs, which are all the same. I've tried every button on the remote, been through all of the menus, unplugged it at the wall etc and nothing seems to make a difference.

It's still under warranty but I'm worried that it could be something really silly, and I'll get charged if I send it off for repair! Has anyone got any idea?

Thanks in advance!

OneADay

Just a thought - do you use a Satellite box or freebox with the TV - and if so check the volumes controls on them plus on the TV itself and DVD player (well you checked that you said).

Thats what I would do check all possible volume controls on all devices.

MissShal

Thanks for replying, but we don't use anything with it - it has Freeview built in but the signal's terrible, so we just use the DVD player.

The user manual is pretty useless, it doesn't even have a troubleshooting guide! It does however have an email address for customer support, so hopefully they'll be able to point me in the right direction. I just don't understand how you can lose half of the sound

OneADay

Well if its not broken - then it might be the audio cables are plugged in wrong somewhere.

As you say if you have email address, send them and email . Worth ringing up support (if any) to get quicker response.

What make / model is it? It might be a common issue.

£$&*"($£&(

As a complete guess is it something to do with surround sound. If the DVD was expecting to output to a 5.1 surround system different parts of the sound would end up in different speakers so only part of the sound is ending up in the TV speakers and there's no speakers to play the rest of the sound. There's a good chance this is rubbish but I might check for sound settings making sure it is set for stereo, if there is such an option.

MissShal

Well, I've just managed to fix it, but I don't know how?

I had a reply from customer support (full marks for the quick reply!), suggesting that I altered the treble, which I did, but it made no difference.

I found another option to restore to default settings, so I did that. Now it works! But I would really love to know why it happened in the first place.

It is a UMC L216/22B-GB-TCDF-UK‏.

Anyhow, all sorted now, but thanks for the replies!

almillar

grahawk is onto something. Without knowing your setup it's hard to know. In a 5.1 speaker setup, voices (what you are missing) generally come from the centre speaker. If your DVD player or amp think there's a centre speaker and there isn't (if you only have 2 speakers) then that's where they voices are being lost. You need to set your DVD player and/or amp to output stereo instead of 5.1/surround. Or find some other way of telling the system there's no centre speaker.
Let us know how it goes, or tell us what your setup is.
HTH

theboylard

At a guess I'd say grahawk was spot on - the audio output from the dvd player wil have been set to 5.1 sound ( ie 4 corner speakers and 1 central front speaker plus a base speaker), but your tv has 2 speakers.

You will have heard the background sounds, but the main speaking parts will have been sent to the central front and facing speakers which your tv doesn't have.

Still, all sorted now so no major drama.