When preparing for my first live VJ show in duo with my friend we ran into following issue. We were using a pair of HDMI 2 A/V converters like this
However, we noticed that only one of them was displaying colour while the other’s display was in black and white. Our setup is really simple as it’s Panasonic WJ-AVE7 with 2 laptops with HDMI output as source. Use of converter and having colour is obviously crucial to what we’re doing.
I’ve tried many options: switching from PAL to NTSC (we’re based in Europe), changing wires, changing input ports in Panasonic but the bottom line was always that two out of three of our converters were displaying in black and white and only one of us could enjoy having a color picture (with a slight greenish tint).
Has anybody else ran into issues with them converters? I must admit that I wanted to save some money on it but I didn’t buy the cheapest ones but neither the most expensive.
We’re about to VJ this weekend and would highly appreciate any help as recommendations of some specific converters that are reliable or some workaround.
i would definitely suggest replacing the converter. those are very hit or miss. unfortunately i don’t currently have a recommendation for which to use - unless you’re going with a blackmagic shuttle (whole different can of worms) or possibly a series of blackmagic converters (hdmi to sdi → sdi to analog - could be pretty expensive), most people i know have figured it out by trial and error. not saying the “pro” option is necessarily the best answer but with the cheaper ones you might get mixed results (and even one that worked for someone else might not work for you).
Same converters here, for budget reasons. Yes they’re unreliable, and yes it’s painful to explore more reliable alternatives.
We also lose colors when connecting a HDMI source > those connectors > our Panasonic WJ-AVE 5.
Colors do not get lost when connecting to the inputs of our Roland Edirol V8. (but they still disappear when connecting the relative monitor output to the WJ-AVE 5)
A cheapest workaround (which would introduce noticeable visual differences in your performance) may be to buy cheap TVCCs with video composite output, use them to rescan the laptop displays and connect them directly to the Panasonic WJ-AVE. Old camcorders would work even better.
If you plan to stick to HDMI sources I’d plan to buy an HDMI mixer. I guess you can buy a new one with the same money you’d spend on two good converters.
(note: I’ve seen converters being sold at 50-60 bucks which I think were exactly the cheapest-est-est ones…just a different plastic box)
I’ve had good luck using a TVone C2-2155 for DVI to composite/s-video downscaling. The prices have gone up on all of this kind of stuff since I got mine but the 21xx series is still comparatively cheap. There’s a 2100 on eBay for under $100 right now.
You might be able to use an HDMI-to-DVI passive adapter to use it for HDMI conversion. I don’t know the 2100 but the 2155 also has some basic keying and timebase correction.
Those converters are funny - sometimes you get one which works great for years and other times hardly works at all. I’ve had good experiences with all the “Ligawo” branded stuff
Thanks for the reply! It turned out that when we bought the HDMI 2 AV converter from the same guy from whom we got the first that was working, it worked fine as well. So eventually, we were able to have 2 HDMI sources converted into AV to Panasonic WJ-AVE7 without any issues.
Furthermore, we bought AV 2 HDMI converter and did not have any issues with color as well, it just needed to be plugged to USB port all the time.
Option with HDMI mixer is interesting, however, we are planning to buy more analog gear in future so in the end we would have to convert that signal to AV as well.
