How do I get PIP or SAP on my Samsung LCD TV ln52a650?

Well, here's the answer you need. You probably don't.

I was looking to get SAP for a high-def financial channel as they had on the side of their screen a congressional hearing I was interested in hearing, and it said "to hear this, press SAP." Couldn't find it anywhere, not on my TV, not in it's manual, and not in my cable box's menus or it's manual. So I decided to call customer support.

When I called, I decided to ask about something that has been driving me nuts since I discovered (after splitting my Coax and running a separate line to the back of the set) that only Analog Broadcast TV can be seen in PIP mode.

Your $2,600 Samsung state-of-the-art 4ms LCD Hi Def, flat panel TV can only do picture-in-picture with... ANALOG BROADCAST. You got that right. The only thing you can watch in the secondary box on your hi-tech Samsung ln52a650 is analog broadcast. You know, the standard that was supposed to end 3 years ago, which was moved to February 2009, and now moved to Jun 2009... Yes, that standard.

On the main side, you can watch any of your HDMI, Component, DTV or anything. On the little PIP? Analog Broadcast only. So says the manual.


So when I called customer support, the first level of support was horrible. Didn't know the first thing about TV technical issues. Not a thing. Told me that I was wrong about the PIP issue, and that I could use other components, I could use the "digital" component input or the "digital" video inputs (all of which are analog) and just contradicted the manual, which I had him get out and read with me. He also told me that I could get to my SAP by going to sound setup and selecting "standard" and that would be SAP. I told him that would change the sound equalizer on the TV and put it in standard mode as opposed to the Bassy movie mode, etc. It's just a sound enhancement, not a completely different sound channel. I explained that it was a different audio program, a second audio program, like the descriptive Video Service for the blind, to which he replied "Oh do you mean Closed Captioning?" I said, no, that was text on the screen, and really wouldn't help the blind. :roll:

So, finally I get this guy to send me to Level 2 support, who was a really knowledgeable guy for the most part. He told me that indeed, PIP can only be used with an analog broadcast signal, and confirmed what I knew already that my FiOS connection didn't have any analog signal on the cable. Lots of cable companies are taking analog broadcast signal off of their cable -- it takes up a lot of their bandwidth-- and doing so forces customers to rent a box for each older TV in the house.

He also told me that SAP was available, and he showed me where it was, but the menu item to get to the setting was greyed out -- so he looked it up and -son of a gun- it only works with analog broadcast TV as well.

He told me SAP probably wasn't a standard of the DTV broadcast and I disagreed saying it probably was (especially since a hi-def broadcast was telling me to use it). Well, we were both half right. Right after I hung up I looked it up. Apparently there is or was some confusion about the implementation of SAP in DTV, but nearly every (like 36 our of 40 or something) DTV converter box (you know, those boxes you can get the to convert the DTV signal to analog so you can still use your older TV to watch the new DTV signal?) has the ability to pick up the digital SAP and to play that for your old TV, so I know I was right. Mostly. It's not a standard, but it's there and in use.

So here I am, with a $2,600 top-quality brand-new Samsung TV, bought less than 3 months before the February 2009 end-of-Analog-Broadcast, where a couple of features -- one essential for some, and one functionally important one, work only with that defunct signal.

The only thing I can do to use PIP at all is to put back up my powered antenna, run a cable to it and from it to the TV set, losing my DTV on the cable (still have the input from the FiOS box), or use the video output from the converter box, and control the converter box with a separate remote as well as a remote for the powered directional antenna. All because Samsung, in their wisdom, decides to make use of an analog tuner they have likely because they didn't want to incorporate a more expensive hi-def video processor for pip and because they were lazy and didn't want to incorporate SAP like the dirt-cheap converter boxes do.

Think I'm kidding?
http://photos.oes.org/albums/userpics/1 ... Manual.pdf

Page 33: Choosing a Multi-Channel Sound (MTS) track
--------------------------
“Multi-Track Sound” is available only in Analog TV mode
--------------------------

Page 29: PIP Settings

<pre>Main picture
--------------------------
Component 1, 2
HDMI 1, HDMI/DVI 2, HDMI 3, HDMI 4
PC
--------------------------

Sub picture
--------------------------
Analog TV broadcasts only
--------------------------
</pre>

All this said, the TV is absolutely super -- the picture is just AMAZING, the colors are AMAZING and it hasn't given a moment of trouble.
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