The convergence on my Hitachi went out of whack. The so-called convergence adjustment available without special knowledge wasn’t doing the trick for me, i.e. the single cross-hair. So I dug deeper and looked into how I might be able to fix this without a $400 service call. Here are the directions for getting into the ‘secret’ convergence menus. You will need your remote operational to do this:
- Turn on the set
- Press and hold the convergence button the set and hit the input button on the remote.
- Convergence adjust is now engaged.
You should see a grid on the screen. This means you are now in the convergence adjust mode. Basically, now it’s up to you to adjust as you see fit. To move around on the grid,
use the following keys on your remote:
- 2: up
- 4: left
- 5: down
- 6: right
Use the cursor on your remote to move the points around. You also have the ability to select a mode for adjustment. The various modes allow coarser or finer tuning of the convergence grid. Generally speaking, you should start out in the 3 X 3 mode (meaning you have access to adjust 3 points on the grid) and then move to finer adjustment modes to perfect the picture. Change modes by doing the following:
- Press Recall 5 times to activate 3X3 mode
- Press 0 5 times to activate 7X5 mode
- Press input 5 times to active 13X9 mode
Generally speaking, the first step is to get just the green color aligned. Press MENU on your remote and then EXIT and you should see only the green lines. After you adjust the green, you will want to pop up another color over the green and align it with the green lines. Here are the modes:
- Blue: INPUT button on the remote
- Red: 0 button on the remote
- Green: RECALL button on the remote
- MENU: to remove an activated color and return to just green
Again, to start with just green. Then activate one of the other colors (red or blue.) Now, move around and adjust so the lines all line up across the screen vertically and horizontally. If you want this precise, you will have to develop some kind of overlay, but for fine tuning, you should be able to eye it.
When all the colors are properly aligned, you will see white lines. Don’t worry if it isn’t absolutely perfect – a small amount of fringe is acceptable and will go unnoticed. When you are done you will want to save the adjustments you made. To do this:
- Press PIP MODE on the remote twice (the first time it will as you if you want to save, hitting PIP MODE the second time does the saving
- The screen will blank briefly. Then you will see a pattern of evenly spaced green dots. You have successfully saved the settings once you see this.
- Hit PIP CH to go back to do more tweaking.
At this point, the changes are saved. Turn off the TV and back on again to see the results with a normal signal.