manjar,

Welcome to the Dell Community Forum (DCF).
You did the Factory Reset and tried a different component cable?

Oh, and I did try different cables, except of course for the D-sub to component, as I only have the one that came with the projector.  I don't know where to get any other ones, though a longer cable sure would be handy (the included cable barely reaches floor level from the overhead mounting point I am using).

Thanks for the response.  Just so we can get caught up quickly, here are some of the things I've done:

* Factory reset - no effect.

* Disconnected and reconnected all cables - still have bands in component video

* Ran the diagnostic - looks fine, but did not resolve issue w/component.

* Used alternate input source (composite video) - looks fine, but did not resolve issue w/component.

* Hit resync button - no noticeable effect at all

* Adjusted brightness, eco mode, etc. - no effect on issue

* Tried alternate input sources into composite - same banding with DVD player and HDTV cable set-top box

* Adjusted cables to keep power away from signal - no impact.

There are probably a couple of other things I've done, but that's what comes to mind.  Any help you can provide would be greatly appreciated... it's a little bit of a bummer to spend all that money and have the picture look so cruddy!

Thanks,

Eli

Despite their best efforts, Dell support was not able to help me with this problem.  However, a two-minute phone call to Music Lovers in Berkeley California got right to the bottom of things.  Once I mentioned to them that I had a cable TV hookup, they immediately suspected that this was the source of ground loop interference.  Indeed, upon disconnecting the cable TV from my system, the color bands went away!  The question then became how to have my cake and eat it, too, i.e. how to get rid of the color bands and still have cable. 

The folks at Music Lovers recommended getting a cable ground lift, an in-line device that isolates the cable ground interference.  However I could not readily locate such a part.  So, per an idea I saw in a web AV forum, I just bought two 75Ohm - 300Ohm "baluns", hooked their leads together (i.e. lead 1 of the first balun to lead 1 of the second, and lead 2 of the first balun to lead 2 of the second... it shouldn't matter which you consider to be 1 and 2), and put them in series right before the cable box.  Voila!  The cable works, and the bands are gone.

It is too bad that the Dell unit does not do a better job of rejecting this interference, and that Dell could not help with this issue.  Nonetheless, there is a $5 workaround, and I can get back to figuring out how to upgrade the measly 2m component cable that came with the system.

manjar,

Great data. I will include this information in the FAQ.

By the way, for those of you looking for a longer component cable for your Dell projector, they can be found at cablesnmor.com.  I just bought a 12' cable for $31.  This should be suitable for overhead installations, to get the cables down to where the rest of the equipment resides.