[scaught]

I made the jump to an LCD TV. 32" Samsung. 720p. Got the fancy DVR cable box, HD service, etc.

The HD channels look sweet. Planet Earth on Discovery is outstanding. The content in general is seriously lacking, but whatever. DVDs look awesome. My Wii games look awesome.

SD channels look like hell. I've tried adjusting sharpness settings and whatnot. Does anyone have a "Setting magic fix" or something i'm not finding to make it look better or am I just fscked?

[Eug]

You're pretty much fscked, unless you can find the same channels as SD digital channels. Sometimes those look better.

In fact, I was just shopping for a TV for my mom. 32" is probably as big as she needs, so I was looking at both CRTs and LCDs. The CRTs pretty much always looked better than the LCDs with crappy quality analogue cable video sources. The 480i CRTs looked a bit better than the 768p LCDs, and 1080i CRTs looked a LOT better.

[scaught]

Maybe I don't understand when you say "crappy analogue video sources" but my fancy cable box thing is hooked up via HDMI.

[Eug]

Originally Posted by scaught 

Maybe I don't understand when you say "crappy analogue video sources" but my fancy cable box thing is hooked up via HDMI.

Yeah, but the source is analogue. Usually cable consists of:

Analogue SD cable
Digital SD cable
Digital HD cable

The first one often looks very crappy on LCD TVs regardless of the type of hookup.

[stevesnj]

Heres an analog TV upres device but how good it works idunno...it still has to deal with the signal it receives

MediaXtreme MX-A - Analog Input/Output Configuration - Keywest Technology Digital Signage

[residentEvil]

just because you have digital cable service and hooked up via HDMI or component, doesn't mean the station/channel you are watching is digital. some cable companies (comcast) simulcast their SD stations in digital to compete with dish and direct tv which is ALL digital. however, many cable companies are sending the SD content in analgue. you can shove a **** load more channesl in that way.

[scaught]

So, SD channels on dish or DirectTV will look better on my TV (because they're all digital)? I'm not really all that attached to my cable service...

[stevesnj]

Originally Posted by scaught 

So, SD channels on dish or DirectTV will look better on my TV (because they're all digital)? I'm not really all that attached to my cable service...

SD on my friends Verizon FIOS looks significantly better than cable SD stations

[awaspaas]

It's very common for people to be disappointed with SD quality on an HDTV. The picture you're seeing is no lower quality than what you had before on your SD television, rather, the higher resolution display shows all the noise and blurriness of SD channels much more effectively!

One thing to try though... are you tuning the analog SD channels through the cable box? As an experiment try plugging cable right into your TV and seeing if its internal tuner makes the SD channels look better. One of the two tuners will most likely have a better scaler/deinterlacer than the other.

[residentEvil]

Originally Posted by scaught 

So, SD channels on dish or DirectTV will look better on my TV (because they're all digital)? I'm not really all that attached to my cable service...

i've had both in detroit area: WOW for cable (everything they offer) and DishNetwork (everything they offer). the HD quality was pretty darn close to the same on both (Discovery HD looked better on Dish though). digital cable channels like HBO for example were the same to me. comedy central or fox sports (non HD channel), etc were much better on Dish then cable.

the reason i went back to cable was that in Detroit, our local HD channels got put on a 4th bird. so i had to have 110, 119, 129 and the new 118.5 if i wanted local HD. being an early adopter, the new dish wasn't available or the LNBs. 3 missed appointments with no phone calls left a bad taste in my mouth (as i had taken 3 days off). but the picture quality was fantastic.

i'll go back; just enjoying a great deal on WOW right now. and i shouldn't have the install problem now; that was about 9 months ago. Dish installers have all the equipment now.

[Eug]

Originally Posted by awaspaas 

It's very common for people to be disappointed with SD quality on an HDTV. The picture you're seeing is no lower quality than what you had before on your SD television, rather, the higher resolution display shows all the noise and blurriness of SD channels much more effectively!

That's not really true. They often do look worse on LCDs, especially on cheaper LCDs with lower contrast ratios.

In fact, it seems to be one differentiating features of the uber expensive LCDs: IMO, TVs like Sony's Bravia line tend to do noticeably better with analogue inputs than my Dell LCD HDTV for example. OTOH, HD on both is stellar (although it's still better on the Sony).

[awaspaas]

Originally Posted by Eug 

That's not really true. They often do look worse on LCDs, especially on cheaper LCDs with lower contrast ratios.

In fact, it seems to be one differentiating features of the uber expensive LCDs: IMO, TVs like Sony's Bravia line tend to do noticeably better with analogue inputs than my Dell LCD HDTV for example. OTOH, HD on both is stellar (although it's still better on the Sony).

Yeah, that is true about the crummy contrast ratio, plus if the TV or cable box has a bad deinterlacer (like pretty much every LCD TV except for the high-end ones), it actually will look a bit worse.

[Weezer]

Do you have Fios in your area? I've heard that Fios SD picture looks pretty darn good.

[scaught]

^
I don't think FIOS is available in my area yet.

Originally Posted by residentEvil 

i've had both in detroit area: WOW for cable (everything they offer) and DishNetwork (everything they offer). the HD quality was pretty darn close to the same on both (Discovery HD looked better on Dish though). digital cable channels like HBO for example were the same to me. comedy central or fox sports (non HD channel), etc were much better on Dish then cable.

the reason i went back to cable was that in Detroit, our local HD channels got put on a 4th bird. so i had to have 110, 119, 129 and the new 118.5 if i wanted local HD. being an early adopter, the new dish wasn't available or the LNBs. 3 missed appointments with no phone calls left a bad taste in my mouth (as i had taken 3 days off). but the picture quality was fantastic.

i'll go back; just enjoying a great deal on WOW right now. and i shouldn't have the install problem now; that was about 9 months ago. Dish installers have all the equipment now.

How was the dish in terms of reliability? I've heard if it's raining or the thing gets knocked around by wind it will go fuzzy on you and whatnot. Pricewise, it looks like I would save a good amount of money over comcast who is a ****ing ripoff.

[residentEvil]

i was shooting through trees and had a pretty reliable signal. for the two years i had it, i only dropped a couple times on the fringe bird (the 129). the new dish for the detroit area for all 4 birds has been reported to get better signal strength. if you have the space and the available sky, you can go with a two dish solution for the wing bird and lock it them in even better (3 birds on 1 dish, 1 bird on 1 dish).

check out SatelliteGuys.US . it is a great site and has many local detroiters and their experiences.

like i said, i'd go back to dish but i have a pretty good deal with WOW right now.

[scaught]

^
Ya. If I went with dish for my cable, my cable modem bill with comcast would go up cause you get some kind of discount having both cable TV and modem through them. Meh.

[Timo]

scaught, for what it's worth, when I had this problem I went down the deep dark hole which is buying a video processor. As the wife works in TV, at least it was a write-off

It certainly makes SD look better, but nothing is going to make it look really good.

[scaught]

^
what'd you get?

[Timo]

a VP-20

from Anchor Bay � Products � DVDO Systems

[Millennium]

Ultimately, what you need is either some kind of upscaler or a CRT-based HDTV. The extra blurriness you're seeing isn't in your head, but neither is it an inherent fault of SD: it's what happens when LCD or plasma sets aren't displaying in their native resolution.

If you have a laptop or LCD monitor on your desktop, you can experiment with this yourself: set the resolution to something other than the monitor's native resolution. Aside from everything looking bigger, it will also look much more blurry, despite the fact that the picture being sent is fundamentally the same. If you have a CRT monitor you won't see this blur.

[Timo]

yeah, the products at dvdo are upscalers, de-interlacers / line doublers, and HDMI hubs. Picture quality is better, but the whole thing does have its problems, starting with teh price

[Eug]

It's especially bad if there is significant noise in the analogue video source. On a CRT-HDTV, it's annoying. On an LCD, it's basically unwatchable IMO.

The benefit of digital SD cable is that the noise is eliminated, but OTOH, sometimes there are significant compression artifacts, depending on the channel and your provider.

[jokell82]

One way to help cut this down is to have the cable box output SD content in 480i, so that it doesn't change the signal at all. Some boxes will scale the content or send it out at 480p, and then the TV does another scale on it to be displayed. Reducing the amount of times the video is processed *should* make for better picture quality.

[Eug]

Originally Posted by jokell82 

One way to help cut this down is to have the cable box output SD content in 480i, so that it doesn't change the signal at all. Some boxes will scale the content or send it out at 480p, and then the TV does another scale on it to be displayed. Reducing the amount of times the video is processed *should* make for better picture quality.

Well, this where the statements about the scaler comes in. Many LCD TVs simply have terrible scaling of analogue material. Analogue 480i looks quite lousy on many, many LCD TVs.

I find the ones that look OK are usually the ones that cost a heluvalot more.

[jokell82]

Originally Posted by Eug 

Well, this where the statements about the scaler comes in. Many LCD TVs simply have terrible scaling of analogue material. Analogue 480i looks quite lousy on many, many LCD TVs.

I find the ones that look OK are usually the ones that cost a heluvalot more.

True, however the scalers in most cable boxes are much, MUCH worse. The best is an external scaler, yes, but if that's not an option sending the original signal to the TV unaltered is *probably* the best way to handle it, unless the TV is just a POS.

A good place for more info on this are the AVS Forums. There are people over there who talk about just this topic all day long.

[residentEvil]

i guess i'm not talking about the same SD problem. it has nothing to do with resolution (in the sense of 480i and on up).

i'm talking about the cable providers, in an attempt to add more channels, cram their frequency with as much as they can get away with. similar to what satellite has to do (x amount of channels per transponder) with how many digital channels they can get, cable does that will analogue. and this is why the lower number non SD cable channels look bad. (lower numbers 1-99 are traditionally analogue SD and higher numbers are digital SD and HD).

i don't care how many $$$$ you want to spend on scalers, de-interlacers and what not...the non digital SD will still always be bad; it is very compressed and full of artifacts. what comcast has done is when available, simulcast digital SD to customers with digital cable boxes. it still isn't as good as the all digital coming from satellite. the only way cable companies can improve is if a) their source is cleaned up; meaning better compression and less artifacts or b) they remove channels/skip some frequencies.

the b) option will never happen; more channels = more money = more ad revenue = more greed.

for proof; check out some of the smaller cable companies in rural areas that provided almost their entire channel lineup as ala cart. they don't have the quantity of channels but have same frequency bandwidth to work with on the wire. picture is much better. course, you don't get the channel choices.

[Timo]

Yep, that's the model. Pipe that used to be one channel is now ten (digital) channels. Not great for picture quality, true.

[f1000]

Originally Posted by stevesnj 

SD on my friends Verizon FIOS looks significantly better than cable SD stations

I've read that it's due to cables' higher compression of their signals. HDTV is supposed to look better on Verizon FiOS as well.

[jokell82]

Originally Posted by f1000 

I've read that it's due to cables' higher compression of their signals. HDTV is supposed to look better on Verizon FiOS as well.

And OTA looks better than any other HD signal.

[stevesnj]

Originally Posted by f1000 

I've read that it's due to cables' higher compression of their signals. HDTV is supposed to look better on Verizon FiOS as well.

Interestingly enough he is still only getting only 1080i, Verizon told him 1080p signals are being worked on.

[jokell82]

Originally Posted by stevesnj 

Interestingly enough he is still only getting only 1080i, Verizon told him 1080p signals are being worked on.

There isn't a single television network that broadcasts in 1080p, so Verizon was talking out their ass.

[UNTeMac]

Originally Posted by jokell82 

A good place for more info on this are the AVS Forums.

Owww...my eyes!

On topic...so is a CRT HDTV a better stopgap for now until HD content becomes more widespread in the next 5 years? It costs less per inch and makes SD look better than an LCD from what I understand.

[Eug]

Originally Posted by UNTeMac 

On topic...so is a CRT HDTV a better stopgap for now until HD content becomes more widespread in the next 5 years? It costs less per inch and makes SD look better than an LCD from what I understand.

CRTs have great image quality in terms of contrast and black levels, and for making SD look good, but they also have a big range of issues themselves.

1) They frickin' monstrous. My 34" widescreen CRT HDTV is 175 lbs, and takes up a lot of space. When it was delivered, there was one delivery guy and one salesman. (The other delivery guy was unavailable, so the sales guy came instead.) The salesman couldn't lift it up the stairs, so I had to help the delivery guy move this 175 lb monstrosity up two flights.
2) They usually have much lower effective resolutions. You're not really getting true HD.
3) They are lousy with text. Usually that's not a major issue unless you're using an HTPC or something and want to surf the web or play iTunes. (That's one reason why the text on Apple TV is so huge.)
4) They can suffer geometry issues with the picture.
5) All have overscan. If you fiddle with the overscan in the service menu you can get rid of it, but even expensive CRTs can unintentionally vary the picture geometry at the edges and amount of overscan depending on the video content, which would make it impossible to completely get rid of overscan without causing problems.
6) They are often hard to find.
7) The ones available don't always have a plethora of inputs.

[analogue SPRINKLES]

Samsungs are notorious for not handling SD well. Nothing you can do about it though.

Next time you are in the market for a set read reviews on which sets handle HD well, usually sony's do a good job with it.

[stevesnj]

Heres the current list of best HD pic I have the 42" Aquos...AMAZING HD PIC!!!! rated 2nd in 40-42" class

Source; Consumer Reports

46- TO 47-INCH MODELS

Sharp Aquos LC-46D62U $2800

Samsung LN-S4696D $3100

Sony Bravia KDL-46XBR3 $4100

Toshiba Cinema Series REGZA 47LZ196 $3000

Sony Bravia KDL-46XBR2 $3800

LG 47LB1DA $3300

Vizio Gallevia GV46LHDTV $1600

Westinghouse LTV-46W1 HD $2000

Mitsubishi LT-46131 $3200

[centerchannel68]

Just torrent the shows you want in HD.

[G4ME]

sounds like a nice legal way to solve your problem

[centerchannel68]

If you're already paying for cable, why not?

[Person Man]

Originally Posted by centerchannel68 

If you're already paying for cable, why not?

Are you sure you want to open that can of worms?

[centerchannel68]

No. No need for people to start pooping on this thread also, I'm just saying it's an option.

[jokell82]

Originally Posted by centerchannel68 

If you're already paying for cable, why not?

Exactly.

[Pao|o]

Does the regza work with Mac OS X?