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New LCD TV

M

Miggidy

Jan 1, 1970
0
I don't know if this is the right place to ask this question, but I'll
ask it anyway. I just bought a $2,000 dollar Sony 40" 1080 LCD tv
(Sony KDL-40V2500). We don't have an HD box, but do have some nice
Monster cables and all of that stuff. When I hooked up my DirectTV box
to the tv, the picture quality is absolutely horrible, even worse than
my old crappy tv. The dvd's look pretty good, but nothing like it did
in the store.

When I turn on a dvd it flashes 480i in the left corner. I'm not a
genius, but isn't that pretty bad? How do i get the resolution higher
than that? Anything will help. Thanks in advance.

Mark
 
C

CJT

Jan 1, 1970
0
Miggidy said:
I don't know if this is the right place to ask this question, but I'll
ask it anyway. I just bought a $2,000 dollar Sony 40" 1080 LCD tv
(Sony KDL-40V2500). We don't have an HD box, but do have some nice
Monster cables and all of that stuff. When I hooked up my DirectTV box
to the tv, the picture quality is absolutely horrible, even worse than
my old crappy tv. The dvd's look pretty good, but nothing like it did
in the store.

When I turn on a dvd it flashes 480i in the left corner. I'm not a
genius, but isn't that pretty bad? How do i get the resolution higher
than that? Anything will help. Thanks in advance.

Mark
Didn't it come with a manual?
 
M

Miggidy

Jan 1, 1970
0
Yeah, but it doesn't explain how to change it. I read every page. It
just says it supports all of those resolutions. Its very annoying!
 
H

Homer J Simpson

Jan 1, 1970
0
Yeah, but it doesn't explain how to change it. I read every page. It
just says it supports all of those resolutions. Its very annoying!

Doesn't it have a Menu button?
 
M

Miggidy

Jan 1, 1970
0
Yeah, there's nothing in the menu that has to do with the resolution,
though.
 
J

James Sweet

Jan 1, 1970
0
Miggidy said:
I don't know if this is the right place to ask this question, but I'll
ask it anyway. I just bought a $2,000 dollar Sony 40" 1080 LCD tv
(Sony KDL-40V2500). We don't have an HD box, but do have some nice
Monster cables and all of that stuff. When I hooked up my DirectTV box
to the tv, the picture quality is absolutely horrible, even worse than
my old crappy tv. The dvd's look pretty good, but nothing like it did
in the store.

When I turn on a dvd it flashes 480i in the left corner. I'm not a
genius, but isn't that pretty bad? How do i get the resolution higher
than that? Anything will help. Thanks in advance.

Mark


480i is standard def TV resolution, it'll look pretty horrible on a
digital TV with a native resolution of 720P. You'll need a DVD player
that supports progressive scan and then you have to enable it in the DVD
player. 480P is as high as standard DVDs go, anything higher you're
scaling in either the player or the TV. You'll have to use a HD source
or wait for HD-DVD or Blu-Ray in order to take advantage of your TV it
its native resolution.
 
M

Miggidy

Jan 1, 1970
0
Ok, now it is starting to make more sense. Thank you very much, I
really appreciate it!
 
A

Andrew Rossmann

Jan 1, 1970
0
[This followup was posted to sci.electronics.repair and a copy was sent
to the cited author.]

I don't know if this is the right place to ask this question, but I'll
ask it anyway. I just bought a $2,000 dollar Sony 40" 1080 LCD tv
(Sony KDL-40V2500). We don't have an HD box, but do have some nice
Monster cables and all of that stuff. When I hooked up my DirectTV box
to the tv, the picture quality is absolutely horrible, even worse than
my old crappy tv. The dvd's look pretty good, but nothing like it did
in the store.

When I turn on a dvd it flashes 480i in the left corner. I'm not a
genius, but isn't that pretty bad? How do i get the resolution higher
than that? Anything will help. Thanks in advance.

480i is SD (standard definition) TV. If your DVD player supports it, you
can change it to 480p, but it may not make much of a difference. DVD's
are natively 480i, and 480p requires the player to do some upconversion
of it's own. This oddly can cause some LOSS of horizontal resolution.

One issue with fixed resolution TV's is that they must convert any input
to their native resolution. In the case of SD inputs, they often do all
sorts of processing in an attempt to make it look higher res than it is.
480(i or p) is about 704 or 720 horizontally. (1280x720 and 1920x1080
are the HD formats.) Upconverting does not actually increase resolution.
If the data is not there originally, you cannot recover it. All
upconverting does is GUESS what to fill in the 'missing' information by
using nearby pixels to average out something.

On top of that, most TV's also boost sharpness, which has the side
effect of also boosting noise.

For your TV, I would NOT use the VIVID settting, which just exaggerates
noise and other issues. Use Custom and turn down the sharpness.
 
M

Miggidy

Jan 1, 1970
0
Thanks Andrew! I noticed when I put it on VIVID it looked much worse
than "custom" or "standard." I think I also put the sharpness almost
as high as it would go (along with some other things.) I'll turn that
down and see how it looks. Thanks for your help!
 
D

David Naylor

Jan 1, 1970
0
Miggidy said:
I don't know if this is the right place to ask this question, but I'll
ask it anyway. I just bought a $2,000 dollar Sony 40" 1080 LCD tv
(Sony KDL-40V2500). We don't have an HD box, but do have some nice
Monster cables and all of that stuff. When I hooked up my DirectTV box
to the tv, the picture quality is absolutely horrible, even worse than
my old crappy tv. The dvd's look pretty good, but nothing like it did
in the store.

When I turn on a dvd it flashes 480i in the left corner. I'm not a
genius, but isn't that pretty bad? How do i get the resolution higher
than that? Anything will help. Thanks in advance.

Mark
Yup You have got the problem that the sales guy will never tell you.
I'am a servece tech for BB and most of todays sets will look horible on
an anologe signal. Meaning basic cable or your standard DVD
player.however there are a couple of cheap dvd players that sony and
samsung put out that upconvert youe signal to 1080. It is NOT HD but it
looks a whole lot better. When you go to HD though cable or direct tv
you will never go back....On the other hand there is a 26, 32, 37 inch
set out there now that looks good on anologe and WOWO on hd, and that
is the philips 26,32,37 mf231d...All the techs in my shop go crazy over
this unit .. check them out
 
L

Leonard Caillouet

Jan 1, 1970
0
David Naylor said:
Yup You have got the problem that the sales guy will never tell you. I'am
a servece tech for BB and most of todays sets will look horible on an
anologe signal. Meaning basic cable or your standard DVD player.however
there are a couple of cheap dvd players that sony and samsung put out that
upconvert youe signal to 1080. It is NOT HD but it looks a whole lot
better. When you go to HD though cable or direct tv you will never go
back....On the other hand there is a 26, 32, 37 inch set out there now
that looks good on anologe and WOWO on hd, and that is the philips
26,32,37 mf231d...All the techs in my shop go crazy over this unit ..
check them out

Upconverting DVD players rarely improve much. They cannot add information
that is not there to start with. At best they increase the number of scan
lines without introducing artifacts. If the scaling, and perhaps
deinterlacing, is better in the player than the display, the upconverting
player will look better. If the scaling, and/or, deinterlacing and pulldown
are better in the display, as most better quality sets are, the upconverting
player is a waste of resources.

Some HD sets look better than otheres with lower resolution or noisy
sources. This is something that varies greatly. Generally, the traditional
TV makers do a better job of handling poor quality NTSC and digital sources
on HD displays. Sony's DRC in its most recent two versions is one of the
best systems for dealing with lousy 480i sources.

DirecTV is notorious for compressing HD signals at times, and SD most of the
time to unacceptable levels. OTA ATSC signals are nearly always better and
HD on cable systems is often better.

Leonard
 
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