1015 Q:

[speakerman39]

Hello people hope all is well for you all. My Pioneer 1015 receiver can upconvert analog (composite and S-video) to component output. So, does that mean it goes from say 480i to 480p? In other words, what resolution is component video displayed? I have a new Samsung 40" LCD tv and with movies it is awesome but on analog cable it absolutely sucks! So, I am moving up to digital cable and the box has composite out puts and running them to my 1015 and then component cables to my 40" LCD. Been told that will give me a much better or at least tolerable picture. Is this correct? Wish I could afford the DVR that will upconvert to 1080i BUT right now money is tight. Is there any other way to get a better picture w/o spending too much money??? Please help if you can.

 

[speakerman39]

Wow, figured there were at least a few 1015 owners that could help me out. Or could it be Santa came and seen them last night......hmmmm.......LOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Guess I have been a bad bad boy then.....

 

[rumble]

The 1015 will not upconvert the signal, only the physical connection. The signal resolution will not be changed by the upconversion.

I did encounter a situation where the upconversion from s-video to component did improve the picture quality over running s-video directly from the cable box to the television. However I believe the improvement was result of the television having really, really bad s-video inputs and only below average component inputs.

I hope your new digital cable box has component outputs and not composite. Running component from the cable box to the 1015 and then the tv should give you a pretty good picture.

Better yet, see if the cable box has and hdmi output. Running that directly to the samsung would probably give you the best picture.

 

[speakerman39]

The 1015 will not upconvert the signal, only the physical connection. The signal resolution will not be changed by the upconversion.

I did encounter a situation where the upconversion from s-video to component did improve the picture quality over running s-video directly from the cable box to the television. However I believe the improvement was result of the television having really, really bad s-video inputs and only below average component inputs.

I hope your new digital cable box has component outputs and not composite. Running component from the cable box to the 1015 and then the tv should give you a pretty good picture.

Better yet, see if the cable box has and hdmi output. Running that directly to the samsung would probably give you the best picture.

Yeah found out that my local cable company's DVR does have hdmi out at 1080i. I will run that to my LCD directly. However, how can I get audio to my 1015? The Samsung LCD has analog audio out. Should I use them or would you recommend another way?

 

[Nick250]

You run a digital connection from the cable box to the receiver and the HDMI from the cable box directly to the TV.

Nick

 

[speakerman39]

You run a digital connection from the cable box to the receiver and the HDMI from the cable box directly to the TV.

Nick

Ok but not sure what audio out the DVR has. Will know tomorrow morning. Thanks for your help.

 

[PENG]

You run a digital connection from the cable box to the receiver and the HDMI from the cable box directly to the TV.

Nick

Let me share my recent experience. I compared PQ of my TV using several HDMI/DVI and CV cables and found the CV cables came out on top. After reading some of the articles on the Blue Jeans Cable website, I now know that whether HDMI will do a better job for one's system or not, depends on a few things. One being that the display characteristics of different inputs may have been set up differently and it may not be easy for an average consumer to do the re-calibration required when switching from analog to digital inputs. So just to be sure, one should try and compare carefully, before settling on one or the other.

 

[speakerman39]

Let me share my recent experience. I compared PQ of my TV using several HDMI/DVI and CV cables and found the CV cables came out on top. After reading some of the articles on the Blue Jeans Cable website, I now know that whether HDMI will do a better job for one's system or not, depends on a few things. One being that the display characteristics of different inputs may have been set up differently and it may not be easy for an average consumer to do the re-calibration required when switching from analog to digital inputs. So just to be sure, one should try and compare carefully, before settling on one or the other.

I think you are correct. My local cable company showed up with a DVR and hooked it up to my tv via the hdmi. The picture was NOT good at all. So, he tried his best to get it to look better but to no avail. He even tried to hook it up with component cables and still got a bad bad picture. In fact, the picture looked better w/regular cable. The thing is though, when I play dvd with the Toshiba A-1 the picture is breat-taking to say the least. So, I thought maybe the hdmi input is bad on my LCD-we tried that input and got the same result. Beginning to think that maybe the DVR the cable installer brought was bad. They will be here again on Friday w/a different DVR and a more experienced technician/installer to see if that was the problem. You have any other ideas as to what could be wrong?

 

[MDS]

'Digital' cable simply means that the audio and video arrive in MPEG-2 format instead of analog. It is still a low resolution standard definition image and on top of that cable companies compress the crap out of most signals so that they can carry multiple stations in the allotted 12 MHz channel.

Low resolution + over compression = low picture quality. Some TVs are better than others at upscaling standard definition signals and can make the image look reasonable.

 

[PENG]

I think you are correct. My local cable company showed up with a DVR and hooked it up to my tv via the hdmi. The picture was NOT good at all. So, he tried his best to get it to look better but to no avail. He even tried to hook it up with component cables and still got a bad bad picture. In fact, the picture looked better w/regular cable. The thing is though, when I play dvd with the Toshiba A-1 the picture is breat-taking to say the least. So, I thought maybe the hdmi input is bad on my LCD-we tried that input and got the same result. Beginning to think that maybe the DVR the cable installer brought was bad. They will be here again on Friday w/a different DVR and a more experienced technician/installer to see if that was the problem. You have any other ideas as to what could be wrong?

When I used the DVI output of the HD box, the picture looked slightly washed out. Same thing with 3 different HDMI cables. I could compensate for it by increasing the contrast, brigtness, back light etc. I returned the DVI to HDMI cable each time, and eventually bought an average priced 2m Master Video 2 CV cable set.

I don't think there is anything wrong with my TV because the same HDMI input works fine with my 3910 universal player regardless of whether I selected the 3910 to output in 480p or 1080i. I suspect the calibration of the HDMI input is just not optimized to work with the cable box DVI.

In your case, if the PQ was bad in both HDMI or Component then may be there is something wrong with the DVR, or the signals wasn't good for whatever reasons. It is hard to believe both the CV and HDMI cables are bad. Let them try another box and see what happens.

 

[speakerman39]

When I used the DVI output of the HD box, the picture looked slightly washed out. Same thing with 3 different HDMI cables. I could compensate for it by increasing the contrast, brigtness, back light etc. I returned the DVI to HDMI cable each time, and eventually bought an average priced 2m Master Video 2 CV cable set.

I don't think there is anything wrong with my TV because the same HDMI input works fine with my 3910 universal player regardless of whether I selected the 3910 to output in 480p or 1080i. I suspect the calibration of the HDMI input is just not optimized to work with the cable box DVI.

In your case, if the PQ was bad in both HDMI or Component then may be there is something wrong with the DVR, or the signals wasn't good for whatever reasons. It is hard to believe both the CV and HDMI cables are bad. Let them try another box and see what happens.

Well, me saying "bad" I mean that there was not any improvement in picture quality per se. In fact, the picture looks better with just regular cable. In other words, the DVR did NOT improve my picture quality at all with the hdmi or component hook up. I guess the DVR was bad because it is supposed to upconvert to 1080i OR my tv is bad. However, when I play regular dvd's with my Toshiba A-1 the picture is outstanding to say the least. Therefore, it does not appear to be a problem with my new tv. We even tried BOTh hdmi inputs with the DVR but same result-no improvement in picture quality. Has anybody else here had this problem with the Samsung LN-S4041D 40 " LCD tv?