New LCD TV has horrible non HD football picture

[pbarach1]

try it in the store first

He said my tv is so good it shows sd crappy. Now I'm sitting here thinking ok I'll return my too good tv and downgrade to 720p.

Don't bother doing this until you insist that the store show you an SD channel on whatever 720p set you are considering. When I was looking for an HDTV, I was trying to decide between a new-at-that-time 40" JVC RPTV (1080p) and a 42" Toshiba 720p set. Both looked good on an HD picture and on DVD's upconverted to the set's native resolution, although the JVC had the edge. However, when I had the salesman change both to an SD channel, the amount of "mosquito noise" around lettering and logos was much higher on the JVC, enough to make it nearly unwatchable. Nevertheless, there is still plenty of noise to be found in the 720p set's picture. I would imagine that the problem would be much worse on larger sets.

I decided on the 720p plasma so that I could at least watch SD channels without being frustrated that I'd spent all of that money in order to produce a picture on most channels that was completely horrid.

 

[hopjohn]

There are a multitude of things that are responsible for the quality of the picture ultimately displayed on your tv. 1-3 you have little to no control over, but 4-7 can be helpful in getting a better picture.

1. Quality of the cameras used in the original broadcast. I've seen some awfully bad looking cameras used in smaller less signifigant basketball and football games. Also some HD broadcasts won't use HD cameras all the way around. Some angles and shots are from SD cameras and upconverted.

2. Quality of the equiptment used in transmission/uplink
Since live games are transmitted uo to satellites then back down for broadcast OTA, and back up to satellites for retransmission on satellite and cable. The equiptment in all this process can effect the ultimate quality before you even begin to get the signal you receive by whatever means you receive it.

3. Level of compression for digital signal. This has become more of an issue with DirecTV and Dish Network that continue to add channels at a greater rate than they add additional bandwidth. To accomadate the growing number of channels more agressive compression is used which leads to lower resoultion. This is particulary noticeable with video containing fast action.

4. Cable systems in homes are not created equally. The network of cabling to your neighborhood and eventually your home can greatly affect the quality of the signal you receive from your cable provider. Some homes will simply have a better feed than others. Also if you home was prewired to send cable all throughout the home to each cable outlet, it may be of interest to you to know exactly what rooms are being fed, and how to run a more direct feed if your only interested in one or two rooms being fed. Splitters attentuate your signal so use as few as possible.

5. The quality of your satellite installations. Many satelllite installers will reuse existing rg59 cable from an old cable connection, which does not have enough bandwidth to fully handle satellite signals. Often times these connections work but at the expense of picture quality and will shorten the life of your satellite equiptment. Insist on RG6 cable be used with new connections all the way the from the satellite location to your box/es.

6. Use OTA HD signals when you have a choice. Because of the route cable and satellite signals take to get to your TV it is almost always better to use OTA HD signals when you have a good OTA antenna/ signal.

7. Know the native resoultion of your HD display. Sending native resolutions to your dispay requires one less processing step of the signal and a therefore a better looking picture by comparison.

 

[dhark]

Reading this is very discouraging I am looking for a new (my first) HDTV and will most likely be watching a lot of SD channels only cause the limited # of HD channels. I dont want to downgrade PQ that I have now on my old Mitsu which comes in fantastic only to get a few HD channels and the obvious improvement in DVD watching. With all the technology out there you think they could come up with a HDTV that can still produce a picture in SD that will look as good as it does on older sets Sounds like theres a serious trade off in converting to a HDTV You gonna get the awesome HD but regular tv is gonna suffer. What is one to do

 

[corey]

Re-read rgriffin25's post.

I've recently seen 2 Sony LCD TV's straight out of the box, and they both had terrible picture quality. SD football seems so bad because of the fast motion & vivid colors. Adjusting the picture controls changed both of them from unacceptable to acceptable. If you're not clear on what adjustments to make, get one of the DVD's listed at the end of rgriffin25's post

 

[aglozier]

I have a 720P Sony KDL40S2000 and have also notice that SD football video is bad on it. It is worst when there is a lot of motion (i.e. during a play). It looks like a low resolution MPEG video played full screen on my computer. I found that adjusting MPEG Noise Reduction setting to high helps the picture.

George

 

[why2not]

Reading this is very discouraging I am looking for a new (my first) HDTV and will most likely be watching a lot of SD channels only cause the limited # of HD channels. I dont want to downgrade PQ that I have now on my old Mitsu which comes in fantastic only to get a few HD channels and the obvious improvement in DVD watching. With all the technology out there you think they could come up with a HDTV that can still produce a picture in SD that will look as good as it does on older sets Sounds like theres a serious trade off in converting to a HDTV You gonna get the awesome HD but regular tv is gonna suffer. What is one to do

You need to make sure you buy a HDTV that still does a good job with SD. They do exist. I have a Pioneer Plasma 5070 & SD looks better on it than any other set in the house, including HD LCD, ED LCD, and several direct view CRTs.

 

[ParadigmDawg]

My 50'' panny looks pretty darn good on SD; even with football. Maybe I just got lucky????