Have you noticed how horrible standard definition looks on these tv's???

I know it's because of something like analog to a digital tv something or other..

but man it's almost not worth having an HDTV because of how few HD channels there are in comparison to SDTV channels...

I really only watch discovery/sports/the office in HD which is about 30% of the time.. and i watch almost everything else in standard def so like 70% of my shows looks like ****...

anyone know of an upconverter or something that helps this?

 

nope...

garbage in... garbage out.

before HDTV, we have been used to SD and nothing else...

now that HD is around, SD is just plain crap.


i take like having bad eyeglasses all these years. suddenly you go to a new doctor who actually knows what they are doing and you are at 20/20...

 

There's not much you can do about this with modern "fixed pixels" TVs. Your TV now has to deinterlace AND upconvert and the processors in TVs can only do so much. There are 3rd party standalone scalers that work pretty damn well but they're going to cost you more than the TV.

I know how you feel though. I have a 56" 1080p tv that I sit literally 6.5' from. 1080p looks great at that distance but 480 (and even 720) look like poop. I try and avoid standard def anything now.

 

walk up close to a CRT and you will see the same image quality that a HDTV has when you use a standard signal.

the reason you never noticed it before is a standard TV has ****ty resolution, it shows up when you have a TV capable of good image quality.

 

seriously though, almost all bay area stations should have done the analog to digital transition.

we are actually lucky in that respect that being in the top 5 in the country for tv markets kinda made it simple.

the last few stations to go digital were the smaller PBS stations. heck, even channel 38 went digital with their home shopping programs that ran 24/7.

what pisses me off though, is channels that do the STRETCH-O-RAMA to fill out the screen from an SD source... sigh...

actually, another thing that pisses me off is CH 7 when they do their 11pm news. apparently, they are still using crappy SD cameras for their ENG. but when they show the footage, they stretch to make fill the screen. the resulting image looks like crap.

personally, only thing i watch in SD is SPEED or MILITARY channel. actually some shows on the OUTDOOR channel too.

otherwise, it's pure HD for me.

 

I tell everyone this, if you go buy a new TV... be prepared to upgrade everything else. The TV, cable service, receiver, HDMI cables, etc. it all costs money.

 

I'm the exact opposite, I only watch stuff because it's in HD. Or else if I don't have that channel in HD, i.e. HBO or Showtime, I download the TV shows. The few times I watch something not in HD is when a Sharks/A's game is on Comcast Sports Plus, and it's not available in HD.

I used to watch ESPNews religiously, but since Comcast refuses to carry the HD version, I never watch the SD version. I couldn't even tell you what channel it's on.

 

squint

 

When you're upgrading the cables to Component, HDMI, DVI, etc., please do everyone here a favor and purchase them through MonoPrice dot com or something similar, and avoid Monster Cable.

 

Well I try to stick to HD channels but things like adult swim are SD only

I guess I am not understanding why my older tube style tv looked better in SD than my HD.. you'd think it'd be able to replicate at least an equal picture to my old tv for the SD signal.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixed_pixel_display

It's because your new TV is a fixed pixel display and your old one was likely a cathode ray tube (CRT). The CRT paints the image and is less exact blurring many of the imperfections. The fixed pixel display allows you too see all the tiny imperfections (like compression artifacts, combing, etc.)

 

yeah i agree.
i buy all my hdmi/dvi whatever cables off amazon for like 5 bucks shipped.
Digital is digital is digital.. either it works or it doesn't haha.

ive been in many arguments with people who try to say "this $200 hdmi cable provides a better signal than this $10 hdmi cable" he knows who he is on here.. .. the receiver knows it's either a "0" or a "1" and it's not gonna confuse them unlike analog which has to decipher the signal where "gold" connectors might help with a cleaner signal.

 

totally understand that.. makes complete sense now. pixel by pixel versus just throwing it up on the screen.

 

I've spent too many hours at avsforum.com.

Seriously though, if you every have any questions AV related that's the place to go. And like someone else mentioned; make yourself familiar with monoprice.com and save a bunch of money.

 

I love monoprice. all of my cables are from them.