Lomag

Hey Guys,

I imagine many of you have HDTV's here and I'm looking for some feedback. I just purchased a Philips 42" Plasma HDTV and well, I'm a little disturbed. I imagine the below applies to either Plasma, LCD, or Projection HDTV's.

First off, the TV is awesome. My PS2 connected via component input is incredible in terms of picture.

Next, I bought a new upscale 720p/1080i HDMI DVD player to replace my old player. Using the 1080i setting, the picture on some movies is a little grainy, on some its not. The DVD player is outputting an un-compressed HDMI signal to the TV so whatever quality/format the DVD was made in, we see on the screen. Basically this means older movies/dvd's don't look as good as they did on a conventional TV only because the HDTV displays so much more detail. Philips recommended I get the movie Finding Nemo to test out my player and TV as that movie is all digital and it should be not grainy at all.

Finally third, regular cable TV is very grainy, its almost awfull. It might be due to the larger TV size as compared to my old TV. In addition i'm still using an old analog cable box. My cable co. didn't have a HDTV box available, only a DVR version which I didn't want. Hopefully when I switch out my current analog box this comming week with the HDTV digital box the picture will be less grainy. And hopefully the HDTV channels are perfect too. The graininess of regular TV is really bugging me here.

So.. it just seems like since the HDTV shows so much detail we see many more imperfections that we don't see on a regular TV. I don't know if this is a good or bad thing.... it seems like it's a bad/not-so-good thing as technologies change over from analog to digital and HD.

What have you guys experienced and what are your thoughts on this? Or is it just me??

daydok

i've had a plasma since 2001, when the pioneer 50" were selling cheap on ebay due to the dot-com bust.

First off, the TV is awesome. My PS2 connected via component input is incredible in terms of picture.
i guess there is no more burn-in issues with the newer gen plasmas? i have a burn-in on my lower right hand corner because of tv station id's being left on for a majority of days. just make sure your plasma will not have this problem., if you play games on it with static graphics for scores, etc.

Next, I bought a new upscale 720p/1080i HDMI DVD player to replace my old player.
have you tried a video processor? i have a dvdo vp and it's specifically geared to get the best out of a high-end video monitor, such as a plasma. check them out at: http://www.dvdo.com/pro/pro_isvp30.php
i can't guarantee results, but my wife, who is not really into a/v, noticed the difference between regular dvd play and after i installed the dvdo vp. it ain't cheap, so maybe check out a high-end plasma place first and ask/see video processors at work. in short, they make older dvd films look cleaner/sharper. try out "superbit" dvd's as well.

Finally third, regular cable TV is very grainy, its almost awfull.
I hear you, brother. I have both directTV and comcast analog cable, and i can tell the difference right away which feed is on. i even have my analog cable feed thru an RGB connection (not s-video or rca), but it's still bad. i don't know what cable HDTV looks like, but i can tell you HD on directTV will just make you cry with happiness. my daughter, whom i took to her first live baseball game last summer, said, "dad, it's just like our hdtv at home".

hope this helps, and thanks again for this e60 site!!!

daydok

Centurion

Lomag,

Find out what the native resolution is for your 42" Philips. I believe (but not sure) that it is either 720 or 768 horizontal lines. If this happens to be true for your plasma, set your DVD player to output every movie to 720P (progressive scan).

Using the HDMI cable is great. The result is a purely digital translation from the movie source to your screen. It is correct that you will be able to notice more "anomalies" in DVD movies with your current set-up because you have a higher resolution and a higher quality picture. Take for example, Star Wars Ep. I (The Phantom Menace). This picture was recorded on film then digitally mastered. You may notice some "edge enhancement" along the borders/edges of some of the characters which you will not see on a smaller analog TV. Next, try movies that are digitally recorded and mastered. For example Star Wars Ep II and III. These pictures should look absolutely beautiful. The only flaws you will see here will come from the limitations of your monitor (i.e. the ability to show fast moving objects, reproduce colors, etc.).

During this period in time where networks are switching their content from analog to digital, we will get bad looking pictures once in a while. Standard definition broadcasts (and DVDs) are made with 480 lines of horizontal resolution so your monitor (or DVD player) is having to scale-up the picture to fit onto your screen. This means some "filling-in" of spaces to get 720 lines, thus a grainy picture. Hang in there. More and more content is becoming available in high definition (HD).

One last advice (for now), do yourself a favor and get your plasma calibrated to correct viewing levels. They usually come from the manufacturers set on very high brightness and some monitors display colors that are too warm or too cool. Try using Avia or even the THX Optimizer included on most THX certified movies on DVD. Once you have done this, your picture quality will certainly improve and you will enjoy your DVD movies even more.

dgjk

Bought a wide screen HDTV 57 inch sony a year ago. Had digital cable with a few HDTV channels. But most of the cable signals were analog. Noticed a difference, but it was too hard. Had to change screen size and resolution to get the best picture every time I turned the channel so I got rid of the digital stuff and got all analog signal. Picture worse but now all I have to do to watch TV is change the channel.
Anyway, my point is HDTV's came out beofre the braodcasters are ready. If I could do it again I would get a regular TV and wait for the broadcasters to catch up.

thatbimmerguy

Your HDTV would still be NTSC wouldn't it? Or is NTSC and PAL no longer applicable to the format of HDTV

Ah I can always tell when a show from America is on - the picture sucks, and the colours are all wack Lucky for us we decided to wait a few years and now have the superior PAL

Rudy

Lomag, congrats on the new set!

One thing I've found, and it may or may not be the case here, is that HDTV sort of ruins (spoils) you. If you've never looked at an HD picture, then your eyes are used to the regular (analog) channels so you really don't notice how bad they look. As soon as you see what you've been missing when you see an HD channel, analog never looks good again...

Lomag

The newer plasma's don't really have a burn-in issue like the older ones did. They still recommend though, for example, if you watch a lot of CNBC or similiar channels with fixed colors in certain areas to change the channel to something else for a few minutes after 4 to 5 hours just in case.

The cable picture issue really does seem to be a broadcasting and/or source issue. I'll deal with that after I get my HD Digital Cable Box, hopefully it'll get better. For now in terms of playing back DVD's... The TV's resolution according to circuit city's web site is 768p. This is what confuses me too.. the DVD player is the Sony DVP-NS70H. It has a HDMI Resolution setting which has 4 options:

Auto (this was the default)
1920 x 1080i (I have it set to this now)
1280 x 720p
720 x 480p

What does the TV's 768p resolution mean in relation to those settings? I'm a Hi-Def-Dummy i guess you could say.. Philips tech support told me that setting either 1080i or 720p is your preference (well, duh). I figure most newer/high priced movies are recorded and can be played with 1080i but older movies should be run with 720p. As I understand both are Hi-Def, but 1080i is supposedly better as long as movie your playing was recorded properly. It seems like using the 720p setting, atleast for the interim would be best until movies get up to par. I'll try their Finding Nemo movie test and play with those settings then to see if there is a difference with a real digitally mastered movie like that. I'd just not something I'd like to play with for every movie I watch.. I need a "set it and forget it" type setting that will make the majority of movies look better as compared to a non-HD set.

I should probably call and ask Sony about this also to see what they say. Hrmm...

hoopsrob

The basic difference between an interlaced signal (e.g. 1080i) vs. a progressive signal (720P) is this: on an interlaced signal, for each "frame" of video (they aren't real frames but electronic frames---but that's another discussion), the picture is applied with all of the even lines first then all of the odd lines next. That happens for each "frame" of video (30 frames per second for NTSC, which is the USA standard) at a speed so quick your eye can't tell the difference.

On progressive frames, all of the information for each 'frame' happens at one time.

In short, a 720p signal is best for images with a lot of motion. Sometimes with an interlaced signal, motion items (e.g. sports) have small 'artifacts' (jagged edges, blurring, etc.) that you won't get with a progressive frame.

If it were me and I had to pick a default setting, I would go with 720P for the most part.

Lomag

The Philips tech guy mentioned this aswell but I had forgot. I'm going to go out and buy one of these at Best Buy and give it a shot.

As for my DVD player settings I still don't know whether to use 1080i or 720p. It seems like you're missing something when using 720p when 1080i is available. You know, the "more is better" arguement. What are some real good quality DVD movies I could test with? They mentioned Finding Nemo. I saw Star Wars 3 mentioned here. Any others? There must be a web site somewhere listing the 'higher' quality DVD movies. Time to google some more!

Simple1

I concur with most things that have been said lomag adn with cable I higly suggest you go with directv also! pure digital cable and it look awesome. I don't even have HD yet but when people see the flat screen tv in my living room with directv they always ask whether I do have HDTV, that's how clear it is. my only quirk with DTV so far is the lil bit of lag when changing channels and how it reacts when it rains hard outside, NO TV!