E60Sim

hmm

I just cant deside what television I would like to buy!!

I very near buying a Samsung Plasma PS42-S5H, because I can get a good deal on that television.. The picture is good on this plasma,, but I can't decide, if I should go for a LCD instead of the plasma...

Lomag

LCD's are usually < 37" while Plasma's are > 37" -- I don't know which is better. LCD's absolutely don't have a burn-in issue while Plasma's do or might.

I picked up a $35 RCA HD Antenna at BestBuy and well... I plugged it in and it was it was awful. The reception stunk on channel 2. So, I went to the TV settings and let it search for channels. After that channel 2 still stunk but pressing channel up led me to channel 2.1 which was WCBS-HD and BAM! What a difference... so much better than the analog signal and analog cable channel 2. I've got to get this HD Digital cable box A.S.A.P

As for my DVD player I've put Finding Nemo and Star Wars 3 on my Netflix list and will test out the settings when they come in. It's probably a much easier decision than I'm making it out to be.. probably either one is just as good with very little difference. I'll most likely just leave the DVD player outputting 1920 x 1080i to my TV.

Next I have to consider getting DirecTV although I'm going to give the digital cable a shot first, I think it should be just the same once I get the correct cable box.

This is so much more complicated than I thought it would when I first decided to just buy the TV...

HughH

Best place to learn and find out about audio and video on the internet is avforum.com, bar none!

amigo525

Do you really want Direct TV?

I have digital cable. And I love it. A co-worker always complains to me when it is raining and his Direct TV goes wild.

Then again I do not have any direct experience with D.TV, i just see people at work pulling their hairs (when heavy rain) and saying "it did it again..could not watch my son playing football!"

HughH

Do you really want Direct TV?

I have digital cable. And I love it. A co-worker always complains to me when it is raining and his Direct TV goes wild.

Then again I do not have any direct experience with D.TV, i just see people at work pulling their hairs (when heavy rain) and saying "it did it again..could not watch my son playing football!"
[/quote]
My son got digital cable and it was so bad he switched to DirectTV. Now, I have heard that most High Def channels on most cable companies are slightly better than DirectTV. I have been on DirectTV for a long time and as far as rain fade, it has been a lesser problem since they went to a newer dish with 3 LNB's, which is needed for High Def. DirectTV has already deployed the new, bigger dish with 5 LNB's needed for the new MPEG 4. This might help further with rain fade. Detroit is the first city changing over to the new MPEG 4.

Only downside with DTV as far as I am concerned is that some standard def channels are too compressed.
Other SD channels such as SpeedTV Formula One broadcast suffer much less from overcompression and actually look great on my 60" HighDef Sony SXRD. Maybe someday before I die, we will get F-1 races in HighDef.(:

Lomag

I've been curious as to why regular cable looks grainy with my new Plasma TV whereas it wasnt grainy at all or very little on my old 27" tube tv? It seems like this plasma tv is a step down in terms of regular television watching although its' light years ahead in terms of dvd playback and gaming consoles. Maybe it's due to the larger size (42") where you see more detail? I plugged in an off-air antenna and picked up FOX-HD and its nearly perfect as compared the FOX channel that comes through my analog cable. I guess I ought to stop bitching until I get the HD digital cable box which might cure all this but it still doesnt answer the original question as to why the crappy analog cable was not grain on my old crappy tube tv and it is here. Hrmm...

Rudy

I think you'll find the answer is simply that grainy analog signals will always look worse on larger screens. On your old 27" set, it was probably not as noticeable -- I don't think the HD cable box will fix this because the analog channels will still be analog.

The only thing you might want to check (or have checked) is the strength of the cable signal. Are you using a bunch of splitters? Are your coax cables all good? Maybe you could try an amplifier? Maybe you need an attenuator or tilt compensator? There's a ton of stuff you can do to tweak the signal and help out the analog channels. It's probably best to let the cable company come out and look at these issues...

amigo525

My son got digital cable and it was so bad he switched to DirectTV. Now, I have heard that most High Def channels on most cable companies are slightly better than DirectTV. I have been on DirectTV for a long time and as far as rain fade, it has been a lesser problem since they went to a newer dish with 3 LNB's, which is needed for High Def. DirectTV has already deployed the new, bigger dish with 5 LNB's needed for the new MPEG 4. This might help further with rain fade. Detroit is the first city changing over to the new MPEG 4.

Only downside with DTV as far as I am concerned is that some standard def channels are too compressed.
Other SD channels such as SpeedTV Formula One broadcast suffer much less from overcompression and actually look great on my 60" HighDef Sony SXRD. Maybe someday before I die, we will get F-1 races in HighDef.(:
[/quote]

Like I said, I dont have any direct experience with D.TV. Only DIGICAB. I just hear people here at work complaining about reception when we have bad weather.

rodybmw

Mark,

Many newer Plasmas (Sony, Panasonic, etc.) have a cable card slot built in so that with certain cable companies you could just get their card and plug it in to your TV. If your TV has that feature then you don't need an external cable box. All you need is to plug in the cable card to your TV and the built in tuner would then pull in your cable channels. The card slots that I have seen look almost like a PCMCIA slot in notebooks, so I don't think that the cards are the same (thin) ones used for cable boxes. I don't know if all cable companies have these cards yet but if your TV has the slot then it's worth asking.

hoopsrob

The rain/storm issue is more of a myth promoted by cable companies than anything else. In a 12-month period, I doubt you'll experience more than 30 minutes of total time of no signal. I had cable for years and their record was no where near as good as satellite.

Besides, where do you think the cable companies get their signal? From satellite!!!

Why not get the direct digital signal in your home from the satellite vs. having it go to the cable company and through miles of cable before it gets to your house?