LCD TV with Cable

[Sideshow Bob]

Hi all,
just bought me a new Sony LCD TV and it's great but it does show up the lack of picture quality you get with Elisa cable. If anyone else has an LCD showing Elisa cable I'd be interested to know your setup or if upgrading to more then the basic decoder helps.

Cheers.

[bevanrl]

are you feeding your tv with a digital signal and using the tv's digital tuner or do you have a seperate decoder box ? when you mention "upgrading to more then the basic decoder helps" it sounds like you have a seperate decoder ?
how you connect this to the tv makes a difference. I don't have cable so don't know what they offer. are you using composite? s-video? rgb ? component ? hdmi (although I doubt it). some tv's don't handle those kind of inputs well, they're more optimised for component and hdmi input.
also high resolution tv's can actually show up flaws in the picture much better than low-res ones. dvd's on my toshiba lcd look much worse than on my panasonic plasma, mostly because of the way the toshiba converts the analog input. lots of blocking quite obvious. the panasonic handles the same picture much better.

[Sideshow Bob]

Hi, I've tried it with the decoder and direct in to the TVs DVB-C and both pictures are the same.

Looking closer I think you're right in that it is amplifying the flaws in the picture more thgan anything else. When I play a DVD through my upscaling DVD the HDMI then the picture improves greatly. Also the normal picture (normal being RGB via scart from the digibox) varies greatly depening on the original broadcaster / station that I'm watching.

I guess there is no advantage to upgrading I'm just looking for an excuse The only thing I can think of is that it will upscale everything through the HDMI output. The only real improvements will come with HD signals.

[Jukka Aho]

Looking closer I think you're right in that it is amplifying the flaws in the picture more thgan anything else.

You can often get a better picture by disabling all or most of the automatic processing that is enabled by default (“dynamic contrast”, “dynamic noise reduction” and whatnot.)

The factory defaults add more punch to the picture (which is what the manufacturers want when the set is still on display in the shop) but the result is usually garish in day-to-day viewing and only helps to amplify all kinds of defects. Especially all kinds of “edge-enhancing” or “dynamic contrast” settings will usually process the picture in ways that make the MPEG macroblock edges more visible, and possibly quantize the number of shades in color gradients to a lower amount, making them less smooth.

(It is often initially hard to adjust these settings as it seems the picture will go smoother and softer... while it is just getting more natural and less artificially processed.)

[mCowboy]

Have you checked that all the basic settings in your TV are correct (PAL vs NTSC, input type, etc)

[sinikala]

the normal picture (normal being RGB via scart from the digibox) varies greatly depening on the original broadcaster / station that I'm watching.

We recently got a cheapo 32" LCD Toshiba, it's 768? (not full 1080) and the picture quality does vary greatly with channel.. the crispest picture seems to come on MTV3... especially when their logo comes on... very sharp.

[bevanrl]

the sharpness control especially is normally set high as a factory default to make the tv look good on the showroom shelves, but it adds no real detail to the picture, just makes the edges crispy. you need some testcard to reduce it to a proper level or just try it on a still picture until it looks good with no extra fringes on the sharp edges. On my toshiba lcd a good value is about 25% of the way along (50% is the default).

[Sideshow Bob]

Have you checked that all the basic settings in your TV are correct (PAL vs NTSC, input type, etc)

er, yeees. I started with the basic settings, that seemd...well, basic.

[Sideshow Bob]

Yeah, it came with the backlight on full by default and the colour turned right up, I could have heated the whole house of it the amount of light that was being used.

Now I have most of the 'features' turned off and started calibrating with everything set to normal or off. On the basic terrestrial channels the picture is great and canal+ showing a movie is great. Canal+ showing football can be atrocious as can Viasat. You get what you're given I suppose but at least when the picture coming in is good the picture shown kicks ass

[Finland Blue]

I noticed that picture quality for football shown on Canal Plus is terrible (although moveis and regaulr programmes are fine) - but football shown on YLE channels is fine. Canal plus football shown in Sports Academy for example also looks fine. Anyone know why this can be - can there be 2 types of Canal plus picture, one via satellite, one via cable??

[mCowboy]

I noticed that picture quality for football shown on Canal Plus is terrible (although moveis and regaulr programmes are fine) - but football shown on YLE channels is fine. Canal plus football shown in Sports Academy for example also looks fine. Anyone know why this can be - can there be 2 types of Canal plus picture, one via satellite, one via cable??

Well it's all up to the service provider and how much bandwidth they let a particular channel to use. For example with satellite, there's really no limitations with the bandwidth, with cable there's some and with terrestrial there's lots. Canal+ and CanalDigital are 2 different entities, Canal+ is for cable/terrestrial and CanalDigital is for satellite.

[hanj]

i guess TV nowadays are optimized for HD signal...so your basic SD signal wont be that great...hence upgrading to more than a basic decoder probably not gonna do much difference.......

which Sony model did you get?