PacMan2006

Hey guys,

I got a 46'' Sony Bravia a couple weeks ago. Before, I had a 40'' Sony Trinitron.

Now, I do have the HD DVD add on for the 360, so I do have great new HD DVD's to compare STD DVD's to.

BUT...standard DVD shouldn't look THIS bad, should it? Granted, I don't have an upscaling dvd player yet, but I popped in Spider-man 2, and it not only DIDN'T look like a DVD, I'd argue it looked like a dubbed copy from a VHS tape. I couldn't believe it. Tons of grain. Tons of noise. Lots of fuzz. Whats going on here?

This wasn't the case with my 40'' TV. Can someone help me understand this? I popped STD DVD's into two different standard dvd players--one was a Malata region free player I have been using for 5 years, and the other was the HD-DVD add-on. Both had the same result--regular dvd looked horrible.

But why is this? I wasn't expecting HD DVD quality at all, but come on. Standard DVD now looks awful, and I don't think it's in comparison to how it looks to HD DVD. It just looks bad on its own. And I wasn't saying this with my 40'' TV. So what has changed? I'm not using different cables or an alternate hook-up or anything.

If anyone knows, I'd love to hear your thoughts.

corbin dallas

Double check your connections to all components.

mrhan

---and calibrate your TV. It will do wonders for pic quality.

Eddie W

If your DVD player is a progressive scan model, be sure you've changed to that from composite in the DVD players menu and hooked up with component cables. Not sure if this applies to the 360 add on though. How do you have that hooked up?

Also in the players menu, make sure you've set it to 16x9 and are watching in 'FULL' mode.

I've got a 42" Wega and while DVD's don't look HD they certainly look better than they did on my old SD set.

PacMan2006

OK, thanks guys. By the way...what do you mean calibrate the TV? Like, adjust the color/brightness, etc? I have done that.

I haven't checked any DVD player settings and such. I'll try that and see how it looks.

I did notice that, while movies like A League of Their Own or Spider Man 2 don't look so great, "24" on DVD looked pretty good, and thats a show that's intentionally pretty grainy.

Sdallnct

I'd have to agree. Sounds like a problem somewhere.

I got a new 720p projector and SD DVD's looke awesome. Much better then my 480p projector I was using.

JayDerek

Definitely check your picture settings on that new TV. My parents just bought a new Samsung 50" 720p DLP set and had the picture mode set at 'Dynamic' and it looked horrible for movies. I went and turned it to 'Movie' mode and the picture improved dramatically.

It could be something simple like this to improve your picture

4KRG

I would check that first. I had this problem. My DVD player was set to 4:3 interlaced for my old tube TV, when I switched it over to the HDTV, it looked like crap. I set it to 16:9 and 480p and the picture was instantly a 1000 times better. Now I need to go get an Oppo

PacMan2006

Looks like you all were right. I changed the settings to 16:9, and it does look much more clean. I now wonder how it'll look when I get my Oppo.

Thanks for everyone's input!

KatSagirl

i have to agree. with the new samsung 42 plasma, i notice standard dvd looks crappy. i'm using a sony upconverter but it still not comparable to HD-DVD. :/

-Kat

Deke Rivers

Im running my dvd player to a samsung 42 inch plasma via component input..player is set to prog scan 480i..
th epic looks phenomonal..not HD but awesome just the same

maingon

I agree, we had a 38" HDTV 1080i Tube tv and it just died, DVDS looked great on it. Got a new Samsung LN-T4061F 40" 1080p TV and HD looks pretty good, but DVDs atleast with a progressive scan look kind of crappy. I gotta adjust the tv more but. wow

NitroJMS

LCDs seem to have a tendency to not reproduce SD content well with the colors appearing to smear together and constant motion blurring. Plasmas generally look much better playing DVDs and SD material from my experience.

You did get a great display though, just calibrate it a bit and it should improve for you.

Spiky

A tube TV probably had a 480p mode. DVD would look better on that than 1080i, most times.

Jason1

There is a big jump in picture quality by switching from S-Video to component and selecting progressive scan in the DVD player menu.

CaptainRon

I have the same set. I calibrated last night using these settings and Last Starfighter (which is pretty crappy) looked great even without an upconvert.

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showp...postcount=1500