So my old 42" Westinghouse LCD broke and I got my brother in laws which is one year older than mine. I had a Samsung HDMI dvd player that had a nice picture quality but that quit. Next I got a Philips and the picture was crappy which you could only tell during "pristine scenes" or dark scenes with few colors. An example of the first would be in Superman Returns at his boyhood home. The beautiful dusk/dawn background shows little pixels throughout. I would say the average viewer probably wouldn't notice until it was pointed out to them but then it stands out like a sore thumb. I took that back and got a Toshiba but it is the same problem.

Another example would be American Psycho when he is in his plain white apartment. The walls look like they have pixelated shadows on them.

Now I know a regular DVD and an HDMI player will not give you a perfect picture but I get a better picture when I use an S video hookup.

Is it the the player I'm using? Am I blind and just didn't notice it before when I had a Saumbsung (which I doubt). I don't know much about these things but I know enough to see that the picture sucks.

Please help, I'm ripping my hair out here.

You do not get better video from S-Video. You're in fact getting MUCH lesser quality video through it, and in fact may be 'hiding' some of the defects that become so obvious via HDMI. Pixelation isn't because HDMI is doing something bad for you, it's because it's standard def material you're watching on a high-def set, so of course, the flaws inherent in any particular encode are going to become painfully clear to you when watching.

I appreciate the response however I didn't have this problem with my previous HDMI player. It's only been with the last two I have tried. These problems must go beyond using substandard material on a hi-def set because I didn't have this problem on the Samsung hdmi and didn't really have many picture problems when I had s-video hooked up on my previous TV

You might need to calibrate your new television; improper settings (especially brightness and contrast) can reveal a lot of flaws.

I did mess with the sharpness which helped a *little*

What else would you recommend?

I'm trying to figure out how a Westinghouse LCD can be "old". Kids...

This is probably a great factor.

I don't know about all that. Pixellation is not generally an on-DVD flaw. It is caused by poor processing systems more often. I mostly see it from HD channels that don't use enough bandwidth for their HD signal, which causes digital signal loss, which looks like blocky pixels. Another common place was the Faroudja 2310 video processor (I hope I've got the right one) that had many complaints about "macro-blocking" when used in DVD players, again a processing issue.

Also, the video could be better via Svideo. Here's how. We're talking about DVDs, which are 480 to begin with, and Svideo can send 480 just fine. There are 2 main processing jobs that must be done for DVD, de-interlacing and upconversion. With Svideo, an unimproved signal is sent to the TV, allowing the TV to do all the processing. So theoretically, a TV with a high-end de-interlacer and scaler will do a better job with an Svideo connection than a crappy DVDp with HDMI. Frankly, I've never been fond of the Philips players. They are highly recommended here at DVD Talk, by those who care more about playing their porn stored in 17 different video formats than about quality video processing.

Sorry!! Totally skipped the OP's problem.

Do you mean that you are now using an even older Westinghouse? Those TVs were not all that great. And it sounds like you have a discerning eye. That may be an unfortunate combination. 3 thoughts:

Nothing wrong with Svideo, see above. If it looks better, use it.

Get it calibrated as well as possible. Digital Video Essentials could probably help. Search at your favorite DVD site.

Get better equipment. Maybe a Panasonic BD60 would be appropriate, they've been on sale everywhere for well under $150. Prob going to be replaced/discontinued soon.

If the O.P. is still checking this thread try turning off sharpness altogether on both the TV and the DVD player (if it has that setting). Do the same for noise reduction. The fewer "enhancement" settings of any kind you have on the more likely you're going to get a picture as the studio intended (unless its a bad DVD transfer). If its an upscaling DVD player try setting the resolution to both the TV's native and 480p to see which looks better.