Can you help me? Is there any-way ON EARTH to get a better picture with my HDTV?
 

I'm not sure if this has been covered here (and I'm sorry if it has), as I'm fairly new to HD, and did a search, but couldn't find anything addressing my issue.

I'm talking about with regular Digital cable broadcasts and SD DVDs. Hi-Def 1080 is absolutely great the way it is. :up:

Someone once told me watching a big screen was like using a huge magnifying glass. It sure amplify's the imperfections of a bad source, I tell you what! :lol:

(For those of you that don't know, I've got one of those Sony SXRD KDS-502000's and a Toshiba XA1 so you know what I'm working with.)

For example, we just got that new Bond set (Vol 1 & 2, anyways) and it says it's restored (frame by frame) and so on and so forth, but it looks no better than that slightly blurred at the movies theater film look. Digital cable looks worse. Treesa says it's fine, and that I should get over myself, but I think it could be better.

On the other hand, 'The Hulk' SD actually looks pretty good, given that it's not HD and all, so that 'source' stuff is where it's at, wouldn't ya say?

The Sony does a Freeze Frame thing that freezes the pic with a smaller picture frame-split screen thing, with the mini frozen pic on the right and the mini active screen on the left. The smaller active pic is o-so mucho better, but I just can't feel comfortable using it like that, not to mention watching the smaller pic on a 50" set is ridiclous, and the frozen frame on the right just sitting there might burn in the image on my set. (?)

I'm screwed on ALL FRONTS! :(

(I seriously miss that ol' CRT clear-er looking pic!)

Hell, I'm actually thinking of buying a couple bigger-screen CRT's to put on either side of our Sony!

Oh, Man! :lol: What am I gonna do?

I understand I'm not 'Mr Popularity' round here (or anywhere for that matter), however, any help, tips, tweeks, info, opinions, suggestions, advice, related counsel, or fortune telling will be greatly appreciated.

-THEEK! :eek:

Unfortunatly the more HD you watch, the more SD is going to look completly subpar to your eyes. That is completly normal and the only thing you really can do is stop watching HD, lol. Seriously tho the smaller pics your talking about on the left and right of your screen, that is absolutly normal. Smaller pictures will look better than bigger blown up ones. There is nothing you can do that will make your big image look as good as the smaller images. Again this is completly normal.

The problem here isnt your TV but simply going back and foth from HD to SD. Your eyes get used to the much better picture quality of HD and then you go back to SD and it looks like crap. This is why I have completly stopped buying SD discs and am 100% HD from here on out. I mean ill still watch movies I already own on SD until the HD version comes out but when it does I will replace my SD without hesitation.

So to sum this up, the only thing you can really do is stop watching HD or stop watching SD or just get used to this apparant shift in quality that is so apparant when going from HD to SD. your screwed like the rest of us :-)

also as for the difference in quality betwwen the Bond and Hulk movie, that is simply the variation in the quality of the SD transfer and that some things simply look better upconverted than others. Take The Incredibles from Pixar. That SD looks awsome upconverted, it almost looks HD but other movies look absolutly terrible. Aain its just the variation in the type of movie it is, (animated, live action) & The quality of the SD transfer.

I for one have always enjoyed you wacky styled posts so your ok in my book :-)

PS...

I don't know if I should laugh or cry!

Oh, what the heck?

:lol:

(I sincerely appreciate your taking time-out to lay down the facts, PS! :up: )

If they could have only made my Sony with the options of different sized screens & resolutions like in that old DOS version of Doom...

-Paul, III

Just deal, everything looks bad after you get used to watching HD material. You'll notice the difference, but get used to it after a while (at least I have).

I avoid television in general these days except for HD programming and the must have sports or shows not in HD - I seldom flip though the channels on my big screen (I might in my office on my little 19 inch CRT).

Movies, I have lowered my expectations. I expect to be underwhelmed by anything not HD-DVD. I find the A1 to do a good job upconverting, so it is tolerable. My LD veiwing is pretty tough, I really have to be in the mood for the movie because it just looks so bad these days (great sound helps with this a little).

HD is a mixed blessing to me.

My mindset on HDTV is thus: It's not all that great. You NEED to have HD to make video look 'normal' on todays giant big screen tvs. Once you blow up HD to a 60-70 inch screen, it no longer looks 'magical' but it looks 'normal'.

HD has never looked "Better than Expected" to me, but it looks the way it should given that I'm viewing it on a giant screen tv.

That said, SD sucks. I only have a 46" widescreen. I wonder how you guys with 60-70 inchers watch South Park or Battlestar Galactica. I dunno, maybe it looks fine.

So, in summary, I guess. HD is what you need to make video look normal on a big screen, therefore HD is underwhelming to me.

Oh, man. About the worst thing I've watched was Blade. The TV series, that is. It's only on Spike, one of the worst PQ channels available to mankind. And it isn't in HD anywhere, yet. On my big TV, it is just horrible. But I MUST see it! I keep this show far away from the kids, so I'm pretty much stuck watching it downstairs on the HDTV.

THEEK,
Just wait til you get accustomed to good HD, then start seeing more and more bad HD. Like NBC football. At least SD channels have an excuse.

Is there any way on earth to improve SD? Sure, but they're generally not cheap. A good video processor can improve the deinterlacing and scaling of SD signals to the HD native resolution of your TV. This can be a big help, but as mentioned by others you'll still need to keep your expectations in check. There's really not much of anything that will make a crap-quality cable channel like Spike or FX watchable on a big screen.

I love most of FX's original programming, but it just kills me on Tuesday nights to switch over from The Unit on CBS (generally one of the better-looking HD shows) to Nip/Tuck on FX (consistently one of the worst-looking SD shows).

Battlestar Galactica is on HD in Universal's HD channel.

Right....but about 7 months after it's first shown. On UHD they are reruns.

Plus, my suck ass Time Warner cable in North Texas does not carry UHD, because Time Warner sucks.

ISF calibration my friend.

www.avical.com

These guys work wonders. Seriously.

My DLP calibrated was a night/day difference.

:tu:

I've had Avical do my calibrations regularly since 2003. Now, I don't watch anything but HD cable on my 57" display, because of course SD cable would look subpar. But SD DVD looks quite great on my setup with upconversion.

WOW!!! :eek:

Thanks, Everybuddy!

It's no secret that I'm taking my 'baby steps' into the world of HD, and I'm seriously grateful for ya'll stoppin' by and takin' me to school!

I can't tell you how much I value and appreciate your time.

-Paul 3rd (Aka: Tek, THEEK!, That Idiot, etc...)

This post is utterly false. HD kills SD period. You would have to blow up HD DVD or BD to over 100" to even begin to approach SD DVD quality. HD on anything from 30 - 60", which are the most common, kills SD hands down. You obviously have either never seen a HD presentation on a good TV or you have really bad eyesite. If neither of those are true then you need to stop sitting like 30 feet awsy from your TV as that would be the only possible explaination left as to why HD looks like SD to you.

Bottom line SD sucks now. It just doesnt have nearly the detail and while TV size effects quality, unless your blowing it up wall size, SD doesnt stand a chance in hell at even coming close to HD's picture quality.

Its absolutly OK that you have no interest in HD as that is your god given right but to come on here trying to convince people that HD isnt that good is lunacy & in the end it looks like your trying to convince yourself that it really is true.

PS..

Did you even read his post? Especially the part that said "That said, SD sucks". He never claimed HD looked as good as SD.

I agree that wasn't what he was saying but he did say:

I completely disagree with that statement. A good HD presentation and certainly HD-DVD look magical to me on my 65" ISF Calibrated RP CRT. I've seen badly compressed HD look more like DVD quality but the high resolution and bitrate stuff looks incredible to me. Your display, seeting distance and of course your personal opinion do factor in on that experience. For me it's still a thrill when the source allows it.

Even SD can look 'normal' if broadcasted at a decent bitrate. If I watch an SD program on one of my HD channels via satellite it looks pretty darn good at 65" since they aren't degrading the signal. I would consider that to be what a normal picture should be. HD is superior to what I would call normal.

EDIT in recognition of this being a THEEK thread. :)

Thanks, The Cow, for pointing out that his feeling on my post were really off base.

I didn't say SD is 'as good' as HD.

All I'm saying is you need HD to make our giant TV's of today look decent. If HD didn't exist and we just had giant tv's to show 480i signals, I don't think we'd sell many giant tvs because the end result sucks.

Thing is, HD Television is a GIANT leap over SD Television. HD-DVD is not as big a bump over DVD up converted.

But....it IS a big enough bump that I am still happy with my HD-DVD purchase, and will continue to enjoy it. It did not meet my perhaps too high expectations.

At the risk of my point being ignored, I think we've had a lot of giant televisions out there since well before HD and that many, if not most, of those televisions now sold are not even being used with HD programming.
To many average consumers big is simply better. I also again make the point that SD can look pretty good if it doesn't have the crap compressed out of it. That's not a fault of the display but of the programming provider.

I agree with you, poor SD is the fault of the programming provider. But when 99% of the programming providers provide poor SD, that's what I would refer to as 'Normal'.

As a foot note, Time Warner in North Texas just added UHD and HDNet this week. Yay! How about that!

Also, those older TVs were not HD resolution. Not necessarily, anyway. Things tend to look much better in native resolution. And the truly big stuff was almost always used with good scalers. Nowadays everybody can get into fairly large screens, and quality of scalers is down.

Meanwhile, I'm trying to figure out how to get my parents HDTV to look better with HD material. Everything looks either too dark or too blown out. I can't wait for the DVE disc to come out so I can use it on their TV. Even then, I almost wish I could just pay for them to get an ISF calibration.

My parents liked theirs way too bright. They watched it in torch mode after they bought it and when I adjusted it they thought it was too dark. They did leave it that way though and got used to it.

I wouldn't care if I wasn't staying with them right now. As it is, I need this thing fixed ASAP, it's bugging the hell out of me.

Have tried pausing a scene on an HD-DVD and adjusting something like a guy with a black coat against a night sky? My ISF guy did that and then adjusted until he got distiction between the sky and his shoulder without losing detail in the coat. It's kind of hard to explain but it seemed to work well.