Poor Reception on TV & Sky with New LCD TV

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Blondini

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#11420 22-Jan-2007 15:20

Hi, I am driving myself crazy obsessing over the reception on my new TV, we previously had a 29" old Sony TV which had a great picture but was dying, we brought a Samsung Sanoma 40" LCD (LA40S71BX) just over a week ago.

The first problem we had was that Sky was freezing, this has been fixed now with a new decoder however I am still not happy with the quality of the picture, I realise that SD TV will look worse on an HD panel than on a CRT. Is there anything I can do to improve picture of am I just being fussy. We watch all of out TV through Sky & mostly record it onto a DVD hard drive to watch on Chase Play (as we have 2 kids to get to bed before we can watch our favourite shows).

Is there any product out there to help improve reception or is there a better option for similar money that I could talk to Harvey Norman about changing our TV for (cost us $2800 on sale).

I have watched a movie that I recorded onto Hard Drive off sky when we had the old tv hooked up & it looks better than if I record sky now.

Any help / advice is appreciated.

Cheers
Ang

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#58486 22-Jan-2007 15:45

nothing you can do really. it is the broadcasters' fault and also the risk of adopting HDTV in NZ at the moment. We have Philips LCD HDTV and TCL Digital Saturn tv and the quality is so so. What we invested on LCD TV today is to ready for tomorrow's HD broadcast, or upscaled-DVD ot HD/ED gaming.

I know it's painful to see spending few thousand dollars to get subpar SDTV over today's paid-tv service... sad huh?

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grant_k

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#58488 22-Jan-2007 16:01

chiefie: What we invested on LCD TV today is to ready for tomorrow's HD broadcast, or upscaled-DVD ot HD/ED gaming.
I know it's painful to see spending few thousand dollars to get subpar SDTV over today's paid-tv service... sad huh?

Because I don't have an HDTV, maybe you guys in the know can explain something to me:

If I buy an HD TV at present and connect the inputs to an SD source, how is this handled?

Does the TV do pixel-stretching like what happens when you connect a PC running 800 x 600 mode into a 1280 x 1024 LCD monitor?

If so, then I can understand why you guys aren't happy with the result. At least with a CRT you could change the scan rate to compensate but with LCD or Plasma, I guess you are stuck with the pixel-stretching until HD broadcasts finally appear

Bung

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#58490 22-Jan-2007 16:30

Blondini: I have watched a movie that I recorded onto Hard Drive off sky when we had the old tv hooked up & it looks better than if I record sky now.

Why would a change in TV affect the recording ability of your HD:DVD? Is it the cables between the hardware that have been upset?

Blondini

33 posts

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#58491 22-Jan-2007 16:40

Thats what I'm confused about too.

I now have a monster component cord going from DVD:HD to TV rather than a composite (component should be better).

We also have a new decoder, however the picture seemed just as bad on our old decoder when it was plugged into the new tv as the new decoder does.

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#58493 22-Jan-2007 16:58

Blondini: Thats what I'm confused about too.

I now have a monster component cord going from DVD:HD to TV rather than a composite (component should be better).

We also have a new decoder, however the picture seemed just as bad on our old decoder when it was plugged into the new tv as the new decoder does.

What type of connection do you have between the Sky decoder and your DVD recorder?

Blondini

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#58494 22-Jan-2007 17:02

Just got composite from Sky to DVD & Sky to TV, we tried s-video with Sky to DVD & it was really bad & ghosting heaps same as when we connected Sky to Component on TV.

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cyril7

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#58495 22-Jan-2007 17:06

As Grant has eluded to a digital display must rescale whatever input frame size exists to fit the frame size of your display, this along with the fact that Broadcast video is interlace not progressive and all these digital panels have to deinterlace means there is one hell of a lot of processing between the input signal and what you see.

From my observation, I would not spend a single razoo on a LCD display, they seem totally incapable of portraying a SD video signal. Of all the digital panels that I have observed I have noted that Projectors and SD res Plasmas and good HD plasmas are the only things that seem to do a half decent job, but HD LCD's dont even come close.

A 50Hz CRT is still the only way to correctly view SD Broadcast video signals, some folk say that the reason HD LCD panels look so bad is that they showup the lack of quality in SD video, however as a CRT is a rather simple tool with little ability to process and degrade the signal I think otherwise, but hey thats my opinion feel free to disagree.

My 8year old Sony CRT that I have moded to accept RGB still surpases most digital panel displays that are 5x the cost.

I do admit that some of Skys "stocking filler channels" dont have a lot in the bitrate area, making them look a bit ropey especially once the extra processing of a digital panel display does it work, however the sports and movie channels should look pretty reasonable.

Cyril

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#58497 22-Jan-2007 17:17

Blondini: Just got composite from Sky to DVD & Sky to TV, we tried s-video with Sky to DVD & it was really bad & ghosting heaps same as when we connected Sky to Component on TV.

Since you're not watching much in real time, have you tried disconnecting the direct Sky to TV cable to see if the recorded content improves?

OrangeDrink

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#58502 22-Jan-2007 18:13

Ok I'm going to suggest that you might want to go back to viewing Sky Digital via Composite... the standard of the broadcast here for many of the channels is frankly appalling and sadly upgrading to Component shows up a lot more of these problems that you may not have noticed earlier on your CRT through Composite. I find Compression Artifacts much more obvious through Component than I ever did through Composite connections.

It could also very well be the electronics your new TV is using to do it's upscaling and deinterlacing. My Plasma's old enough that upscaling and deinterlacing processors have moved on a lot and it was cheap enough in the first place that it probably didn't even have up to date stuff in it at the time!

When I switched from Composite to COmponent I was incredibly disappointed by the signal Sky were broadcasting, I went back to Composite for a while however I did find that turning off any Sharpening my Plasma screen was doing helped a bit. When I was back in the UK I also picked up a Plasma Enhancer external Deinterlacer and Scaler on the cheap and despite an odd reverse dominance problem mentioned in another thread the quality has improved a lot for me. There are though still noticeable compression artifacts on lots of channels, some shows more than others. Ultimately Sky TV here is pretty crappy

OrangeDrink

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#58503 22-Jan-2007 18:17

cyril7:
I do admit that some of Skys "stocking filler channels" dont have a lot in the bitrate area, making them look a bit ropey especially once the extra processing of a digital panel display does it work, however the sports and movie channels should look pretty reasonable.

Cyril

Oddly I get the worst problems with the Sports Channels, particularly Live Sport and more noticeably when it's being rebroadcast from another country. (ESPN Spanish Football is utterly unwatchable!) I still have my suspicions that some of those broadcasts are being encoded multiple times and being degraded each time... things like the NPC and Super 14 (games recorded in NZ) though I remember looking better than say Super 14 games shot in South Africa then rebroadcast here. There's also that horrible Digital Audio problem which seems to hate Cricket ;)

Blondini

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#58505 22-Jan-2007 18:44

I have been viewing sky through composite but have just tried component again to see because my composite cords are really old & I wondered if that could be the problem.

I also remember that Cyril said the Samsung had bad deinterlacing (or something like that), is this a problem on their Plasmas as well as their LCD's?

Is there any better LCD that could be suggested around the 40" size & $2800 pricetag?

Cheers
Ang

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sbiddle

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#58506 22-Jan-2007 18:54

IMHO if you want to view large screen SD content your best bet is an older (ie 3-4yr) rear projection TV. Both my parents and uncle have 40" models, 1 a Sony and the other a Philips. Once you get the convergence set correctly they give a brilliant picture on SD stuff.

Any large screen plasms or LCD is unfortunately going to show up the poor quality SD signal and there is nothing you can really do to overcome that. It's a bit like reading a paper with a magnifying glass.

cyril7

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#58507 22-Jan-2007 18:55

ESPN lands here as a pretty thin (read low bit rate) NTSC distribution feed, that then must be mpeg decoded, NTSC>PAL converted, and recoded for reception, so yes it looks absolute rubbish.

One thing you must remember is that getting live or distribution circuits down here to NZ and Aus cost way way more that say in Europe, so feeds are not always contribution level, probably distribution at best. Thus once they have been decoded, local details and breakouts added, then recoded the end results are not always that flash. Compare to Europe where tens of broadcasters take a common (and group paid for) good contribution feed (ie 8Mbit/s or more) decode it, add their local dogs and breakouts and reencode at whatever distribution rate (ie 3-5Mb/s) and the end result is much better. One of the costs of living far away from the rest of the world.

Cyril

Blondini

33 posts

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#58508 22-Jan-2007 18:58

I am assuming in another year or so most of my concerns should be no longer an issues when Sky introduces HD TV or am I still going to have issues?

OrangeDrink

51 posts

Master Geek

#58509 22-Jan-2007 18:59

Pretty much what I'd always figured but Sky denied it when I put it to them... The fact that half their channels look like jpegs after you resave them half a dozen times though would seem to back me up ;)

Any clue about the alternating dominance in fields on the sports channels Cyril??

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