colour loss with sky on plasma tv

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Wills1

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Topic # 5489 2-Nov-2005 09:29

Hi everyone,

I just purchased a plasma tv, it was installed by the company I bought it from...
I have noticed that the sky picture sometimes goes grey in places, and the picture quality is not that great?

The decoder is a Pace DSR600 model, if this helps...
I rang up hill and stewart to see if there was a better quality cable I could buy, The salesperson said that there was, but it would only provide 70 more lines??? and that the difference would probably not justify the $300 cable

It looks like there is a scart from the decoder to a s/vhs in the back of the plasma
are there any settings I can change on the decoder?

I dont have a clue about these things, so Any help would be great

Thanks :)

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Reply # 22442 2-Nov-2005 09:38

I'd avoid plasma if i can, and get LCD. sure they're not cheaply available for 40"+ screen but it has longer life and more vibrant colours and better contrast and newer generation LCD have true-black, and more importantly, insurance company are more acceptive to insure LCD than Plasma because Plasma has life span of max 5 years, they burned up quicker.

Anyhow, along that line, Plasma also are gas-based display, and the amount of colours it can display is quite limited and the vibrancy of the colours will fade away as the gas get burned up. I'd get the company to check it, or even return it and have another installed and see the colour quality. else avoid plasma if you can...

Sony released new BRAVIA LCD and the V-series looks great, it has HDMI and all. I just recently got Philips 32" LCD with PixelPlus2 and AmbiLight, it is great and looks awesome with ambilight in the room on the wall and light up the whole room quite nicely and with balance ambient light. No need to have side lamps on to help the eyes vision. :-)

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chiefie

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Reply # 22443 2-Nov-2005 09:50

oh. if the TV has SCART connection, then you can set up the TV and Sky using SCART for intelligent control, because SCART carries more than just AVio signals, it also carries control signal. So theoretically, you can have 1 remote to control both devices, or at least when the TV "on" is press, it will signal the Sky decoder, or when Sky decoder channel changed, it will turn on TV and set to right input.

However, more and more TV solds in NZ are lacking SCART these days...

you can get SCART to Component and put into the component in on tv (or typically known as DVD input) which will yeild better quality than S-Video, next choice is using S-Video (via SCART).

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Wills1

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Reply # 22444 2-Nov-2005 10:08

Sadly there is no scart input in the tv,
it is a Panasonic TH-42PA50-A
Is there a better type of decoder than the pace, I dont know if that would help?
I have seen different types of digital decoders at friends houses

Jama

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Reply # 22445 2-Nov-2005 10:21

Chiefie - do your home work. The Plasma half life is 50,000 hours. So, at 8 hours viewing a day it would take 17 years for a Plasma to lose half its brightness.

I don't no where you get your 'max life span of 5 years' from.

LCD are not always better. The suffer from blur on fast moving action due to high refresh and they have a back light (like a Fluorescent tube). Also if you want a 42" TV then you only really have a choice of DLP or Plasma.

Hmmm... my Plasma lights up my room fine - no need for side lamps either. It has 10,000:1 Contrast ratio, 1,500cd/m2 Brightness and HDMI.

Wills1 - you are right the pic quality on Sky is quite aweful, although it has got better recently due to a new algorithm they are using. There are no settings on the decoder with Sky the picture is what it is.

Wills1

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Reply # 22446 2-Nov-2005 10:27

Thanks Jama,
Hopefully sky improve the quality...
Its quite depressing buying a Plasma, only to have the sky picture look a whole lot worse than it did on the normal 50hz tv

Jama

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Reply # 22448 2-Nov-2005 10:46

Don't forget that the bigger screen the worse the picture will look if the quality of the broadcast is not that great. If you sit at least 5m from the screen it will look better. If you go digital out from a DVD or VGA/HDMI from a PC the picture looks great.

I also have a 26" LCD and if you look closely at the screen it is no better than my Plasma. Roll on High Definition broadcasts!

chiefie

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Reply # 22451 2-Nov-2005 11:12

mmm jama, i read that from wikipedia. anyway i agree with jama that the compression used on Sky (or in my case TelstraClear Saturn digital) would be the one to blame...

it seems worse on TelstraClear Saturn digital since they repackage/recompress some of the channels on the already compressed content, which then made the broadcast fugly to watch...

however, lately, it seems that the sympton has reduced and the picture looks great again...

oh the LCD i have doesn't suffer any evidental "fast motion" or "ghost image", due to the help of PixelPlus2 and DNR, which help creating high refresh rate, and the LCD refresh rate is pretty high too 12ms.

Only hope is to see HD broadcast, and utilise my MCE on DVI-HDMI output. :-)

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Jama

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Reply # 22454 2-Nov-2005 11:35

Never trust a Wiki -

Chiefie ask Philips if they will replace your Ambilight panel when it burns out. Your LCD panel will outlast the Ambilight.

chiefie

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Reply # 22458 2-Nov-2005 11:51

mmmm interesting question.... i shall ask but i have a gut feeling that they wont. (since you asked it that way. :-S)

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kiwiana

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Reply # 22465 2-Nov-2005 14:08

My 2 cents ... its not your Panasonic, its Sky.

I have a Plasma that I used in Australia where they broadcast in HD and SD ... I have since shipped it back to NZ and the display is perhaps 20% worse on standard NZ broadcasts and 30% worse on sky broadcasts.

Jama

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Reply # 22467 2-Nov-2005 14:14

I agree with Kiwiana - Sky is just plain crap. You are certainly not paying for quality of broadcast.

Wills1

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Reply # 22472 2-Nov-2005 15:59

Would the monster gold plated scart to s/video help?

Jama

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Reply # 22473 2-Nov-2005 16:11

Maybe - I have always used gold plated connectors/cables because you can lose a bit of signal through cheaper coax/connectors

chiefie

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Reply # 22475 2-Nov-2005 17:12

monster cost so much that it help wee bit but to me, it just paying way premium for great cable with minor benefit for the result...

i agree with jama and kiwiana, it's time to see more (better/high definition) digital broadcast...

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Wills1

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Reply # 22543 3-Nov-2005 10:42

Ok I have tested, and it must be a fault with the scart to s/vhs running to the TV.

Yesterday I recorded a music video from juice onto the DVD recorder. I chose to record it because half of the person’s body on the video was grey.

When I played it back through the DVD recorder the picture was perfect. So the scart from sky to the rca lead in the recorder is working fine.

Next I plugged an s/vhs to s/vhs from the recorder into the TV, to make sure there was no fault with the TV, and it works great as well...

Putting pip on and running sky through AV1S1 on the TV, and the same channel on sky on the other side of the TV through the recorder, there is a big difference in colour and skin tones {being grey} on the AV1S1 side.

So Im guessing it must be the scart to s/vhs from the decoder to the TV that is faulty...

Can anyone recommend a good cable to use, or should I just wait for the sky tech to come out and put a newer model of decoder in and try another cheapo lead???

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