Lcd tv

[radhak]

My brother gifted me the LG 40LH30 last week. He must have noticed we still had our Sony 27" from 1994 !

I was thinking of buying one myself, so this was a true gift. Problem is, I am not happy with what I see on screen now. Images are not even as good as before.

He told me that this is because I am not getting HD reception and I need to upgrade to HD with Comcast. Is that right? A higher/costlier TV cannot display regular channels with the same vividness as a much older one?

And I am bit confused - is the non-HD broadcast also 'digital' but less resolution? IIRC, not all channels broadcast in HD, do they? So I have to settle for worse-than-before quality for those?

For example - Mad Men seems to have fared really bad - almost as if I'm watching a Video cassette from yore !

Some are okay - all kids-animation better than before; the Wii also makes for better viewing; CNN/HLN are just a bit better; some sports channels are just okay.

I was happy with my minimal monthly cable bill - but if it really makes for better viewing I'll be happy to pay - so long as I get some ROI.

[Uncle Cracker]

It's gonna be nothing but trouble for you. Pack it up, send it to me, and I'll get rid of it for you, no charge...

[crokett]

I believe the problem is related to your new TV having a much higher resolution than the old. The incoming signal is still at the old resolution. You didn't notice before because the old TV was either lower resolution or the same as the signal. I have the same problem with my flat screens, especially the 42" downstairs. I am unwilling to upgrade to HD receiver for satellite so just learned to live with it.

[cabinetman]

We're on Direct TV. When we got an LCD TV, the picture was superior to our regular TV, we opted not to go for the HD upgrade. Our signal is digital. You might go into "menu" and see if you can improve the picture.
.

[Thalermade]

Unfortunately the first answer to these technical questions is - it depends.

The new LCD TV is capable of showing HD (high definition is 1080i, 720p and 1080p). HD is the upgrade higher quality digital signal.

Standard Definition TV (SDTV) - SDTV is the basic level of quality display and resolution for both analog and digital.
The four major networks broadcast in either SDTV (480i)
or one of 2 HD formats
ABC- 720p
NBC- 1080i
CBS- 1080i
FOX- 720p

You should not have to upgrade to get a good signal.

But having said that, that are several adjusts you may have to make, for a better image, plus there is the potential that your cable connection could be weakening somehow (doubtful since you said your old Sony was good).

To me, LCD monitors and tv's seem to be brighter.

Here is a link to make things confusingly simpler or just simply confusing:
http://www.videotapestock.com/hdwhdibe4872.html

Have fun,
Russ

[Mr__Bill]

I seem to recall that early digital TV's had a hard time handling non digital signals, there were lots of discussions about this back then. An early adopter may have more iformation on this. For me, your old TV would be an upgrade.

How do the over-the-air digital channels look?


Bill, living on the wild side, just a few years late.....

[Kristofor]

Are you using a cable box right now? If so, you're only seeing standard definition analog stations. At that point the quality of the video processing electronics determine how good the picture looks. It might look terrible, or it might be "okay" but it will never look as good as HD.

If you're not using a cable box then you may have a mix of stations being tuned by the QAM (digital) and NTSC (analog) tuners in the TV (not all cable companies provide unprotected QAM stations, and some older TVs didn't have the ability to tune them either. In this case some of the stations may be digital (and even HD) and the others would still be the lower quality analog SD (the digital conversion was only for OTA, not cable/sat equipment).

Only you can decide if it looks good enough for you, or if the better quality is worth the increased cost...

[radhak]

It's gonna be nothing but trouble for you. Pack it up, send it to me, and I'll get rid of it for you, no charge...

heh heh! I know, looks like I am trying to look at gift horse in the mouth, but am only getting my bearings right here...

No cable box, but my TIVO is the regular one, not the HD version, so I am sure that too is an issue (at least for Mad Men - I should try and catch it direct next time just to check).

And also, while the TV has HDMI connecting-sockets, I am using the old style audio-video connectors (whatever they are called).

To clarify - my old TV was only good sporadically. I noticed some weeks ago while watching European soccer (tivo-ed) that I was unable to track action easily - again maybe the combination of lower quality TIVO and TV.

Today I was in Best Buy and the adverts for the US Open on most of the display TVs looked really brilliant, sharp and vivid. If I were to get that reception at home, I'd be happy.

And that reminds me - the audio : should I expect acceptable audio from the TV itself, or are external speaker a must?

[Kristofor]

No cable box, but my TIVO is the regular one, not the HD version, so I am sure that too is an issue (at least for Mad Men - I should try and catch it direct next time just to check).

The stand-alone Tivo's do their own MPEG compression of the video on the fly. They don't do a bad job, but there will be visible artifacts if you look closely on a SD set, and those will be even more visible on an HD TV. You're also definitely not seeing a digital signal (SD or HD) when you're going through the Tivo, so you may want to try hooking up to the TV, and then scanning for digital channels to see how they look.

Today I was in Best Buy and the adverts for the US Open on most of the display TVs looked really brilliant, sharp and vivid. If I were to get that reception at home, I'd be happy.

You sir are the reason why no TV purchased from a retail outlet is anywhere close to being calibrated correctly . Typically the picture on display models is significantly overly bright, sharp, and with too much color saturation to accurately reproduce the video being sent to it because that's what draws eyes in the showroom... In theory, once it's in your perfectly light controlled room you'd want to turn those settings down to something more accurate. However, since not very many TVs end up in the perfect light controlled room, I think a lot of time some happy medium between the "ideal" settings and the showroom settings works best...

And that reminds me - the audio : should I expect acceptable audio from the TV itself, or are external speaker a must?

Depends... The onboard speakers are often pretty low-end (and only stereo), but they can be workable if you don't need to fill a 20'x30' room or try to cover lots of ambient noise. I find that I can hear dialog better in a system with a dedicated center channel, thus allowing the volume to remain lower if that's a concern.

[WayneJ]

I had problems after I switched to LCD t.vs. My cable TV was ok with my dig tvs. I had about 10 service calls in a two week period. The picture would tare and the audio would distorte. The cable company changed everything, even the drop from the phone pole. I switched from cable to the phone company. Verizon ran fiber right to the house. My phone,TV, and comp are all on fiber and no problems.I have two inputs to the TV from the converter box, the reg cable and a HDMI port.The HDMI input might have made the difference.
Wayne

[RayintheUK]

Perhaps it's as simple as the way you're getting the signal to the new screen - composite, or RGB, is that set right? Have a look at the AV settings and how each of the AV channels is set to handle the inputs. Good luck!

Ray

[Garasaki]

2 things I'd suggest:

1) Get an antenna and pick up over the air HD - your "local" channels will all have free HD signals floating thru the air - might as well pick those up.

2) Try making sure the TV isn't stretching your image. The way to avoid this is to have gray or black pillars on the side - some people find this objectionable. But it should improve your image quality on non HD stuff.

[radhak]

You sir are the reason why no TV purchased from a retail outlet is anywhere close to being calibrated correctly .

Sorta like the ice-cream adverts, eh? Good to look at, but not really to eat!

But some good news.

I realized I've been watching all my programs on Tivo! Well, that's my life !
And when I tried the 'live' broadcast, there's a major difference - to the better! Still not as good as in the store displays, but better than my first impression. And some broadcasts are really sharp, particularly the shopping networks!!!

Good thing is, the options for screen size are 4:3, 16:9, 'by the program', and others. The 'by the program' setting seemingly adjusts by incoming feed. Of course for now its all 4:3 (ie, bars on the side), but I guess that's because I don't get the HD yet.

[RayintheUK]

You should be able to adjust the screen ratio (to 16:9) independently.

Ray

[ragswl4]

Unless you use the composite or HDMI inputs to the TV you will get a more fuzzy pictures (less resolution) whether you have SD or HD signals coming in. Me thinks that to really enjoy that LCD TV you will need to upgrade to an HD input signal (cable or sat). How does a DVD look on the TV? Should look better than SD but not as good as HD. Good luck and +1 on getting the local HD stations off the air. I use a regular old TV antenna for that and get 10-15 channels of HD.