Lcd tv

[Jim Frye]

paying the piper...

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.

We recently purchased a new LCD HD TV (Samsung 650 series TV and our first HD TV) to replace our 10 year old cathode ray TV that blew out its mother board. I thought the original digital cable box (not HD) with a coax connection to the new TV was producing poor resolution images. The picture was not much better than the old set. Even the component connections did not improve the image that much. The existing cable box did not have an HDMI port on it, so I swapped out the digital box for a HD box from the cable company's service store. It added $5 to our monthly bill, but we picked up 35 additional HD channels in addition to having a more intelligent converter box, as well as the HDMI port. It has a USB 2.0 port on it so you can plug in an external hard drive and the box will then do Tivo-like functions at no extra cost. I spent about 20 minutes on the phone with a cable company tech. support person while he tweaked the converter box over the network to match our new TV's capabilities and the change was astounding!. Even the SD broadcasts looked better. Our set has a feature on it that shows the resolution and cycle (Hz) of the input every time it changes. Even on commercials. It is rather revealing how many different signals are being broadcast today. Hopefully, as time goes by, the various stations and networks will upgrade to improve the resolution of the material they broadcast. Our new set is a 1080p/120 Hz set and there is nothing broadcast at that resolution. I will say that NFL HD is stunning at 1080i/60 Hz. It almost looks 3D. The local Fox station has such old equipment and their HD broadcast is so bad, it looks like CGI animation. The news broadcasts look very much like the Star Wars Clone Wars cartoon shows and I'm not talking about content.

[RAV2]

Be aware of the cable company's scams

Be careful with the information you get from the cable company.

Many used the digital signal transition to mislead people into purchasing up-tier packages (and generate more revenue).

There are two "dirty little secrets" of the cable industry: (1) they continue to migrate to digital broadcasts by moving channels from the analog feed to the digital one. This causes the viewer to have to upgrade equipment to see the channels they used to like. My mom is a basic cable subscriber and she lost MSNBC just before the presidential election. She and the other "mature" viewers in her neighborhood were upset as the only way to get this information was to get a digital box. (2) There are physical limitations of (copper) cable and analog signals take up a lot of bandwidth (pipe capacity). This limited capacity also is a constraint when the cable providers transmit HD signals and they can choose to feed lower bandwidth (lower resolution/quality) signals to viewers to maximize the use of their over taxed infrastructure.

My sister got some (free or cheap) limited digital cable boxes from her cable company. These did not have all of the fancy features like PVRs or On Demand options (revenue generators) but they allowed full viewing of the basic channels.

Fiber is not limited in this capacity (FIOS) but there are still issues with the cost of full featured boxes.

I use over the air HD tv and have a large antenna at my home and a good system (I installed) to distribute the signal. I get 22 or 24 channels in full HD. Friends are amazed with the quality and my cost is 0$. (I also have FIOS internet at 10/2 and use the Netflix Player (Roku box) for $9 a month).

I am constantly bombarded by FIOS TV salesmen, often in person, trying to sell the TV package to me. I've even had one come to the house, stand under the fiber optic cable, and state that I did not have FIOS! (Goes to show you the level of technical ability of some of the people that are answering the phone and/or selling these services.

Choose your path wisely. Fees are steep for boxes. "Cool" click are costly.

Want to try a cool experiment? Pull up a pair of rabbit ear antennas and see what you can get over the air for free. Then do a same source signal comparison (say channel "5" over the air vs. channel "5" from the cable provider - select a major network for this trial). You may be amazed at the difference and what you can get for free.

[radhak]

Good Progress

Thanks to all the help here, I was able to tweak the TV settings quite a bit, and can see big improvements in what I can see with direct reception from Comcast.

Pity is, Tivo is still as bad.

Also, I do not have a cable box; I am splitting the incoming from the wall - one goes to Tivo, the other to the TV. Even the LG rep says 'use HDMI', but from what to what ?

This Tivo box (series 2) does not have any HDMI connector, but it does have an S-video that I could use instead of my 3-color-audio-video cable. Will that help? Is an S-video an improvement from the RWY AV cable?

I see that Tivo has a hi-def version of their box. Will that improve my recordings or will that only work with HD broadcast?

And RAV, I too am suspicious of the cable company; to begin with, they keep pushing for their 'digital package'. And when I look carefully, they say I have to pay $6.95 more for their HD ?!!? So their digital is still short of Hi-def!?! Sneaky, I say.

Jim, which cable company do you have? Comcast does not offer any set-top boxes, as far as I can gather.

Rags, you are spot on : DVD is better than broadcast, but maybe a bit less than the store display. But I'd live with that, or even what I see with the direct broadcast, if I could get to record at that level. Rarely do I get to the TV when anything is coming in, so the PVR is my main source of TV!

I am trying to figure out which option would be best for me :

(a) Keep current cable level (ie, non digital) but upgrade my recording options by getting a hi-def Tivo box; I think the service will cost me the same

(b) Upgrade to the digital package with Comcast, and use their DVR option; I think it is free and they give me a recorder too. Pay more on the cable, but save by eliminating Tivo

(c) Kill both and upgrade to satellite, as they do have a free DVR option. I think that'd be the costliest.

Whew! Too much thinking. Maybe I should stay in my garage and send that TV to Uncle Cracker !

[RAV2]

Take a look at the information at the bottom of this page:

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applicati...017&CatId=3647


There is an excellent introduction to the technologies and a comparison of the image quality of the different outputs.

[woodturner]

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?

You should be seeing a comparable or better picture on your new LCD set, given the same signal source and method of connection. However, most cable providers are not willing or able to provide HD content. So the reality is that the picture quality over cable is usually poorer than the over-the-air (OTA) HD signal.

Put another way, if you want HD television, you usually have to use an antenna to receive it (for free) over the air. As a practical matter, most areas have at least 3 times the number of HD channels as they did analog channels - so while the variety is not as broad as cable, it is much broader than analog TV is and was (now only low-power stations are broadcasting in analog).

Another advantage of OTA HDTV is that you don't get the "snow" and "ghosting" common to analog reception of weak signals. HD OTA is generally either a great picture or no picture - and you get a great picture with a much weaker signal that you could not even see with an analog set.

Note that in most areas, HDTV signals are UHF rather than VHF - so a simple "bowtie" or "loop" antenna is often all you need, and the "rabbit ears" often don't work well (because they are a VHF antenna).

[RAV2]

Spent an hour + with my mom tonight.

She got a box of 2 (minimal function) digital cable boxes for free today.

Comcast (Middlesex Massachusetts) is migrating all analog channels to digital.

Set up required a call to Comcast - where the person tried to "hard sell" us more advanced (monthly fee) boxes.

"Mature" neighbors need to spend a few dollars more each month to get what they used to see on the basic (analog package).