HDTV making SD look like hell. Scaler questions.

Silvanos

I bought an HDTV a few weeks ago, and surprise surprise, the internal scaler is horrible with SD. I have a 42" Vizio LCD HDTV. It handles 480i/480p/720p/1080i. It wasn't an expensive one, certainly not a high-end model, but it works great for HD; I couldn't be happier watching television or playing my 360.

I noticed however that the Wii looks extremely bad on it(the bowling pins in Wii Sports have noticible jagged edges), and the SNES(which I play quite a bit still) looks god-awful with horizontal lines going through most everything. I've tweaked the settings, the Wii is hooked up with component cables and the SNES with S-Video. It really does seem to be an issue with the internal scaler on the TV.

The question then is, will an external scaler fix this problem? I've noticed they start down in the $150 range, but am I going to need a highly expensive one just to fix this problem? I'm certainly no videophile, it's one of the reasons I didn't bother buying a $4000 TV(apart from the price itself), I just want my older SD consoles to look as good as they did on a crappy $200 television. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

LaPuzza

bad news. the only cheap scalers (sub $1000) delay the picture' adding lag. This is one of the biggest differences between cheap and high end sets. Take the grand you saved and buy an old tv for snes games

Silvanos

LaPuzza wrote: »

bad news. the only cheap scalers (sub $1000) delay the picture' adding lag. This is one of the biggest differences between cheap and high end sets. Take the grand you saved and buy an old tv for snes games

Ah well, c'est la vie. Thanks for the help LaPuzza.

apotheos

Even the middle range of the scaling possibilities add lag.

You kind of get used to it, but a set that modest has pretty crap built in scaling which exaggerates the issue.

Rigor Mortis

It's always good to keep some legacy tech around. SDTVs are a good example, not only because of this issue, but of others e.g. most light guns don't work on HDTVs. If I want to play duck hunt, HDTVs are right out.

A couple of quick thoughts...
1. have you tried hooking the SNES up with RF cables? (poor man's anti-aliasing)
2. Can you turn down the sharpness on an LCD TV?? (or is that only on CRTs) Edit: no, you've already tried tweaking the settings, nvm

apotheos

I find if you just relax - have a beer! - you find the ugliness is easy to get used to.

Silvanos

Rigor Mortis wrote: »

It's always good to keep some legacy tech around. SDTVs are a good example, not only because of this issue, but of others e.g. most light guns don't work on HDTVs. If I want to play duck hunt, HDTVs are right out.

A couple of quick thoughts...
1. have you tried hooking the SNES up with RF cables? (poor man's anti-aliasing)
2. Can you turn down the sharpness on an LCD TV?? (or is that only on CRTs) Edit: no, you've already tried tweaking the settings, nvm

I'll see if I have any RF cables left. I'd be damn surprised if I didn't. It's worth a try though.

Rigor Mortis

apotheos wrote: »

I find if you just relax - have a beer! - you find the ugliness is easy to get used to.

Enough alcohol and the jaggies should blur right out. Putting on the wrong glasses should do this as well.

arcath

Kinda in the same boat I am in. Cept i have no tv tuner for it.

I picked up the $999 37' LCD from westinghouse. Great monitor, no tv tuner.

I only found out afterwards, that because of where my apartment is located, the ONLY place i can hook a dish up for directv CANT hit the HD satellites. So im stuck with shitty looking SD tv on a beautiful looking LCD.

At least my 360 looks great.

::shrugs::

Silvanos

I tried the old RF adapter, it looks atrocious compared to the S-Video, although it took away the horizontal lines permeating everything. Mario was reduced to a blob of red and mustache though. I'm guessing the only options are either A)Old TV, B)High-End Scaler, or C)Find an HDTV that has a decent built in scaler, but that's like trying to find a needle in a haystack. Luckily on C, if I decide to go that route, I got the TV at Costco where they have a three-month return policy for whatever reason.

Daedalus

Do you have a pretty beefy computer? You could scale through that. Pick up a cheap TV card (or don't, if your graphics card has VIVO you should be fine already), run it through DScaler, and output to the TV over VGA or DVI or HDMI or whatever in the TV's native resolution. DScaler upscales beautifully and if you have a good CPU, there shouldn't be much if any lag.

edit: Think of it as configuring your $1200 computer to act like a $800 TV upscaler. I mean, that's the beauty of Turing-complete devices, I guess.

Silvanos

The Warlock wrote: »

Do you have a pretty beefy computer? You could scale through that. Pick up a cheap TV card (or don't, if your graphics card has VIVO you should be fine already), run it through DScaler, and output to the TV over VGA or DVI or HDMI or whatever in the TV's native resolution. DScaler upscales beautifully and if you have a good CPU, there shouldn't be much if any lag.

edit: Think of it as configuring your $1200 computer to act like a $800 TV upscaler. I mean, that's the beauty of Turing-complete devices, I guess.

I saw this suggested a couple of other places. My computer is about a year old, Pentium Dual Core 2.8ghz, 1Gb Ram, GeForce6800. I would hope that it could handle it. I'm not sure if my card has the VIVO, it has the HDMI, VGA, and S-Video ports. I'm a bit too ignorant of the workings of the card to know if they're imput or output.