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HDTV = Now all my movies and games look like crap?
AbsoluteZero
The new film by Quentin KoopantinoRegistered User regular
The new film by Quentin KoopantinoRegistered User regular
So I just bought a new HDTV. This one, to be exact.
So I bring it home and get it all hooked up to a brand new upconverting DVD player with a fancy gold plated HDMI cable and all that good stuff. I make sure everything is in working order and set up correctly. The only thing I haven't taken the time to do yet is calibrate my HDTV for color/brightness/etc.
However, my movies look like shit. They're all pixelated to crap, even with upconversion to 720p (the native res of my HDTV). I hooked up my Wii with some nice new component cables and got that configured properly for 480p and that looks rough around the edges too.
Is this normal? Are all HDTVs going to make my movies and games look like shit, or is it just this set? Or is this something that can be "calibrated away?"
So I bring it home and get it all hooked up to a brand new upconverting DVD player with a fancy gold plated HDMI cable and all that good stuff. I make sure everything is in working order and set up correctly. The only thing I haven't taken the time to do yet is calibrate my HDTV for color/brightness/etc.
However, my movies look like shit. They're all pixelated to crap, even with upconversion to 720p (the native res of my HDTV). I hooked up my Wii with some nice new component cables and got that configured properly for 480p and that looks rough around the edges too.
Is this normal? Are all HDTVs going to make my movies and games look like shit, or is it just this set? Or is this something that can be "calibrated away?"
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2) Don't upconvert.
3) Watch some HD content. Heros premiers tonight. Good excuse to buy a 360.
I think I may return it.
When I first bought my HDTV, I bought an up-converting DVD player that inputted via HDMI. A Sony something-or-other that I had read decent reviews about. It looked like CRAP --- super muddy. A big, big disappointment. I also thought that this is what I was goign to have to live with and was, unsurprisingly, very let down.
Then I returned the POS DVD player, bought the Xbox360 HD-DVD player. Decided to run my Xbox through VGA cables (upconverting isn't a problem via VGA since it's just monitor resolution anyway --- which is good, considering my xbox doesn't have HDMI and can't upconvert through component cables).
End result? I can hardly tell the different between older movies and HD-DVD movies. The picture is super, super crisp and clear, and I couldn't be happier with it.
The moral of the story: don't think your *television* purchase was a bad one b/c of a DVD player you bought. While my story is a little different (esp the use of the VGA port as opposed to the HDMI plug -- my HDMI port is currently empty), it should shed some light towards the end of your tunnel.
That said, my PS2 looks muddy on the HDTV. I used to have a Wii, but it got stolen in a break-in (about two weeks after launch. So sad.), so I don't know how it would look either.
best of luck!
EDIT: for reference, here's my TV. Very similar to yours, I imagine:
OLEVIA 32 inch LCD
So yeah, try turning off the upconversion. There's a few other filters that will sometimes make a picture look worse, as well, but it depends on the set.
Remember, DVDs were meant to be played at 480p on Standard Def sets. You now have an HD set, and DVDs were not made for it. Doesn't mean they won't play, but they aren't going to look as good. If you want things to look nice on your new HD set, you need to have HD content. I had the same issue as you, and found a decent upconverting player that held me over until I got HD-DVD, which looks fucking spectacular.
The Wii was also meant to be played at 480p, which is why it looks like crap.
No wonder HD adoption is so slow, it's pretty well pointless without any HD content.
Obviously, nothing is going to look as good as true hi-def video, but there's no reason upscaling your DVDs should make them look WORSE. Fiddle around with your settings on your HDTV, check avsforums.com and see if anyone has some recommendations for settings on your TV -- that helps a TON most of the time.
When I go to watch my DVDs, I put the picture into the appropriately titled "movie" mode for picture, and have fiddled with a couple color settings and voila -- my movies look a lot better.
I would suggest you check both the settings on your TV and your upscaling DVD player. There's no reason it should be as bad as you're suggesting.
Unless you got a television that has bad picture anyway, all of these problems should be solvable.
this weekend i got a 26 inch tv... if i sit in my usual chair it looks like shit with normal dvd player / digital tv. If i move one meter further away... it looks awesome.
have you calculated that into your equations when buying a big tv?
I blame the god damn movie industry and not being able to decide on HD DVD or BluRay. I've had a 50" HD set for a year and still haven't gotten any kind of High Definition DVD player because I don't want to be screwed if the industry goes the other way.
It makes the TV shows and games I play in HD super pretty though. However I wish there was more HD channels. I always see shit on the discovery channel and science channel that are like "WATCH THIS IN HD!" But comcast doesn't have the regular discovery channel in HD(Just Discovery HDTheatre, which just shows the same crap every day) or the science channel. It really chaps my ass.
From what I've read and personally observed your suppose to sit about double the screen size away from the TV.
Totally agree. Thanks to the generous return policies of Best Buy, Circuit City, etc, it'd definitely be worth trying out several different DVD players to see if you can get one that works to your satisfaction.
Tv will look like shit because 99% of stuff is analog still (hurry your ass up 2010, so we can get digital standard)
I agree with this 100%. I've got a Sharp Aquos 32" HDTV, and a Sony DVP-90V Upconverting DVD player. The DVD player I had to set to 1080i to actually have it upconvert that far, and all of my DVDs (except the old ones with poor "letterbox" transfers) look awesome. I had to do very little in the way of adjusting anything else to get excellent DVD playback.
I don't believe it - I'm on my THIRD PS3, and my FIRST XBOX360. What the heck?
The Nintendo Wii however doesn't look that great even with the component cables. Don't get me wrong, it isn't a deal breaker, but at the same I notice a lot of jagged edges.
The only thing i would say is worse 100% of the time would be PS2 output, it really looks like shit. But i dont have the component cables for it, so i cant say its the TV's fault or the PS2's fault.
The PS3 looks fucking downright beautiful. So do DVD's.
Bottom line is, before you take anything back or give up on HDTV, mess around with the settings to see if theres anything you can adjust. I would guess there is, and youll be much happier with the TV after you do.
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I notice the "jaggies" on the Wii even with component on my Samsung plasma, but it does a great job of scaling for older content, even 480i TV signals. It takes a period of time to adjust, but with the stuff you can watch in HD (sports in particular), it's amazing to see how clear TV can be.
If you have a computer, you can always play DVDs off your DVD drive and input to your TV via the VGA plug. When my Xbox was in the shop (3 rings of light --- grahhhh!!), I would plug my laptop into my TV whenever I wanted to watch a movie. As long as your graphics card can output at your TV's native resolution, it'll be like watching an "upscaled" signal
worked great for me, super sharp picture, etc. Much better than the Sony DVD player I had mentioned earlier in this thread.
Plus, you've got super-huge computer monitor ready for usage!
I spent a whole day watching Return of the King to get all of the colours/sharpness/brightness right so that there'd be a balance over a variety of scenes. Subsequently, all of my videogames/computer stuff looked great on the tv afterwards.
and then i got my 360 and shit looked better
your tv must be poopy
Movies i've watched on it so far being stuff like Casino Royale and Pan's Labyrinth both of which looked awesome.
watching standard tv does suck though, fuck that noise.
Some people also expect it to look awesome right out of the box, and it doesn't. My TV came and I had to recalibrate the colors (it's a rear-proj HD set, doesn't even have HDMI -- not that it matters, digital is digital), and I turned off a few of the filters as well. I think it's the comb filter that typically makes the picture jaggier, for instance.
Also, you don't need gold-plated HDMI cables. HDMI is a digital signal.
This has absolutely nothing to do with picture quality.
Ask anyone who has gone from analog to using a digital reciever and how the same channels do not change whatsoever in visual quality.
Now if they're comparing to newly available HD versions of those stations, thats a different story
I also have an upscaling "Freeview" box, which makes Freeview transmissions look pretty great at 720p, too.
The problem with the HD era is that, unless your TV has a fantastic scaler built in, SD material is going to look terrible without some sort of external scaler. Colour/contrast settings do make a big difference, too. I have external scalers, which I got cheap, and now everything looks brill.
Take some time to calibrate the TV and if you can take back your upscaling DVD player and swap it for a different one (possibly one recommended in this thread). One comment from avs stood out which is:
"Returned it. Good TV, but not so much for gaming, especially in SD. Swapped out for a Sony Bravia, KDL32S2010." Apparently there's a lag and no mention of a 'game' mode.
There seem to be a sizeable number of people mentioning they're taking it back due to SD performance though. May be worth that refund after all.
If you're delving in to the HD market then I'd highly recommend the AVS forums for getting some decent information on the set you're buying. When you're laying down that much cash, it's good to be informed.
PSN: SirGrinchX
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It doesn't matter the receiver so much as the channels are broadcasted in analog. I am saying, picture quality SHOULD improve some once all stations are required to broadcast in digital IF you have a HD TV and IF you have a digital receiver.
I'm curious which other sort of cable is carrying your digital signal.
DVI does digital.
Shogun Streams Vidya
If his TV doesn't have hdmi I really doubt it has dvi.
Also, I've seen some DVD players do some really, really horrible upconverting. Like, cable box bad. you might want to look at a new upconverting DVD player if yours is a POS like my last one.
I suspect that the analogue connection acted sort of like antialiasing on the picture from the DVDs, much like how an analogue NTSC TV looks acceptable even though a digital video of the same resolution at the same size will be pixellated beyond belief.
I don't know the exact size, but it was at least a 45" set, and we were sitting about 5-6 feet away.
There's also the better upconverter/different TV route, of course.
http://www.thelostworlds.net/
And I'm saying there is nothing about digital that makes the picture any better. I worked with the local cable provider for western Canada, it's just how it works. The signal still comes over the same copper cabling, in the same resolution and everything.
Different tvs can affect quality, different cables carrying the signal, and whether the signal is HD or not, but analog vs digital --> there just isnt a difference.
Maybe I'm just not understanding what you're saying. Anyways!
You guys were right about turning the Sharpness setting completely off. The picture looks a million times better, I think I'll be keeping this HDTV after all! I gotta figure how to calibrate it properly, now. I don't know the first thing. avsforums is a good place to look for that info?
Also @Marty81, I splurged on that gold plated, ferrite core HDMI cable. $6 at monoprice.com.
Also Also @Mr_Grinch. I played some F-Zero GX and noticed no lag at all. If there was lag, you'd know it with that game. Might I also mention that game is smooth as fucking silk in pro-scan... I've never been able to tell the difference between interlaced and pro-scan until now.