New LCD TV

I don't know if this is the right place to ask this question, but I'll ask it anyway. I just bought a $2,000 dollar Sony 40" 1080 LCD tv (Sony KDL-40V2500). We don't have an HD box, but do have some nice Monster cables and all of that stuff. When I hooked up my DirectTV box to the tv, the picture quality is absolutely horrible, even worse than my old crappy tv. The dvd's look pretty good, but nothing like it did in the store.

When I turn on a dvd it flashes 480i in the left corner. I'm not a genius, but isn't that pretty bad? How do i get the resolution higher than that? Anything will help. Thanks in advance.

Mark

Reply to
Miggidy
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Didn't it come with a manual?

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Reply to
CJT

Yeah, but it doesn't explain how to change it. I read every page. It just says it supports all of those resolutions. Its very annoying!

Reply to
Miggidy

Doesn't it have a Menu button?

Reply to
Homer J Simpson

Yeah, there's nothing in the menu that has to do with the resolution, though.

Reply to
Miggidy

480i is standard def TV resolution, it'll look pretty horrible on a digital TV with a native resolution of 720P. You'll need a DVD player that supports progressive scan and then you have to enable it in the DVD player. 480P is as high as standard DVDs go, anything higher you're scaling in either the player or the TV. You'll have to use a HD source or wait for HD-DVD or Blu-Ray in order to take advantage of your TV it its native resolution.
Reply to
James Sweet

Ok, now it is starting to make more sense. Thank you very much, I really appreciate it!

Reply to
Miggidy

480i is SD (standard definition) TV. If your DVD player supports it, you can change it to 480p, but it may not make much of a difference. DVD's are natively 480i, and 480p requires the player to do some upconversion of it's own. This oddly can cause some LOSS of horizontal resolution.

One issue with fixed resolution TV's is that they must convert any input to their native resolution. In the case of SD inputs, they often do all sorts of processing in an attempt to make it look higher res than it is.

480(i or p) is about 704 or 720 horizontally. (1280x720 and 1920x1080 are the HD formats.) Upconverting does not actually increase resolution. If the data is not there originally, you cannot recover it. All upconverting does is GUESS what to fill in the 'missing' information by using nearby pixels to average out something.

On top of that, most TV's also boost sharpness, which has the side effect of also boosting noise.

For your TV, I would NOT use the VIVID settting, which just exaggerates noise and other issues. Use Custom and turn down the sharpness.

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Reply to
Andrew Rossmann

Thanks Andrew! I noticed when I put it on VIVID it looked much worse than "custom" or "standard." I think I also put the sharpness almost as high as it would go (along with some other things.) I'll turn that down and see how it looks. Thanks for your help!

Reply to
Miggidy

Yup You have got the problem that the sales guy will never tell you. I'am a servece tech for BB and most of todays sets will look horible on an anologe signal. Meaning basic cable or your standard DVD player.however there are a couple of cheap dvd players that sony and samsung put out that upconvert youe signal to 1080. It is NOT HD but it looks a whole lot better. When you go to HD though cable or direct tv you will never go back....On the other hand there is a 26, 32, 37 inch set out there now that looks good on anologe and WOWO on hd, and that is the philips 26,32,37 mf231d...All the techs in my shop go crazy over this unit .. check them out

Reply to
David Naylor

Upconverting DVD players rarely improve much. They cannot add information that is not there to start with. At best they increase the number of scan lines without introducing artifacts. If the scaling, and perhaps deinterlacing, is better in the player than the display, the upconverting player will look better. If the scaling, and/or, deinterlacing and pulldown are better in the display, as most better quality sets are, the upconverting player is a waste of resources.

Some HD sets look better than otheres with lower resolution or noisy sources. This is something that varies greatly. Generally, the traditional TV makers do a better job of handling poor quality NTSC and digital sources on HD displays. Sony's DRC in its most recent two versions is one of the best systems for dealing with lousy 480i sources.

DirecTV is notorious for compressing HD signals at times, and SD most of the time to unacceptable levels. OTA ATSC signals are nearly always better and HD on cable systems is often better.

Leonard

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Reply to
Leonard Caillouet

see sony for some support:

formatting link

after you read the manual you will determ> I don't know if this is the right place to ask this question, but I'll

Reply to
buffalobill

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