chump

Hi,

My Dad has just bought himself a 32" JVC LCD TV. I checked out all of the reviews for it before we chose the model he went for to make sure he was getting a good one.

Anyway he's got a terrestrial tv aerial plugged into the tv and picks up the Digital TV Channels using the built in Digital Receiver.

Now i know that a regular non-digital terrestrial signal is always going to look crap on an LCD TV but to be honest so does the Digital picture! I was shocked at how bad it looks. Grainy picture and during movement there is tonnes of pixilation...

Thinking it might just be the signal i hooked up a DVD player using an RGB scart and the picture is just as crap. It almost looked like it was snowing in Saving Private Ryan - the pixilation was that bad during movement!!

So whats wrong? Any ideas?

Thanks

GrollySTI

I'm not saying this is the problem but sometimes new sets have all the fancy techno stuff turned on ie Dynamic Picture,Motion Compensation,Noise reduction etc etc.
Turn all that crap off and see if it makes a difference.

Scooby Dooby Blue

Watching this thread with interest.

I was hugely disappointed with my 37" plazzy.
Sky looks so bad it makes me cringe.

Recently bought an expensive component video cable for the DVD player and this noticeably improved the picture quality.

Unfortunately, scart is the only connection option from the Sky box so looks like i'm stuck with a diabolical picture.

delbert

Could try an expensive gold plated RGB scart cable, Ive got a Lg32lx2r and got say pitcure is really good even sky looks pretty good. Check out http://www.avforums.co.uk there will be someone over there that can help

chump

its just gutting for both of us when he spends £1300 on supposedly new and 'better' technology and it looks terrible compared to his old trusty CRT....

stevem2k

£1300 on the technology , £1.30 on the cable ?

bob269

LCD has never claimed to be better than CRT, the advantage it has is the ablility to manufacture bigger screens without having to fill 2/3 of your living room with the rear of the tv.

chump

ok but i'd expect them to be at least comparable....they're not even close in terms of picture quality....

chump

how is a more expensive aeriel lead going to make any difference?

JackClark

I bought my LCD knowing that the quality would be down on CRT for TV broadcasts. Xbox 360 in HD, now that's a different deal.

bob269

The 360 HD is awesome, i've also d/l a couple of hd trailers from xbox live, quality is comparable from when we first switched from vhs to dvd.

The hd dvd is not necessarily going to blow you away, however it gives you the quality but on a screen 32" > 60"+

Current dvd's dont contain the resolution to look good on larger tv's, anybody who says they look good on a 60" plasma need their eyes poking out

TopBanana

Should have gone for a plasma

jowl

You do need a decent cable to get the best out of an LCD tv.

Also, it takes a fair bit of fine tuning with the settings to get a better picture. Even then some things - and sport/footie was worse for me can be bad.

My first 30" LCD was terrible - I sent it back. Now I've got a Sharp P50 series - designed for PAL (SD) broadcasts but will display HD content too (and it still looks great)

It's sort of a compromise until HDTV broadcasts are up and running (about 5 years away on terrestrial)

Oh yeah, http://www.avforums.com - great source of information

jameswrx

iTrader: (4)

I agree that the picture looks dodgy. I've seen one running sky broadcast and wasn't impressed with it, appeared to have small spheres everywhere.

rmtypeR

I think what's happening is the LCD screen is too good... it shows all the compression on the DVD MPEG2 that gets missed on a CRT TV. Also, if you send a picture at a resolution that is lower than the sceen it will look bad because the screen will scale it up to fit - if you've got an LCD monitor try setting windows to 640x480 and you'll see what I mean. DVD's are under 800x600 where as the screen is probably about 1280x768.

Might be worth checking that the TV is getting a proper RGB signal as well. Just because it's a scart socket coming out of the freeview or DVD etc, doesn't guarantee that the signal is RGB as some scarts send s-video out (often if they're are 2 scart sockets, 1 is RGB and the other is s-video). On my freeview the scart is RGB but there is a menu option to choose whether the output is RGB or not.

chump

im just glad that i found out how crap they are by seeing my Dads before i went out and buy one. I'll be sticking to my 32" CRT for definite now for quite a while to come!

jowl

My old Sharp CRT broke so I needed a newone. After swearing I'd not buy another Sharp TV, I cought the Aquos P50's series LCD TV.

If you want a good LCD for SD broadcasts try that. I couldn't recommend it enough

http://www.sharp.co.uk/Category.aspx?SubID=131

DJ Dunk

iTrader: (5)

My Loewe 32" LCD looks the business. Yes, SD signals like Sky Digital will look grainy, but as said, you're just seeing detail that was previously hidden by the blurring pixels by the CRT.

Get it all connected up right and its more than acceptable to watch Sky until HD comes along, from a suitable viewing distance my picture is as good as my old Sony Wega CRT but even better colour reproduction.

With the 360 hooked up via component, its just awesome

Hanley

I recently bought a Toshiba 42" High Def LCD TV and was dissapointed with the picture.

DVD and X-Box 360 on HD was amazing but Sky, even over S-Video, was a very poor picture.

As GrollySTI said you need to mess around with the settings.

I changed the settings to the following:

Backlight - 30

Contrast - 70

Brightness - 50

Colour - 50

Tint - 0

Sharpness - 0

Black Stretch - Off

MPEG NR - Off

DNR - Auto

Color Temperature - Normal


My TV also has another button which changes the 'Picture Mode' from 1, 2, 3 or M. I fund setting this to 3 in conjunction wit the settings above increased my picture quality about 500% (no exaggeration)

I'm not saying this is the best way to get a better picture but it worked on mine, also after I changed all the settings the picture seemed to gradually get better over the course of a few hours (not sure why)

Might be worth trolling through the settings and experimenting which set gives you the best picture.

I also second the remarks about the quality of the leads, you need a very high quality scart or s-video lead to maximize your picture quality.

Hope this helps

Frosty The Snowman

Cables can make loads of difference. I went from a regular free with my TV SCART to a £35 RGB only, ie no sound to the TV, SCART on my CRT TV and the difference was astounding, went from being very unhappy with my new TV to stunned at the quality.

I have a Philips and the pixelplus 2 fancy picture processing is dire, couldn't get a good picture out of it at all, even on DVD's. I turned it off and the picture was excellent.

I would suggest not giving up on the LCD panel and nipping over to avforums in their LCD section as they will probably be able to help.

ozzy

chump, make sure your aerial lead doesn't have dodgy connectors. I've had to remake some leads for my new LCD TV. Give it a wiggle (the aerial lead that is) to see if it makes any difference to the picture quality. A really expensive aerial lead won't make that big a difference, but a pre-made moulded one could.

If we're talking about low-quality vs high-quality cables for SCART, HDMI, Component, etc.. then that's a whole different thing alltogether.

Frosty The Snowman

D'oh, silly me only concentrated on the comment about playing a DVD and it was still naff

What sort of aerial has your Dad got? It's possible a normal terrestrial aerial isn't up to the job. Also has he used digital terrestrial before? Is the area he's in covered at the moment you can check here

chump

thanks for the comments. the aerial is brand new. he's just moved into a brand new flat. signal strength is excellent. guy that fitted it had one of those wavelength thingies and the signal was more than enough. So the cables are new and the signal is excellent yet the picture is poo.

Gonna play around with the settings a bit more but have done that for a while already.

Like i said - its put me off buying one.....

ozzy

it's either a dodgy one or just ****. My Sammy 32" one is perfect; even makes **** terrestrial look half decent

Proby521

iTrader: (1)

My old man paid nearly £1800 for a 32" SONY Bravia HD LCD. The picture is AWESOME on both digital and analogue. He is still using ****e quality old 'pound shop' scart leads, but I honestly cant see how the picure could be better (until HD broadcast). I will look at one of these when I'm due to change my tv, picture really in my opinion is as good if not better than my 32" Quintrix Panny.(100Hz). Everytime I go around his house, can't belive the sharpness/clarity and boldness of the picture.

Proby