noob HDTV question about picture quality

[kranky]

Don't have an HDTV. Over the Christmas holidays, we visited two different families who had HDTV. And while I'm not very picky, I have to say both looked like crap, with shadowing and oversaturation of colors. Two different TVs, one on cable and the other on DirectTV satellite.

My brother showed me his HDTV, cycling through the various display modes and going between regular and HD channels. Clearly the HD channels shown on the HD display mode was impressive in detail but it still had shadowing and oversaturated color.

So we are considering going to FIOS to save some money and that would mean we'd receive HD programming. My wife wants to get an HDTV if we get FIOS, but frankly I don't want a picture like the two setups I've seen.

Maybe if we were farther away from the picture the shadowing wouldn't be as distracting, but in our case we'll only be 6-8' or so away from the TV. Not enough space for a giant wall-mounted TV where we can sit across the room. Maybe too close for HDTV?

So is this shadowing problem solvable? I assume I can balance the colors with controls on the TV.

 

[Baked]

Did you take note of the make and model of the HDTVs? When you say shadowing, are you talking about ghosting and blur when watching fast action videos? Newer HDTVs have 120Hz refresh rate to solve this problem. As for over saturation, it's just poor calibration. Get a HDTV calibration DVD from amazon.com and follow instructions on screen. Or you can go over to AVS forums and see what kinda settings people are using for their HDTV.

 

[PurdueRy]

Most people leave their TV on "Vivid" video settings...that's problem #1.

 

[kranky]

Don't remember who made the TVs. The shadowing/ghosting was on all images. It looked the same to me as what you can have on a PC monitor with a poor quality video cable. Everything had a faint secondary image offset to the right a bit. If there were words with large letters on the screen like you'd have in a commercial, it was very obvious, as the ghost image was plainly visible in the white space between the letters.

Good to know a calibration DVD would address the color issue if one exists.

 

[Peter Trend]

But you cant calibrate an LCD to anywhere near the extent that you can calibrate a CRT monitor.

You should bear in mind that most "HD" satellite channels at the moment aren't broadcast at 1080p @50fps/100Hz+ refresh rate ("full" HD). Most often they broadcast at 720p
There could also be problems if the signal is interlaced instead of progressive scan, but this should only be noticable in scenes of rapid motion:

http://www.hdtvorg.co.uk/focus/resolution.htm

"1080i: 1,920x1,080 pixel resolution. High-definition picture that is displayed interlaced. Each odd line of the picture is displayed, followed by each even line, and the resulting image is not as smooth as a progressive feed. 1080i is therefore a more detailed picture suited to documentaries and wildlife footage, but less suitable for action-oriented material such as sports and movies.

1080p: 1,920x1,080 pixel resolution. High-definition picture that is displayed progressively. Each line is displayed on the screen simultaneously, therefore it is smoother than an interlaced picture. This is the ultimate high-definition standard -- the most detailed picture, displayed progressively."

"There are two main formats for HDTV, namely 720p (i.e. a 720 line picture progressively scanned 50 times a second) and 1080i (1080 lines interlaced at 50 cycles per second). The picture resolution of a high definition digital TV is about 4 times greater than a typical 576 line TV picture."

 

[spidey07]

Peter Trend, that article is over two years old and full of misinfomation and outright lies.

Kranky - what you describe is by having the TV in vivid or "way too much sharpness and edge enhancement" mode. Most folks use this because it "looks sharper" when in reality it's more like "kill all detail and have ghosting like a mo-fo".

If you buy a quality display and set it up and connect it properly you should not see that. A lot of TVs actually need the sharpness set to complete zero to remove the ringing/ghosting.

 

[kranky]

Thanks everyone. I'll take these concerns out of the decision making process.

 

[PurdueRy]

Am I the only one who feels the need to set everything up correctly for friends and family? For instance, went to my future in-laws place and their new surround sound system was not connected correctly and hence they were using 5CH stereo for a DVD. So I spent a few hours rewiring everything for them correctly. Then I went to my fiancee's sister's house and it was fairly obvious that the aspect ratio of the DVD player was set to 4:3 for her 16:9. So before the movie got really started I had to go and change the setting for her.

Maybe I just can't let these things go...

 

[freegeeks]

Originally posted by: PurdueRy
Am I the only one who feels the need to set everything up correctly for friends and family? For instance, went to my future in-laws place and their new surround sound system was not connected correctly and hence they were using 5CH stereo for a DVD. So I spent a few hours rewiring everything for them correctly. Then I went to my fiancee's sister's house and it was fairly obvious that the aspect ratio of the DVD player was set to 4:3 for her 16:9. So before the movie got really started I had to go and change the setting for her.

Maybe I just can't let these things go...

95% have no clue about things like aspect ratio. These are the same people who complain about black bars on their shiny new HD set

 

[Peter Trend]

Originally posted by: spidey07
Peter Trend, that article is over two years old and full of misinfomation and outright lies.

Kranky - what you describe is by having the TV in vivid or "way too much sharpness and edge enhancement" mode. Most folks use this because it "looks sharper" when in reality it's more like "kill all detail and have ghosting like a mo-fo".

If you buy a quality display and set it up and connect it properly you should not see that. A lot of TVs actually need the sharpness set to complete zero to remove the ringing/ghosting.

Please could you point out which parts are misinformation or outright lies? I genuinely want to know. I have an examination on the fundamentals of video, including HD resolution, broadcasting standards etc in about 2 weeks, and the information in that article seemed to fit with what I'd been taught, but maybe I remembered something wrong then? I would definitely like to know, if you don't mind taking the trouble.

I thought at least the part I quoted was true? And I didn't think Sky had given enough bandwidth to their transmissions to fit a 1080p signal. But again, if I am wrong please tell me in what respect!

 

[thomsbrain]

I have seen a lot of people with rear projection TVs where they don't have the different colors even remotely lined up with each other. Red will be off by like half an inch, and they don't seem to notice! But I'm pretty sure this comes down to calibration.

There shouldn't be anything intrinsically wrong with the HDTV signal itself.

 

[Booty]

Originally posted by: PurdueRy
Am I the only one who feels the need to set everything up correctly for friends and family? For instance, went to my future in-laws place and their new surround sound system was not connected correctly and hence they were using 5CH stereo for a DVD. So I spent a few hours rewiring everything for them correctly. Then I went to my fiancee's sister's house and it was fairly obvious that the aspect ratio of the DVD player was set to 4:3 for her 16:9. So before the movie got really started I had to go and change the setting for her.

Maybe I just can't let these things go...

No, you're not the only one. I'm far from a home theater expert (working on that), but if/when I know something's DEFINITELY not set up right, I HAVE to fix it. Call it a pet peeve or mild OCD... either way, it drives me crazy!

 

[Madwand1]

As the resolution of your devices increase, the easier it is to see the the flaws upstream. Even many so-called HDTV programs have a SD center with fluff around, and sometimes it's just SD content in a 16:9 perspective passing for HD. And of course the SD programs will appear in all their lack of glory on a larger HD screen. Finally, even true HD programming can look bad when makeup or other such details are much easier to notice.

Ghosting is common in SD material, and other such artifacts are common in material that's overly compressed (for storage or transmission).

Until the entire field matures, living with some flaws in the upstream or legacy material is a fact of life with HD.

 

[kranky]

Now I am starting to re-think the decision to go HD. It sounds like moving to HD gives you a great HD picture but a worse SD picture.

I am pretty sure I won't like ghosting on SD broadcasts, and I know for sure my wife won't as she watches TCM almost exclusively and they aren't HD.

Is it possible to reduce the display size to eliminate the ghosting? I'd rather watch a smaller picture without ghosting if that's an option.

 

[spidey07]

kranky - I get no ghosting at all and SD looks pretty decent. That's on a 67 inch screen from 9-10 feet away. Go to a store and ask to have some SD material put on preferably SD television. Then turn the picture mode to standard or movie and turn the sharpness all the way down and see if you still have ghosting. Or try it out at your friends place. But if it's a cheap TV with a bad scaler you can't really get around that so don't go cheap.

I'd hate for you to miss out on HD glorious goodness because you saw televisions that just had bad settings or just a bad TV.

 

[krotchy]

Originally posted by: PurdueRy
Am I the only one who feels the need to set everything up correctly for friends and family? For instance, went to my future in-laws place and their new surround sound system was not connected correctly and hence they were using 5CH stereo for a DVD. So I spent a few hours rewiring everything for them correctly. Then I went to my fiancee's sister's house and it was fairly obvious that the aspect ratio of the DVD player was set to 4:3 for her 16:9. So before the movie got really started I had to go and change the setting for her.

Maybe I just can't let these things go...

:thumbsup: I am the same way. I always end up messing with my friend's Systems/TV's to get them looking better when I am invited over for a game/fight/whatever. My dad is the worst culprit, since he has like 6 HDTV's in the house and he never touches the settings from the factory until I see the TV for the first time (I live 750 miles away).

 

[krotchy]

Originally posted by: kranky
Now I am starting to re-think the decision to go HD. It sounds like moving to HD gives you a great HD picture but a worse SD picture.

I am pretty sure I won't like ghosting on SD broadcasts, and I know for sure my wife won't as she watches TCM almost exclusively and they aren't HD.

Is it possible to reduce the display size to eliminate the ghosting? I'd rather watch a smaller picture without ghosting if that's an option.

Going HD doesn't reduce the quality of SD unless you buy a crap TV. Make sure you get a good brand with a nice scalar (Panasonic, Samsung, Sony, Pioneer etc.) and the SD can actually look better in the end.

However a smaller display (from the same brand/series) will always make the SD look better from a fixed distance, since you are basically making the details smaller so problems are harder to spot. Still I don't know anyone who has said they bought too big of a TV, but plenty say they bought to small. The only way your TV is "too big" for standard definition is if it is a crappy TV.

 

[Madwand1]

Originally posted by: krotchy
The only way your TV is "too big" for standard definition is if it is a crappy TV.

My point was that my TV, a good one, is too big for crappy SD. It is not too big for decent SD DVD's -- these look great. But the fact is that there still a ton of crappy SD on the air and around these days, and a good, big TV will make that clearer.

I don't however recommend sticking with SD just because it makes the crap look less bad -- instead move to better playback and better sources over time.

 

[DaveSimmons]

Consider a Netflix subscription instead of raising your cable bill, if you can't do both.

Most major movies now come out on blu-ray, and they look very nice.

 

[heyheybooboo]

Originally posted by: Madwand1
As the resolution of your devices increase, the easier it is to see the the flaws upstream. Even many so-called HDTV programs have a SD center with fluff around, and sometimes it's just SD content in a 16:9 perspective passing for HD. And of course the SD programs will appear in all their lack of glory on a larger HD screen. Finally, even true HD programming can look bad when makeup or other such details are much easier to notice.

Ghosting is common in SD material, and other such artifacts are common in material that's overly compressed (for storage or transmission).

Until the entire field matures, living with some flaws in the upstream or legacy material is a fact of life with HD.

This.

Words can't describe the suckage of analog SD cable on an HDTV

 

[spidey07]

Originally posted by: heyheybooboo

This.

Words can't describe the suckage of analog SD cable on an HDTV

That's the fault of your cable company and a crappy TV.

 

[manimal]

Sd has always looked better on a plasma to me. We end up watching most tv on our 58 panny but movies usually end up on the projo or on the LN52a550 in the master bedroom.Real ISF calibration made my 550 look much better than what I did temporarily with a thx disk in sd as well.funny thing I gave my 4 year old 720 plasma to my mom and it probably looks better than any lcd I have ever seen do sd

 

[Robor]

Originally posted by: spidey07

Originally posted by: heyheybooboo

This.

Words can't describe the suckage of analog SD cable on an HDTV

That's the fault of your cable company and a crappy TV.

That's not my experience. I don't watch much SD programming but outside of Southpark every SD show I watch looks pretty bad. I have a Sony LCD RP + FiOS and SD channels look terrible. Yeah, my TV is older (~ 6 years) but I have friends with Brighthouse HD + a newer 55" Sony LCD and theirs looks terrible in SD. Another friend with a newer 60" Sony LCD + FiOS and it looks bad with SD channels.