SD tv looks awful on HD tv, is it because I don't use a cable box?

[gorcorps]

I bought a (cheap) HD tv a while back. The free local HD channels look great, my 360 looks good and so do all of my recent DVDs played through the 360, but all of the SD cable channels look like absolute ass. I don't have a cable box at all, just a direct coax into the TV. I was just wondering if getting a cable box (comcast) and using component or HDMI to the tv would improve the quality of the SD signal much.

 

[Pheran]

That won't help. However, if you do get a cable box from Comcast you could get a number of HD stations, which of course will look much better. Also see:

http://www.digitalhome.ca/forum/showthread.php?t=18580

 

[gorcorps]

I already get some HD channels through my TV (it has a built in tuner). I get all the local stations in HD for free (fox, cbs, nbc) which means fantastic sunday football picture for free! And then after watching something look that good everything else looks horrible. If it's dark at all the screen will ghost like crazy, which it doesn't have a problem with HD picture.

 

[JackBurton]

Originally posted by: gorcorps
I bought a (cheap) HD tv a while back. The free local HD channels look great, my 360 looks good and so do all of my recent DVDs played through the 360, but all of the SD cable channels look like absolute ass. I don't have a cable box at all, just a direct coax into the TV. I was just wondering if getting a cable box (comcast) and using component or HDMI to the tv would improve the quality of the SD signal much.

There is your problem.

 

[gorcorps]

Originally posted by: JackBurton

Originally posted by: gorcorps
I bought a (cheap) HD tv a while back. The free local HD channels look great, my 360 looks good and so do all of my recent DVDs played through the 360, but all of the SD cable channels look like absolute ass. I don't have a cable box at all, just a direct coax into the TV. I was just wondering if getting a cable box (comcast) and using component or HDMI to the tv would improve the quality of the SD signal much.

There is your problem.

Understandable, but I refuse to believe something that looks great in HD, SD DVDs, and SD streaming vids can look so bad with cable.

 

[Shawn]

Because it's analog. SD will look crappy no matter what, but an analog picture looks even worse. Imperfections in the picture you might not have seen with an old SD tv are no visible and magnified. A DVD looks significantly better than cable TV. Also since you have a cheap HDTV it probably has a crappy scaler.

 

[Shadowknight]

Poor scaling. An hdtv has to scale 640x480 to its native resolution of 1280x720 or 1920x1080; the larger the screen, the worse it looks. With a better scaling chip can help, there's only so much you can do to make a standard-definition signal look decent on a large flat-panel TV.

 

[biggestmuff]

What is the size difference from your old tv to the new one? The larger the screen the better a viewer will be able to see artifacts and abnormalities.

 

[erwos]

Originally posted by: Shadowknight
Poor scaling. An hdtv has to scale 640x480 to its native resolution of 1280x720 or 1920x1080; the larger the screen, the worse it looks.

It's worse than that - not only does the signal need to be upscaled, it also needs to be deinterlaced. If your TV blows either of those operations (or both!), SDTV is going to look like crap.

 

[montypythizzle]

Analog looks like shit while some of the digital SD channels look not quite DVD quality but what you would expect from digital channels, on my 50" plasma.

 

[JackBurton]

I gotta say, my 60" plasma does a fantastic job with SD channels. Oddly enough, that was one of the things that impressed me the most about this set. The reason it looks so good is because of the video processor that comes with the TV. It just does a fantastic job of making crappy SD actually look very watchable. Obviously HD looks much better, but SD looks pretty dang good, for SD. Better than an HDTV on the market. The only bad part about it is, it doesn't come cheap.

 

[vi edit]

Originally posted by: JackBurton
I gotta say, my 60" plasma does a fantastic job with SD channels. Oddly enough, that was one of the things that impressed me the most about this set. The reason it looks so good is because of the video processor that comes with the TV. It just does a fantastic job of making crappy SD actually look very watchable. Obviously HD looks much better, but SD looks pretty dang good, for SD. Better than an HDTV on the market. The only bad part about it is, it doesn't come cheap.

Even with top of the line processing, a TV can't work magic. A crap feed is a crap feed. ESPN in particular has some absolutely horrible game feeds for their college and MNF games.

 

[JackBurton]

Originally posted by: vi edit

Originally posted by: JackBurton
I gotta say, my 60" plasma does a fantastic job with SD channels. Oddly enough, that was one of the things that impressed me the most about this set. The reason it looks so good is because of the video processor that comes with the TV. It just does a fantastic job of making crappy SD actually look very watchable. Obviously HD looks much better, but SD looks pretty dang good, for SD. Better than an HDTV on the market. The only bad part about it is, it doesn't come cheap.

Even with top of the line processing, a TV can't work magic. A crap feed is a crap feed. ESPN in particular has some absolutely horrible game feeds for their college and MNF games.

Oh, I agree. Junk in equals junk out. However, most SD feeds aren't bad and most people just want it to look as good as their CRT they had before. A good video processor can help with that. Will it come close to HD? No. Will it look much better with a good processor? Yes. The LCDs and DLPs out today have junk processors, even the top of the line Samsung and Sonys. That is why SD looks so bad on them. On the other hand, Pioneer, Runco, Fujitsu (when they were still in business) and I believe B&O have GREAT video processors and the SD feeds looks pretty dang good on them. Again, I was really impressed with how good SD looked on a 60" screen. It was actually more than watchable.

 

[rdp6]

My cable provider has ~80 SD channels and a few HD channels unencrypted on its coax. The digital 480i channels don't look any better than the SVHS output of my Dish Network STB on my 52" Samsung LCD. I guess they aren't *bad* but they do suck compared to HD sources.