TV is fuzzy with TV and sharp with blueray

[wooohooo]

I'm staying for 2 weeks at my parents place and we bought them a sony bravia TV about 3 months ago. When we watch anything in blueray it looks fantastic, but when we switch to normal cable and play on the xbox it looks like crap. The xbox isn't on HDMI and the normal yellow, red and white plug but it looks terrible. TV looks pretty bad.

Our other Sony TV that is a WEGA so about 5 years old or so... looks perfectly sharp watching cable non HD. I don't think my settings are messed up enough to cause this blurryness... or does the TV just suck?

Thanks!

[BlackArcher101]

The joy of new technology. Crappy signals look crapier but good signals look even better.

[Boblobla]

If you are just plugging coax cable into the back of the TV then it will always look terrible. For the XBOX try using the component cables, not just the video and audio. I 5 year old sony should have component input.

[photon]

Yeah the resolution of the TV is far far higher than the resolution of the cable signal. That's why people are getting high def cable/satellite boxes, to see the shows in high def.

For the Xbox if you get component cables rather than the standard yellow, red and white ones it'll look quite a bit better.

[ken0042]

Think of it as listening to AM radio. If you listen on a single speaker little radio it doesn't sound all that bad. Tune to AM on a $3000 home theatre system and it will sound like crap.

[You Need a Thneed]

Composite Video can only send signals up to 480i. Composite Video can show up to 1080i (or 1080p?). 1080p has at least 10x the video information per second as 480i.

Showing a 480i signal on a TV with 1920x1080 resolution is exactly like taking a little picture you find on the internet, and blowing it up to print on a full page of paper. It's going to look terrible.

[Roast Beef]

Originally Posted by You Need a Thneed

Composite Video can only send signals up to 480i. Composite Video can show up to 1080i (or 1080p?). 1080p has at least 10x the video information per second as 480i.

Showing a 480i signal on a TV with 1920x1080 resolution is exactly like taking a little picture you find on the internet, and blowing it up to print on a full page of paper. It's going to look terrible.

Composite Video (Yellow/Red/White) is 480i at the most.
Component (Red/Green/Blue) Video can do anything between 480i and 1080p.

Standard Def TV is always going to look like crap on an HD display. The Xbox with Composite video will also look like crap on an HDTV as the most you can get out of it is 480i. The only way to fix the problem is to get an HD box through your cable provider and to upgrade the Xbox cables to wither component or HDMI.

[HOOT]

I'm going to guess they have cable, and not HD or at least digital service.

HD=Awesome
Digital=Decent
Cable=Brutal!

[PIMking]

let me ask this.

Is direct tv digital?

Because I bought a vizio 1080p tv and it looked okay from a distance but like garbage when sitting within 6'

It (dtv) looks great and clear and almost perfect on my regular boob tubes.

I have a maybe 10 year old orion 20" tv in the bedroom and an ION 32" in the living room and DTV looks fantastic on it.

Because If I buy another tv i'm going to be pissed if I have to spend 199$ on a direct tv HD box when not all the channels are in HD.
I returned it because I spent HOURS trying to get the colors to look right.

[Vulcan]

I think the HD TV makers are less inclined to make them have a good SD picture because SD sources are disappearing so having HDTVs with good upconverting software is no longer a priority.

You can cheat and use composite cables in your component connections for your XBox, if you watch what you are doing.

[Vulcan]

Originally Posted by PIMking

let me ask this.

Is direct tv digital?

Because I bought a vizio 1080p tv and it looked okay from a distance but like garbage when sitting within 6'

It (dtv) looks great and clear and almost perfect on my regular boob tubes.

I have a maybe 10 year old orion 20" tv in the bedroom and an ION 32" in the living room and DTV looks fantastic on it.

Because If I buy another tv i'm going to be pissed if I have to spend 199$ on a direct tv HD box when not all the channels are in HD.
I returned it because I spent HOURS trying to get the colors to look right.

You are going to be pissed.

[wooohooo]

Thanks for the great replies!

So basically because my TV is HD compliant now, normal TV will look terrible? What if I get an HD box, will the normal channels that aren't HD look okay?

[sclitheroe]

I think you should walk to a neighbor's house that has an HD flatscreen and compare if possible. Either something is wrong, or your expectations are way out of whack. SD cable on my 37" Aquos doesn't look THAT bad, and its certainly not worse than the crap tube TV it replaced.

I often watch 320x240 h.264 encoded video on the Aquos via AppleTV, which is technically half SD resolution, and even THAT is certainly watchable for disposable recordings of SD TV broadcasts (like the wife's soaps and stuff).

Also, how close are you sitting? If you walk right up to an HD set running an SD broadcast, it does look very muddy compared to a bluray. But at a normal sitting distance its not that bad.

[wooohooo]

Originally Posted by sclitheroe

I think you should walk to a neighbor's house that has an HD flatscreen and compare if possible. Either something is wrong, or your expectations are way out of whack. SD cable on my 37" Aquos doesn't look THAT bad, and its certainly not worse than the crap tube TV it replaced.

I often watch 320x240 h.264 encoded video on the Aquos via AppleTV, which is technically half SD resolution, and even THAT is certainly watchable for disposable recordings of SD TV broadcasts (like the wife's soaps and stuff).

Also, how close are you sitting? If you walk right up to an HD set running an SD broadcast, it does look very muddy compared to a bluray. But at a normal sitting distance its not that bad.

There's a noticeable decrease in quality. The letters are a little blurry, just not very clear. It's kind of like watching TV on one of those extremely cheap TV's you see at walmart.

I'm sitting far enough and it's still blurry.

[HOOT]

Originally Posted by wooohooo

Thanks for the great replies!

So basically because my TV is HD compliant now, normal TV will look terrible? What if I get an HD box, will the normal channels that aren't HD look okay?

No it would just be a digital picture. They would need to subscribe to HD programming to get the best picture for your television.

And before you say they don't need it or want it...yes they do.

[Igottago]

Originally Posted by HOOT

No it would just be a digital picture. They would need to subscribe to HD programming to get the best picture for your television.

And before you say they don't need it or want it...yes they do.

Not aiming this at the OP...but I also find it hilarious when people go out and buy HDTV's yet refuse to go for an HDTV subscribtion. Might as well keep the old CRT plugged in if your gonna stick with a standard definition TV service.

[Bob]

Originally Posted by Igottago

Not aiming this at the OP...but I also find it hilarious when people go out and buy HDTV's yet refuse to go for an HDTV subscribtion. Might as well keep the old CRT plugged in if your gonna stick with a standard definition TV service.

I've heard of many people returning their HDTVs claiming they were broken after they watched an NFL game or something with regular cable and were turned off by the abysmal quality. A surprising number of people (1 in 5!!!) seem to think an HDTV will magically make everything look better all on its own.

[HOOT]

Originally Posted by Igottago

Not aiming this at the OP...but I also find it hilarious when people go out and buy HDTV's yet refuse to go for an HDTV subscribtion. Might as well keep the old CRT plugged in if your gonna stick with a standard definition TV service.

It's like buying a Porsche and never putting gas in it.

[GoinAllTheWay]

Originally Posted by HOOT

It's like buying a Porsche and never putting gas in it.

It's like taking the best day of your life and putting it in your mouth.

[Shazam]

There are ways to make an SD picture look better on an HD monitor.

The Shaw Motorola boxes do a pretty average job of upconverting to 1080i - you need to set this up in the setup menu.

There are other solutions. Many receivers now have some sort of Faroudja upconverter that will do a fairly decent job of cleaning up that picture. DVDO is another solution that's really, really good but costs a fair bit.