Bad pictures

[Kevio]

Over the past couple years I've seen a lot of bad pictures on both plasma and LCD displays in friends' houses, at hotels and in sports bars and the like. SD looks especially bad on some of these sets. The limited SD resolution is blocky and in your face whereas a CRT tends to somehow soften it for you.

Even at HD, I've been annoyed by abrupt loss of detail whenever the camera moves. I'm not sure if this is an artifact of the digital encoding or something more fundamental about the displays. Other things I've recoiled from are newscasters with a strange overly-smooth complexion and pictures with subtly but disturbingly blown out or distorted color.

Anyone want to comment on the state of the art with regards to some of these issues?

I have seen plenty of gorgeous flat-screen pictures at trade shows, television studios, retail and other professional environments.

Why the big gap between what's possible and what often happens at home?

Anyone want to try to convince me that it is time to let go of my CRT?

[blackraven]

There are some plasma's and LCD's that handle a SD picture fairly well but they don't approach the quality of ED or HD. Most do a poor job with SD. Consumer reports many times rates Plasma's and LCD's SD picture quality. You have to take this with a grain of salt, because when they do the rating, the TV's are being compared to each other, not to CRT TV's made for SD.
SOME of the Samsung and Sony LCD models give a decent SD picture. And SOME of the Panasonic Plasma's do a good job too.

[pixelthis]

SD over a digital cable box isnt that bad, at least not on my set, I set the box to 480i and let the TV's deinterlacer do the job.
A lot of what you describe will end with analog broadcasting.
A lot of people save on a cable box, which would improve the pic, they probably wont
have a choice when analog stations go dark.
As for the state of HD, it varies, its new and that is to be expected.
Remember NTSC was around for decades.
"Fake" HD seems to be fading out of the pic, TNT had a presentation of teh lord of teh rings trilogy this weekend and it was nothing short of spectacular.
If you think its bad now, its paradise compared to when I got my first HD set, there
was next to nothing on except the HD demo on public TV

[RoadRunner6]

I first bought a 768p 50" Panny plasma about 5 months ago and then changed it after 2 months for the exact same series except in 1080p (Costco). I should note that the 1080p also had an improved contrast ratio. On the 768p I saw a little of what I would say was very slight softening on some faces or as you say, overly-smooth complexion.

The 1080p was a noticable improvement even at 25 feet. The 768p was generally excellent IMO and the 1080p is superb. I am completely pleased with the 1080p model, no complaints at all. The PQ on HD faces is perfect (you will see every pimple and ingrown hair). The Panasonic does a very good job on SD signals and is definitely better than the Sony 27" CRT (I had two of them). Blu-Ray is stunning.

I would definitely give up the CRT. You won't be disapponted as long as you get a top quality plasma. Lots of the complaints on SD material is from owners of cheap sets. In plasma stay with Panasonic, Samsung or Pioneer (expensive).

[jvc]

When you see a set that looks the way you mentioned, first thing to do is look to see how the cable/sat is connected. I've seen cases where the installer used s-video to hook things up, even on an HD tv (idiots). If they are friends, ask if you can look at the settings. Chances are, a/some settings are wrong. People like to do things themselves, and a lot of them do it wrong.

They say that the bigger the screen size, the worse that SD channels look. I recently got a Samsung 61" LED DLP, and my SD channels look very good. I was really surprised, because I was expecting worse. I've had comments from visitors about how good the SD channels look.

[Ed_in_Tx]

Over the past couple years I've seen a lot of bad pictures on both plasma and LCD displays in friends' houses, at hotels and in sports bars and the like. SD looks especially bad on some of these sets. The limited SD resolution is blocky and in your face whereas a CRT tends to somehow soften it for you.

That bugged me a lot too with the first sets I looked at. The SD quality varies a lot with different brands and sets. The newer Sony Bravia 2 processor in the set I bought last summer does a good job on SD, good enough to satisfy me. I have several SD sources like my old big dish satellite receiver I still rely on.

Even at HD, I've been annoyed by abrupt loss of detail whenever the camera moves. I'm not sure if this is an artifact of the digital encoding or something more fundamental about the displays. Other things I've recoiled from are newscasters with a strange overly-smooth complexion and pictures with subtly but disturbingly blown out or distorted color.

Some of that lag is caused by the processing speed. Plus, TV stations, cable and satellite companies downscale the bit rate so they can fit in more channels. The OTA stations scale back the HD bit rate to accommodate the additional sub channels. I see the lag even on a CRT set with a DTV converter box, so it isn't the LCD display, it's the whole digital process. The overprocessed blown out distorted colors are a result of improper or no calibration of the display, likely using one of the factory picture presets. A properly calibrated and set up display can look quite stunning even on a middle of the road TV.

I finally retired my 20 year old 30" NEC CRT set last summer and replaced it with a Sony 40" LCD TV. Could not be happier. With the new models coming out now, they are blowing out that same set now for huge discounts, hundreds off. Almost tempted to buy another!

[Kevio]

Anyone want to back up RR6's assertion that I won't lose SD quality going to certain HD sets?

The LED DLP looks awesome. I have to say I've seen less of the aformentioned ugliness on projection systems.

[E-Stat]

Over the past couple years I've seen a lot of bad pictures on both plasma and LCD displays in friends' houses, at hotels and in sports bars and the like. SD looks especially bad on some of these sets.

LCD displays, whether used for computer use or for TV/video, lose resolution when not run in their native mode. I regularly run into this when I perform web based software demos where I have to "dumb down" my monitor to a lower rez setting. I experience the same issue when viewing cable sources. My older CRT TVs look sharper. I also find the image distortion very distracting when 4:3 sources are "stretched" to the 16:9 format in public places.

rw

[Woochifer]

Anyone want to back up RR6's assertion that I won't lose SD quality going to certain HD sets?

The LED DLP looks awesome. I have to say I've seen less of the aformentioned ugliness on projection systems.

Actually, that's one area where I disagree with RR6, and we are both happy owners of the same model Panny HDTV. IMO, on any non-CRT HDTV, you will lose picture quality when watching SD channels. As E-Stat points out, flat panel TVs use fixed pixel formats, which inherently do not handle non-native sources very well, so they rely on rescaling to fit the picture onto that fixed pixel grid. CRTs don't have this drawback, and much better at adapting to changes in resolution.

But, increasingly this does not matter.

That's because the flip side to this is that most of the popular channels now broadcast in HD. Even if the program itself is SD resolution, it will still look cleaner than before if it was rescaled at the source and transmitted using a 720p/1080i HD signal. And here, I would say that viewing SD programming on a HD channel DOES look better than a SD source viewed through a SD CRT.

The only consideration you have is which of your favorite channels currently broadcast only in SD, and that list is rapidly dwindling.

Two years ago, I would have advised anyone who values SD picture quality to wait before upgrading their TV, simply because the number of national HD channels was very limited and you still had a format war between HD-DVD and Blu-ray. Now, you got FiOS, Dish, Directv, and some cable systems carrying more than 100 HD channels, and Blu-ray has become standard issue with new home video releases.

[Kevio]

What about watching standard definition DVDs. How's that look?

[Woochifer]

What about watching standard definition DVDs. How's that look?

Mixed bag.

Using my old non-progressive DVD player, and a S-vid connection, it looks almost as bad as SD broadcast channels.

Using my PS3, connected via HDMI, and upscaled to 1080p, it looks a lot better. While a good DVD on that PS3 can look very film-like on my HDTV, one of the disadvantages of a large screen and higher resolution is that it reveals the flaws and limitations of the DVD format. Things that I didn't notice on a 36" non-HD CRT such as compression artifacts, macroblocking, haloing, and edge enhancement are now more noticeable. Different progressive/upscaling DVD players might have filtering and other processing options, but sometimes they make the picture look worse.

If you go with HDTV, IMO you should also go Blu-ray at the same time, since you'll need a decent upconverting DVD player to optimize your DVD playback anyway. Unlike earlier Blu-ray players, a lot of the newer models now do a very good job with DVD upconversion. Comparing DVD playback with Blu-ray, it's no contest. While I enjoyed watching my DVD copy of Casino Royale, switching over to a Blu-ray copy of Quantum of Solace was an altogether different viewing experience. The jump up in detail, vividness, and clarity was stunning.

Don't believe the myriad comments on various discussion sites and tech blogs claiming that upscaled DVDs are almost indistinguishable from Blu-ray. That's just flat out false. Those comments usually come from techies that are bent on promoting video downloading and streaming, and doing so by fabricating any excuse to disparage Blu-ray. Physical disc media might seem backward in their technocentric worldview, but the capacity and performance on Blu-ray blows away any downloaded and streaming option that currently exists.

[Kevio]

Thanks Woochifer. Good input. I'll make sure to evaluate how standard DVDs look in any BluRay player I consider.