I hooked up my new Samsung 46" LCD 1080p TV in the bedroom and the picture through cable looked pretty damn crappy. I figured that I would get another Motorolla HD digital cable box from my cable provider and hook up the TV through HDMI. OMG, the picture looked even worse than it did before. Also, through HDMI, I can't seem to get the picture scaling correct where as the cable through ANT IN is automatic.

Fotunately, the TV has a fine tune setting on the cable signal and this did improve the picture so that it is at least viewable.

My cable company is pretty shitty. They only offer a few HD channels and even those are classified at a higher tier.

Anyways, I'm just frustrated so if anyone has any suggestions on getting the clearest picture through digital cable, please let me know.

 

Be sure to check the output of your cable box. You can usually find it pretty easily by looking through the basic setup menus accessed via the remote.

When Time Warner hooked up our first HD box I wasn't impressed either. When the guy left I checked the output of the box and it was set to 480p/480i. Yeah, a lot of good that did me! So I changed it to 720p and bam, whole new TV and the HD channels looked great.

So that is where I would start...

Second thing I would do is get over to the AVSForums site and start doing some reading. Odds are you'll find several recommended settings for the picture that you can tune and adjust to your liking. That is typically the first thing I do when I plug in a new TV. In fact, I usually do it before hand so as soon as I turn it on I can adjust the picture to make it look sick since out of the box settings usually blow...

 

You should set your cable box to PASS THROUGH or "AUTO HDMI". That will send the signal to your display in its original format, which is ideal since the scalers in SA/Moto cable boxes sux0r.

In any case, part of what you're seeing is the result watching a relatively low resolution on a high resolution display.

720p will look better on your 720p HD sets than it will on your 1080p set. And 480i will probably look better on your 1988 Sony Trinitron CRT than it will on your 1080p TV

 

. . . and THAT is why I will keep my 35" Sony Trinitron XBR CRT until ALL broadcasts are in HD.

 

I noticed this too when I got my 57". My basic cable looks worse then on my 32" tube.

 

Well, the cable box doesn't have any settings that have to do with output so it looks like i'll be hitting up AVSforums. My 61" DLP looks better at the moment.

 

Is the cable box a Comcast box? My dad's HD box output menu is found through some random key sequences on the box itself. Undocumented and something the normal user wouldn't find.

Find the model number and head over to google/avs... You'll find what you need.

 

Good point... I'll do that when I get home. The cable box is through Sudden Link which used to be Cebridge. It's a Motorola.

 

That's b/c you're running a crappy analog signal directly to the TV. Whenever you hook up a crappy signal to a larger display, the crappiness is only amplified

 

Aren't all channels supposed to be digital by 2008 or so? While digital is not HD, it blows away standard definition. And honestly, we pretty much only watch HD programming... but when we do watch SD or digital programming, it blows away any CRT we ever had.

The key is to buy a good TV that displays all signals very clearly. Do that and you're golden...

 

Digital or analog, it's still 480i... which will look better on a high-end "digital" CRT then any fixed resolution digital display.

Your 720p/1080p DLP/LCoS/LCD/Plasma simply can not display a 480 line interlaced signal without introducing image distortion.

I agree it's a silly argument since most quality programming is in HD these days (save for the learning channels - Food TV/etc)... but it's somewhat valid.

Personally, the benefits of having a non-CRT for all the HD content I watch far outweigh the benefits of seeing the best possible 480i signal on a CRT. But if you spend most of your time watching C-Span a CRT will definately give you a better picture then a modern display.

 

We probably watch 85% of our TV in HD save for Adult Swim (Cartoon), HGTV, and TBS... but even those channels look fine to me. Even the science and learning channels look fine to me, especially the digital ones. So yeah, for me, a CRT isn't even a consideration...

 

I think it really depends on the particular person. I see great displays all day long, but still cannot justify spending thousands myself on a tv at this point. I am glad others do though or I'd be shit out of luck. My parents are a good example. They can barely concenrtate on a movie or show as it is. My mom knits or does other stuff while she watches tv, and my father will be asleep 2 minutes after his ass hits the couch. They wanted to possibly setup a "theater", mostly for visiting family and guests, but they didn't want to spend money on something they will not use. I just gave them a 36" proscan tv that a customer gave to me. For them it is fine and they are perfectly happy with it. It's actually the biggest tv they ever had.