Home audio & video: Sony Bravia LCD- how do I get 1080p picture?
Sony Bravia LCD- how do I get 1080p picture?
by mcase84 - 2/3/09 11:25 AMI just purchased a Sony Bravia 42V4100 1080p. I have hooked up with my comcast digital cable receiver. When I have on the HD channels, the display on the tv says it is a 1080i picture. What reasons would there be for not getting a 1080p picture? Does it depend on the actual broadcast? Would it depend on the HDMI cable I used, because I bought a real cheap one to hook it up. Overall, I think the picture looks good, but I want to make sure I'm getting the most performance out of the TV. The 1080i description of the picture is bothering me.
1080i is the highest resolution available for broadcasts
by mamontano - 2/3/09 11:32 AM In reply to: Sony Bravia LCD- how do I get 1080p picture? by mcase84Blu-ray, hd-dvd, ps3, upscaling dvd, etc.
only thing outputting 1080p right now.
Don't know when they plan on broadcasting
1080p. We are ready for them though.
1080i is the highest resolution available for broadcasts
by mcase84 - 2/3/09 11:49 AM In reply to: 1080i is the highest resolution available for broadcasts by mamontanoThank you very much for the response. I was very worried I had something hooked up wrong, or something wrong with the TV. Always paranoid when making a big purchase.
No need for expensive hdmi cable - so way to go.
by mamontano - 2/3/09 12:06 PM In reply to: 1080i is the highest resolution available for broadcasts by mcase84I see people getting them online very cheap.
I buy mine at bj's wholesale for less than $20.00.
The general opinion i see on this group is to
stay away from the expensive cables and use that
money elsewhere - maybe blu-ray or surround.
I'm still using dvd until blu-ray comes down some
more. Enjoy your sony.
Cheap cables vs. expensive cables
by Dan Filice - 2/15/09 11:14 AM In reply to: No need for expensive hdmi cable - so way to go. by mamontanoI agree for the most part about not needing to spend $100 for an HDMI cable when a less expensive cable will do, but, this argument has been made many times on this forum and it gets generalized way too much. I work at a broadcast facility and I can certainly tell you that when our engineers connect equipment the choose very specific cables, of all types, that are not the $1.99 garden variety. For example, there is such a HUGE difference between the really cheap CAT-5 cable and the better stuff. I've had cheap CAT-5 cable strung outside of the house and after a certain amount of time it actually leaks through the sheathing. The cable company told me about a specific brand and level of CAT-5 cable, and since I replace the cheap-o stuff, I haven't had any issues. Anyways, there is a quality difference between some cables. We can't simply generalize that the $1.99 cheap-o brand is just as good as some of the expensive stuff, but for home use, I certainly agree that a $20 cable may do just as good as a $100 Monster cable.
I agree completely
by gingaskunk - 2/15/09 9:29 PM In reply to: Cheap cables vs. expensive cables by Dan FiliceYes, actually I agree and think you just made exaclty point I was trying to (and failed at!).
Use outdoors would be a perfect example of needing a high grade of cabling. Again not for the quality of the transmission as such, but because the sheathing can withstand both weathering and interference much better.
Also, as mentioned in a previous post, running a cable any distance can cause you to need to look at quality more, but a 4' connetion from a cable box to a tv is really not so crucial.
I buy pretty much all the cables I have (both home theater and when I build computers) from www.monoprice.com, who are mentioned alot on these boards. They make most of their own cabling and I have always found it to be VERY high quality and VERY cheap... plus they have just about every cable I have ever needed for anything, offer a lifetime guarantee on what they sell and the one time I ever had to call them, they helped me isolate the issue, even after it became aparent that the problem I was having was not due to their product.
On monoprice I have bought all of my HDMI cables for about $4-5 each and they work wonderfully.
Now if you start talking broadcast quality you are probably talking about a lot of analogue cabling which is a whole other set of threads 
HDMI Cables and Hi-Def broadcasting
by gingaskunk - 2/13/09 11:43 PM In reply to: Sony Bravia LCD- how do I get 1080p picture? by mcase84Although the original question has already been answered, I thought I might address your uncertainty about the HDMI cable as this is an area that many of those new to home theater trip up on, and consequently often get ripped off (by monster cable and their cronies - Best Buy etc).
Think about it like this, the signal the HDMI cable carries is digital. This means that all the data it carries is 1s and 0s. Nothing more. Therefore you cannot "lose picture quality" by using a cheap cable.... If I say the number 10010111100 to you, would be able to say if that was a high quality number or not? No, you would only be able to say if you heard the number at all... and so it is with digtal signals.
This is great because it means that even a cheap HDMI cable will do the job for you nicely. There may be problems if you run the cable over long distances but these problems would manifest as no picture at all, or whole blocks of the picture or sound not coming through (the TV can't "hear" part of the number coming through).
The only exception to this is if you are going to be running your cables in-wall, where long term wear and damage could warrant more heavily shielded cable (and may in fact be required by local building codes).
On the question of broadcast definition, currently the top quality "live" broadcast tv is 1080i. This is simply a question of space.They can only fit so much information in the cable that comes into your home for each channel, and giving you 1080p would take up more space per channel than they have available (this "cable space" is what you hear referred to as bandwidth).
Some cable companies are starting to do "true hd" 1080p movies, but these require a special set-top box/ DVR and this is not "live" programming. They simply use the bandwidth they have to send the program to your set top box which then records it and show it to you... this means that they could send a 1 hour 1080p movie in 1.5 hours, because you can't start to watch it until it has (mostly) finished downloading.
Also of note is the fact that all 1080i is not created equal either. You typically get better quality 1080i from over the air broadcasts than from cable companies because of something called compression. If you want to know more about that, let me know though, that is a whole other conversation..... 
I hope this helps.....
HDMI Cables and Hi-Def broadcasting
by 50y/o - 2/14/09 10:38 AM In reply to: HDMI Cables and Hi-Def broadcasting by gingaskunkAll Replies are Excellent and informative. I have learned LOTS from fellow CNet member forums, including(but not limited to)Hi-Def broadcasting and HDMI Cables.
My question and interest goes out to 'gingaskunk.'
Your last paragraph in your Reply regarding, "..the fact that all 1080i is not created equal either."
Could you please go more in-depth for us novices? Would be very much appreciative. Currently use only cable/Hi-Def/converter box through my Samsung HL-T6189S which is able to accept both, over the air broadcast/cable. Only cable hooked up currently.
Thanks for your advice, in Advance.
Cable box compression....
by gingaskunk - 2/14/09 11:18 AM In reply to: HDMI Cables and Hi-Def broadcasting by 50y/oAs you may be aware, essentially an HD image is made up, just like most images (computer monitor etc) of lots of very small peices of light projected onto the screen in lines. In a 1080 picture, there are 1080 seperate lines.
So when your cable company is sending a 1080 signal to your tv they are indeed sending the infomration for your tv to create 1080 line on the screen.
However in order to save broadcast space (again, due to the bandwidth restrictions was I talking about earlier) they use compression to achieve this.
Compression is like digital shorthand. There are different ways to compress an image (if you are familiar with digital pictures, you may have heard of formats like bitmap (.bmp) .jpeg or .raw. These are all completely different approaches to taking a whole picture which would take up a lot of space and condense it down to take up less space).
The cable company sends your picture to your cable box in this shorthand and your cable box then expands that shorthand back out to full 1080 to send to your 1080 tv. How much compresion goes on will depend upon the image, the cable company and the channel in question, but the more the image is compressed, the the smaller amount of information your cable box has to try make a full 1080 picture out of (the amount of compression applied to the image is referred to a "Compression Ratio").
As the compression ratio gets higher therefore, you lose detail in the picture. This could mean smotth edges are not so smooth, or that colors that should be close but distinct in the original are now the same color and so on.
The cable box is still feeding 1080 lines to your TV so it is still a 1080i picture but not as high quality as it could be.
Over the air channels tend to have more bandwidth per chanel, and although they still use compresion they typically use it at a drastically lower compresion ratio.
If you wanted to test this, the only true experiment would be to have two identical set ups running in paralel, if you have an antenna in your house you could simply run that directly to your TV, tune it to pick up channels, then put the cable box on something showing in high def on a network channel and tune the main tv to it as well, and simply flick on your tv between the network channel and the cable box channel to see a difference....
Again , I hope this helps....
The problem is the broadcast
by GENE8 - 2/14/09 10:07 AM In reply to: Sony Bravia LCD- how do I get 1080p picture? by mcase84The reason why you are getting a 1080i signal when you watch HD channels is because cable TV signals are not yet capable of broadcasting in 1080p. Your HDMI cable has nothing to do with it. The highest resolution that HD channels can broadcast in at this time is 1080i. When digital conversion finally comes to TV, then maybe then it might be possible for HD channels to reach 1080p, but no one really knows for sure. Right now, blu-ray is the only medium that is capable of reaching 1080p. Even an ordinary DVD movie cannot reach 1080p unless it is upconverted on a blu-ray player, as opposed to a ordinary DVD player with upconversion capability.
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