Home audio & video: tired of 1080P?
How does Sony look on SD?
by Dan Filice - 9/27/06 3:24 PM In reply to: I got the Sony too! by bevillanBearvp,
How does the Sony look when viewing SD cable? One day, when my trusty Toshiba RPTV dies (I hope it never does), I will probably go the Sony SXRD direction. But I was curious if you had a chance to view SD channels on the 1080p set? I was going to ask if it looked different than a 720p or 1080i set on SD, but I'm figuring you moved directly into the Sony from an old CRT so comparing wouldn't be possible.
SD on the Sony
by bevillan - 9/28/06 6:53 AM In reply to: How does Sony look on SD? by Dan FiliceActually, I upgraded from a 51" 1080i projection TV that wasn't great, but it was my college TV.
In comparison to viewing SD content, the Sony performs better but some programs look bad. For some reason CBS is the only broadcast station to not put out an HD channel in Santa Fe and when I flip from Fox HD to CBS on NFL Sunday, SD CBS looks horrid...but it could be that I was just watching Fox HD.
I'd that that 80% of the SD channels look good and nothing looks any worse than it did on my previous HDTV.
HD content looks amazing though. 1080i signals that are deinterlaced to 1080p have images that seem to jump out at you. Even 720p signals that are upconverted/deinterlaced look great. Also a big thing that I was happy about is that DVDs look very crisp on the set. I have a Sony upconverting DVD player set to 1080i output, but I may set it to 480p if the TV does the video processing better up to 1080p. I was watching Top Gun: Special Edition and the TV made the older film look like an HD picture.
Viewing HD on this TV will blow you away, and will make all your friends jealous haha. Even my girlfriend is impressed and she usually could care less about electronics.
Just make sure, if you buy it, to either look up CNET's recommended picture settings or run a calibration DVD because the factory default "Vivid" setting looks horrible.
Everybody is fussing about 1080p, When they should be,,,
by jcrobso - 9/28/06 10:07 AM In reply to: How does Sony look on SD? by Dan Filiceconcerned about how the HDTV looks on SD!!!!!
Now maybe if your young and don't have a lot of SD video tapes and Laser disks around SD picture quality may not a big concearn.
Yes, I'm an OF(old fart) and I have 25 years of VHS tapes and Laser disks, So SD video quality is important to me. So I ended up with a HDCRT-RP TV and a direect view HDCRT TV. Both of the HDTVs do an excellent job of displaying SD video as well as HD video.
Dan, I also hope that your RPTV lasts a long time. john
1080p and SD
by Dan Filice - 9/28/06 10:44 AM In reply to: Everybody is fussing about 1080p, When they should be,,, by jcrobsoJohn,
I was just curious how a 1080p TV would handle an SD signal. It's just my curiosity. I would love to see a side-by-side comparison of the different TVs displaying SD signals. I have a Sony 23" 720p LCD and it looks OK on SD. I just wondered how a 1080p set would handle a low-res signal seeing how other TVs re-scale the signal to 720p or 1080i. I think my Sony 23" does a decent job of scaling, but it's a small screen, although Sony does have one of the better scalers. Again, just curious how a 1080p TV would fill in all of the pixels and what it would look like. As one of the other posters here mentioned, none of the stores ever have HDTVs hooked up to SD signals because it would look terrible and they would never sell any TVs.
Dan
DAN THE MAN 1080p FEEDING 480
by stewart norrie - 9/29/06 3:42 PM In reply to: 1080p and SD by Dan FiliceOn my 72 d.l.p. beast s.d. looks about the same as a regular anolog t.v. without the scan lines. V.H.S also looks very clean especially all my old Laurel and Hardy black and white tapes the big difference is between 720 and 1080I but when you go a monster screen size it shows all the vidio faults, time for 110" stewee
"I would love to see a side-by-side comparison "
by jcrobso - 10/4/06 9:21 AM In reply to: 1080p and SD by Dan FiliceMe too!! Look at all the posts we have had in the last two years complaining about how bad SD looks on many sets. I feel that C-Net should add this into there reviews when they test HDTVs.
Like Stew said in his post, if the HD set has a good rescaller it should look like it did on his analog set.
Both of HDTVs are CTRs and SD video looks as good as it did on my analog TVs.
Just doing a quick memory search most of the complaints seemed to be from LCD owners. John
Sd should look good on a HD TV
by breslin - 10/4/06 11:07 AM In reply to: 1080p and SD by Dan FiliceWe watch a lot of SD material on our HD TVs. A lot of the DirecTV material we watch is SD and most of the DVDs we watch are still SD. In general the HD has more detail than the SD material but the SD material still looks very good and better than when we watched on an SD TV.
If SD material looks bad on a HD set it is either becuase the original material was bad and you can see it better on the HD TV, or there is a problem in the scaling that is being done. Most HD TVs today do a very good job of scaling SD material.
It is unfortunate that most retailers do a very poor job of displaying TVs. In most cases they use a common feed that has to be supported by the lowest common denominator in the store, or at least that share the same feed. In most cases these are analogue feeds which are not optimized for digital displays. Also, they are usually not properly adjusted. I am still surprised that manufacturers ship their TVs set to the vibrant setting, even for high quality sets. I guess it's like stereo displays that crank up the bass or treble to impress prospective customers.
SD and service plan?
by husni.nm - 9/27/06 6:24 PM In reply to: I got the Sony too! by bevillanI am worried about how SD looks on it since they only show High Def in the store. How does it look?
Also, did you purchase a service plan? Still contemplating purchasing a 5 yr. plan with one bulb replacement...
Thanks!
SD and service plan
by bevillan - 9/28/06 6:58 AM In reply to: SD and service plan? by husni.nmI talked about SD in my post just above this one so check it out for details, but the SD channels look good enough in my opinion and I have owned a previous HDTV before this one to compare it to. SD on it still isn't the best, but the set does alot better than most large HDTVs do with SD signals. I might tinker with some of the video processing enhancement tools to get a better picture on SD, but it still looks good.
I bought a 3 year service plan and I would highly recommend a 3 or 5 year one. Living with the protection of a service plan on something this expensive sure makes you live with less stress.
Maybe it's the way your store hooks things up
by breslin - 9/30/06 10:37 AM In reply to: tired of 1080P? by HTsales82I truly don't know what to make of your post. I can't tell if you are joking or if you are serious. If you are serious I think you need to either; 1. work for a better store, 2. get some more education on the issues surrounding video reproduction in the home, or 3. go into a new line of work.
Let's start by understanding that resolution is not the only or even the most important specification when considering a TV. In fact the priorities would likely vary by individual. Color accuracy and contrast are two important picture qualities that come to mind for me. It is also true that a poor TV would not be made better just by increasing the resolution. But, to suggest that an increase in resolution, in and of itself, degrades the the quality of the picture does not make sense.
I have no idea if HD-DVD or Blu-Ray will survive in the long term, but the HD DVDs that I have purchased have a much higher level of detail than their SD DVD counterparts. The idea that studios will not allow the full potential of 1080P resolution in nonsense. All you have to do is try the HD DVDs that are already out. Don't miss understand, I'm not saying every HD DVD is excellent, just that on average they are a true step up from SD DVDs and there is no reason at all to think that studios are deliberately limiting the resolution to prevent you from seeing makeup or anything else.
I own several TVs, Some are fixed pixel 1080 sets, some are fixed pixel 720 sets, some are CRT and therefore not fixed pixel one is 1080P capable the other is 1080i/720P capable. I have watched all types of sources, standard over the air, HD over the air, standard DVD, HD DVD, Blu-Ray DVD, standard satellite, HD satellite, VHS, and S-VHS. Maybe I have been fortunate in my selection of TVs, but I have not encountered a single situation where using a higher resolution TV made the picture worse than on a lower resolution TV. If the scaling, either in the source device or the TV, is done properly, the picture will not be degraded, it also won't turn a bad picture magically into a great picture. Often higher resolution TVs are larger and as such will tend to show defects better than smaller TVs, they will also show off great sources to better effect as well.
In summary, when I went to buy the best TVs for the larger rooms, and under the conditions, in my house they have been 1080P sets. Based 100% on the quality of the picture they produce.
sorry to say
by blklacker - 10/2/06 1:54 AM In reply to: tired of 1080P? by HTsales82I got a sony xbr3 1080p last month, blue ray is amazing, sorry to break it to you but it will replace hd-dvd.
bold statement
by bevillan - 10/2/06 7:01 AM In reply to: sorry to say by blklackerGiven the fact that Sony and Samsung cannot fix their software which makes their current Blu-ray movies look not even in the same league as HD-DVD movies. The Fifth Element Blu-ray is supposed to not look any better than DVD quality.
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