Here's a question for some of you HDTV experts . . . I haven't been able to pick up my HD cable box yet from Comcast. When I do, and everything is hooked up, will regular (non-HD) broadcasts look good? Right now, any channel not being broadcast in HDTV actually looks worse than it did on my old TV, simply because the images are much bigger. Thanks in advance for your insights.
No point in worrying about it until you get the new box and connect it with an HDMI cable or a well shielded component cable set. You could have a bad box, or old box, or connected with a bad or obsolete cable. If you are connected with coax or RCA that is likely the problem. After you get the new box - the one you will have for a while, you likely need to adjust you set. Most TV's default settings are HORRIBLE. Go to a good HD channel for reference. Turn off "Noise Reduction", "Sharpness". Turn down brightness. Tone down color. Adjust other picture settings to get a less bright, harsh, unaturally colored image. Then look at the non-HD channels, they should be better. There are plenty of detailed ideas on the net. You could even find specific setting ideas for your exact model if you search for it.
Thanks a bunch, Masbee. Very helpful information. I'm hoping to install the HD cable box on Wednesday, and will follow your tips. I'll let you know how it goes.
Since you don't have the HD box yet, you're looking at SD signal which isn't hi def. SD is like 640x480 pixels, while 720p is like 1200x768 and 1020p/1020i are 1920x1080. So how do you look at 640x480 on a screen with 1920x1080? Zoom in x2 and you get 1280x960 which still doesn't fill the screen, and the pixels are bigger (2x2). So what the TV manufacturers did is add circuits that give you a handful of choices of how to make the SD picture fill the screen. One way, and the one I suggest with LCD, is to show it 640x480x2 and fill the unused screen with black or grey bars. Another way is to zoom in 4x and crop (cut off) some of the picture on all sides. Another way is to stretch the picture, which makes round things (and heads) look squashed and fat. Another way is a kind of gradual stretch so the center of the screen is 1x1 pixel size and toward the left/right edges it's really stretched. No matter what you do, you're not going to get full screen without distorting or cutting off the picture. When you receive a non-HD program on an HD channel, they can use one of those stretching algorithms before broadcasting (like TBS does, ewww, let me choose!), or they broadcast it in pillar mode - bars on the left/right. You'll quickly find out that the source is what really matters - Blu Ray is the ultimate in picture and sound, providing full 1080p. Most HD cable boxes will do 1080i.
Thanks, Denny Crane. I've now got the new HD box installed, but I'm still having problems with the image. It's not that it's too small, or doesn't fill the screen--it's that the image itself is not very sharp. Maybe I need to adjust the internal settings of the TV itself. Aarghh! This is frustrating.
Do you guys actually like the 120HZ thing? To me, its super clear, even compared to my Vizio 47inch 1080P, but damn, it makes everything look so fake.... like i'm watching unsolved mystery re-inactments.... true the picture is better with the 120hz, but i cant get over the weird, fakeness of the picture... so real its fake??? does that even make sense... lol
