Serious artifacts in low-def? Really? That shouldn't be a problem on an HD set, unless your TV isn't the greatest.

For HD quality, if you're watching HD television rather than Blu-Ray discs, there are noticeable artifacts from compression that can be more or less awful. They bug me as well, although our particular cable provider seems to have improved noticeably over time. I remember when I first saw it a couple of years ago it was pretty awful.

As I understand it, cable providers are up against some serious overall bandwidth limitations, so they have to make quality vs channel count tradeoffs, unless fiber optic becomes more widespread.

Re-reading your note, I wonder if there is some sort of "sharpness" setting you need to turn off on the TV. It may indeed be doing some kind of unsharp masking....

Regards,

T

Is it just me, or isn’t this a completely off-topic post that, in a rational administration, would be deleted?

—
Joe Clark
http://joeclark.org/

It is just you.

In standard def you're likely getting issues of non-native resolution. In High-def, compression results in artifacts. How is the type displayed rendered on your XBox 360 or PS3?

Cheers, Si

I've had an HD set for about a year. The compression artifacts bother me, too, although I've gotten used to it. My wife and daughter barely notice them even when I point them out.

The splotchiness of standard definition broadcasts is the most noticeable. I assume that it's because that type of video was not meant to be seen on a flat screen HD set, that when viewed on a CRT at the intended resolution, the artifacts are there, but they are not visible. CRT TVs are not only lower resolution, but less sharp and brighter. I chalk it up to fundamentally different and not fully compatible display technologies.

(Type looked very different on CRT TVs, too.)

Joe, Nick comments that he finds ‘everything is over-sharpened, so all the type has a line around it, inside and out’. In what way is this off-topic?

I've found that there is a dramatic difference in picture quality from different providers. I used to have Directv and experienced amazing picture quality. Switched to Cablevision coax in New York and the picture quality is awful in comparison. (Don't event get me started about the difference in NHL Center Ice quality!)

Compression artifacts, which I never noticed on the satellite picture, are very distracting on the cable picture. Upgrading the horrible, atari-like Scientific Atlanta cable box to an HD Tivo improved our picture quality a little.

Satellite doesn't have the severe bandwidth limitations that (coaxial) cable has, so that's not a surprise.

For upscaled "regular" TV resolution, a lot depends on the quality of the upscaling system used by your particular model of HDTV. Our is pretty good, though not perfect, but I've seen some horrendous stuff. You may also be able to adjust your TV's settings for upscaling.

Cheers,

T

Our cablevision cable doesn't even use switched digital video, so their bandwidth is even more limited. In general, they're the worst.

You may not be sitting too close, Nick, but HDTV is a bit like sitting in the front row at the theater: sometimes you see things you aren't supposed to see.

And as for the "aggressive display of artifice," well, it is still just TV, isn't it?

Many answers to the rocket science involved in setting up your new digital TV can be found here:

http://www.highdefforum.com

Common problems as you have described begin with proper connections of HDMI or component cables to the cable box and/or DVD source. Also, your TV is going to have a settings menu ... and your cable box is also going to have its own settings menu controlling screen resolution and aspect ratios for standard broadcast and HD.

Best of luck with your new collection of remote controls! I wish this stuff was simple.

> Just bought a flat-screen TV, and can’t watch the damn thing.

brand? what is the display resolution? input resolution?
equipment? (e.g. dvr, dvd etc etc)

"Satellite doesn’t have the severe bandwidth limitations that (coaxial) cable has"

Yes, it does.

If you're getting your signal from Cable or Satellite, you're not really getting the best possible picture. Both will use various levels of compression on the channels. Some 'lesser' channels will be compressed to the point of looking like unusable JPGs. Sports and first-run movies tend to get the 'bigger pipes'.

To fully test if it's your signal or your TV settings, hook up the rabbit ears and tune in your local HD PBS station. OTA HD isn't compressed so would be the 'purest' signal.

Otherwise, it sounds like you maybe have a bad TV and/or bad settings and/or bad cables. My parents had a Samsung for a year before they discovered that the LCD panel had been 'sandwiched' wrong in manufacturing adding this odd distortion to the picture. (To samsung's credit, they fixed it).

What bothers me the most is people that get the new big wide-screen TVs and then don't notice that they're still watching their old fuzzy standard def analog cable in stretch-o-vision. Watching Football with my FIL is agonizing. ;)

For the exact same reasons, I don't like the look of 95% of the LCD TVs - HD or otherwise. I generally prefer my old, clear Sony CRT. The problem I find is that I spend hours and hours in a day staring at a high-quality, sharp but not too sharp, high-res display with reasonable color fidelity, just-right contrast, and more brightness that I need most of the time. It's connected to my computer, and cost a bundle.

I'm not prepared to spend that much dough on a high-end HD TV (and the bandwidth to support it), so all the options look poor in comparison to what I'm used to - too much contrast, bad viewing angle, awful color, image outlining, grainy movement. If I really, really want to watch something in HD resolution, I'd prefer to buy it, download it in advance, and watch it on my computer. Most of the time, though, normal old school CRT and low-res display is fine, and much more pleasant to watch.

Then again, I happened to be staying with friends in Dallas while the Beijing olympics were on. They had an excellent screen the size of a moose, and an HD satellite feed. It was spectacular - and probably very expensive.

@ Nick

Did you ever think about investing the money, that a TV costs, in cinema tickets? If they broadcast the same public deluding shit in Canada as in Germany, it would be worth a consideration to trash the TV.

> Did you ever think about investing the money, that a TV costs, in cinema tickets?

That works out to about 100-150 hours of movies. I watch about 15 hours of TV per week (or more) so that is 10 weeks of movies, at the same rate of usage. And if I watch 15 hours of movies (7 or 8), then I am going to be watching some pretty crappy movies too.

(And that doesn't even consider that in a few months I can watch those movies on my HD tv.)

"If they broadcast the same public deluding shit in Canada"

But that's the great thing about HDTV. It turns the shit programming into very pretty shit programming!

Did you ever think about investing the money, that a TV costs, in cinema tickets? If they broadcast the same public deluding shit in Canada as in Germany, it would be worth a consideration to trash the TV.

I like sports.
The Grey Cup final (Canadian Football) last weekend was riveting.
I got caught up in the action, and the image quality on the field was pretty good.
It was impressive, so I think I got the bang for my buck there.
But apart from the play, the talking heads, station ID BS, and many of the advertisements were artefact-laden.

But (ice) hockey is too weird--the stick and puck are always outlined, like the experiment that was tried a few years ago when the NHL was expanding in the US market, and one station started putting a blue(?) glow around the puck to help novice fans follow the action.

But (ice) hockey is too weird—the stick and puck are always outlined,

I had a problem similar to this with my Samsung (I watch a LOT of hockey). In my case there were ghost images of the puck to the left and right, kind of like this: (0)

Eventually I found out it was a bug called the triple ball effect (it happens in baseball too), the solution was to make sure any motion enhancement was turned off.

I bought a new TV six months ago. My first LCD screen since iMac. It has a Bravia 3 engine; the latest from *ony (in case someone needs to keep neutral in some way).

HiDef is just brilliant.

720-based images are very mixed: even in the same program some seguenses are fine, and next one has these wierd lines appearing with high contrast areas. Low contrast is fine, but if it gets close to black and white, there is this odd zigzag pattern you usually see when video feed is stopped.

Nick, you should definitely check the "sharpness" setting on your new set. A few days ago I got a Blu Ray player and a copy of "2001: A Space Odyssey". I was horrified to see the same sort of over-sharpening effect. At first I thought it was the player, because I hadn't really noticed it with DVDs. But there didn't seem to be a setting for it on the Blu Ray player. Then I checked the setting on the HD set and it was cranked almost all the way up. I turned it all the way down and it looks great now. Having the sharpness cranked up also makes the compression artifacts look worse. They're less noticeable now, although not absent. (The type looks much better, too.)

Thanks for all your help, everyone!

For those in the wasteland - The Grey Cup is the Canadian equivalent to the Superbowl. To those in other nations ... you really don't care about north American football, now do you.

I just helped my dad buy a new TV the other week. I went into the store and messed with all of the settings on all of the TVs to turn off sharpening, oversaturation, 240Hz motion "enhancement", noise reduction, skintone "enhancement", etc. I actually got the Blu-Ray to look like a real movie, and not some made-for-TV documentary from the 1980s.

I wonder why they put so many crappy features into the TVs when the average consumer doesn't care, and cinephiles will just turn them off?

- Lex

P.S. I spotted this during the second quarter of the Grey Cup. Should bring a smile to the face of anyone who watched :-)

- Lex

Lots of TVs default settings are more for showroom than living room. Definitely check those. Issues with sports 'blurring' might be an indicator of a low refresh rate for your TV. Not much you can do about that.