[andy614]

After sticking with my old CRT for many years, a few days ago i bought an new 42 in LED TV by LG.

However, i am incredibly disappointed with the picture. The picture isn't even half as good as my old tv. The HD channels are fine but i'm really not sure i can live with the normal channels. The picture is a grainy and fuzzy and there is a lot of noise around/in everything, motion blur ect ect. It's just not a crisp, clear good picture really at all.

I've tried playing around with the settings and stuff but nothing seems to really help.

At this point i actually feel like going back to an old style CRT television as i was perfectly happy with the picture, i thought i would be getting an upgrade by getting a LED but i don't feel that way at all now.

Is it just the particular TV? The make? The fact it's not a mega expensive one? Or will i just find that is the case with LED/LCD tv's?!

[chrisjr]

First thing to do.

Go into the picture setting menu and find every option with the word Dynamic in the title and turn them all off. I have an LG TV and it is the first thing I did and it does make a difference. All the so called picture enhancement features seem to do is conspire to make the picture worse than it is when they are all turned off.

I also found that out of the box the colour balance was way out. It made people look like they had over indulged in a spray tanning booth!

You need to tweak the settings carefully a bit at a time to get a decent picture. Don't dive in changing loads of settings all at once in a mad rush. Even better if you have a DVD or Blu Ray player is to find a calibration disk and use that to set up the TV. But bear in mind that each input source on the TV can be set-up separately. So if you tweak it for one of the HDMI inputs the Freeview setting will be completely different unless you copy the settings.

And you will notice just how crap some SD channels are (ITV 4 was particularly bad at the start) on a large screen TV. Even on some Sony and Panasonic sets I've seen the artefacts from too little bandwidth allocated to some channels are clearly visible.

Oh and by the way it is an LCD TV, the LEDs are only used to backlight the display panel they don't create the image which is all LCD.

[emptybox]

It really comes down to the quality of the scaler in the TV.
Some are better than others in scaling the SD picture up to 1920x1080 pixels (or whatever the resolution is in your telly).
And yes, the price point plays a big part in that.

I have a Samsung 40" LCD (5 series) that has an excellent picture on the SD channels.
It cost me £650 about 5 and a half years ago, so not super expensive at the time, but I bought it from a shop, and a good SD picture was my priority at the time, so I compared them.

My nephew has an LG 42" LCD from a lower price range, and the SD picture on that is not very good at all, similar to yours.

I'm not saying Samsung is better than LG, just that these TVs were from different price ranges.
But nothing beats comparing them in a shop, even if you later buy online.

Incidentally, my Brother has a 42" Panasonic plasma TV, and that has a really excellent SD picture. But plasmas are getting more scarce and have their disadvantages as well (more bulky/heavy, power consumption).

If it really bothers you, a way round it might be to buy a Freeview box with HDMI out, and set it to output at 1080i or 1080p. Then it would be the box doing the scaling rather than the TV, and it might do a better job.
But if you've only just bought the TV you might be able to return it, and maybe do some more research before you choose an alternative.

[andy614]

So a smaller television might produce a better picture?

I did see various 4k tv's in the shop, though i just assumed that that would only apply to HD channels anyway so it wouldn't really make a difference to the picture on normal channels?


I must say that pretty much all the TV's i looked at in store looked to have a dodgy picture to me, save for the mega bucks ones.

[chrisjr]

Quote:

Originally Posted by andy614

So a smaller television might produce a better picture?

Not necessarily. It just might make what artefacts there are in the picture less visible unless you compensate for the smaller screen size by sitting even closer to it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by andy614

I did see various 4k tv's in the shop, though i just assumed that that would only apply to HD channels anyway so it wouldn't really make a difference to the picture on normal channels?

4k refers to the screen resolution. This means that even broadcast HD has to be upscaled to fill the screen. And SD has to be scaled even more than if you had a standard HD set so could look even worse. Depending on the quality of the scaler, which might be better in a 4k TV as it may be considered a premium product, though no guarantees.

Quote:

Originally Posted by andy614

I must say that pretty much all the TV's i looked at in store looked to have a dodgy picture to me, save for the mega bucks ones.

You need to be careful when comparing TVs in shops. it would be very simple indeed for them to set up the cheaper sets to look poorer than the more expensive models. Especially the big out of town sheds like Currys. Somewhere like John Lewis might be more even handed in how it sets up it's displays.

[David (2)]

My 32in sony lcd full hd provides an Sd picture with very few digital effects in it, but it does look a bit artificial or as some people would say "plastic like". The smaller 26in sony in the other room which is hd ready has a more natural looking SD picture but you can see the digital effects more easily. 2 different results from same brand, and I would say the 32in screen has the better sd picture overall, yet its a bigger screen.

The quality will vary from channel to channel. Bbc 1+2 are usually very good, whereas chs such as itv4 are often quite poor quality.

Freesat tends (and I guess sky as well as the free chs are the same) to provide a marginally cleaner image on sd channels than freeview.

The quality of the source material will also make a difference.

Dvd provides the best sd solution although your still at the mercy of the source material on the disc.

I have often found an improvement can be made to sd pictures if the device be it a freeview/freesat/sky box, or DVD player is connected via Hdmi rather than scart (and adjusting the devices output quality setting eg 1080i or 1080p) once you have done so can improve sd pictures from those devices.

[evil c]

Hi Andy,

Try setting up using this guide: https://www.avforums.com/PicturePerfect/

[Winston_1]

Quote:

Originally Posted by chrisjr

Somewhere like John Lewis might be more even handed in how it sets up it's displays.

Recently at JL in Bluewater all the TVs were showing a 4:3 programme in stretchy vision. When I asked the salesman why the TVs were not set up properly he said that was how the customers liked them.

I didn't buy my TV there.

[andy614]

I'm watching The Big Bang Theory at the moment and the picture is shocking to me. It's grainy, it's blocky, theres lots of noise on and around all the images, theres motion blur, it's just not acceptable to me at all. I can't understand how a picture on a brand new, good branded TV can be like this. I can't believe that it's just what people accept. These are all the problems i did actually see on most of the TV's in the stores but assumed in an actual home environment and with some tweaks it would be different, but in this case it's not. I must say the HD channels produce an OK picture, it's just the normal SD channels.

I think i will end up taking this back, so does anyone have any hints or tips in terms of choosing another one? particular make? Particular TV itself? Specs to look out for?

I'm looking to spend about £400 - £500.

[fmradiotuner1]

When watching Anglia News my Sony KDL42W706 really sucks and has lines going across the screen at times this on satellite.
Tried changing settings but cannot get it right.
Though picture is great on HD & Dvd.
Though anglia news is fine on my Iiyama ProLite XB2783 the screen is much better with SD stuff.

[SnrDev]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Winston_1

Recently at JL in Bluewater all the TVs were showing a 4:3 programme in stretchy vision. When I asked the salesman why the TVs were not set up properly he said that was how the customers liked them.

I didn't buy my TV there.

First up I really don't believe that JL ask the punters what they prefer, or that punters en masse report a preference for a distorted picture, or that it's company policy.

I also don't believe that anyone would turn down the benefits of buying from JL on the spurious basis of the demo tvs not being set up correctly. You'd ask surely, and have someone who knows go through it , set it up properly and demo it as the maker intended.

[stud u like]

I only buy LG televisions and they have great pictures but they sometimes need a light tweaking to get the quality.

How far away are you watching? There needs to be quite a distance or it will look like fuzzy especially close up.

[fastest finger]

OP, curious to know what your sharpness setting is at. If it's too high it may well be exaggerating the imperfections in a SD image

[biggyt]

Google the model number and settings, Eg lg32lvnv settings

[David (2)]

The noise in the pic can be reduced by turning on a feature called "digital noise reduction" if your tv has it.