picture quality lcd

madmiller · 14-09-2008, 21:45

Bloody awful, wish i never brought one ,the model I brought was the Sony KDL40W4000 thinking it was one of the best , Very disipointed with the SD digital pitcure
I was wondering what others thought .

bobcar · 14-09-2008, 22:26

Quote:

Originally Posted by madmiller

Bloody awful, wish i never brought one ,the model I brought was the Sony KDL40W4000 thinking it was one of the best , Very disipointed with the SD digital pitcure
I was wondering what others thought .

What is horrible about it specifically?

If you are using the out of the box picture settings then it will usually look horrible.

If the screen is bigger than you had before then the picture quality will automatically be worse because you will see more of the faults in a compressed transmission.

What is DVD like? That should be better and will indicate whether it is compression artifacts you are seeing.

Jimmy Connors · 14-09-2008, 22:56

I am over the moon with the quality of my new LCD. It's very sharp and well just perfect really.

I nearly bought a Sony too. Ended up with a SHARP and it's really good. Especially with a DVD playing through a HDMI cable.

OP like the previous poster said. Fiddle about with the picture settings. My settings (straight from the box) were actually very crisp - but I managed to make them bettter with a little tweaking.

I thought Sony were very well regarded?

Gort · 14-09-2008, 23:11

First thing, make sure you use Standard instead of Vivid in the Picture Mode settings, which I think is the default setting for Sonys (could well be wrong there). After that, fix the settings in Standard, reducing things like the backlight, contrast, turning the colour tone to neutral, and reducing the sharpness a tad lower. There are other settings to fiddle with, too, like brightness, colour, etc.

I haven't got your Sony, but when I first got mine, the picture was "awful" on SD. However, after a bit of messing with the settings, I'm very happy with it.

madmiller · 14-09-2008, 23:58

Just turned all the picture options to (off) ,seems to of improved things, found this on internet quite helpful.

1.Ensure that the set has been switched on for at least twenty minutes. 2. Set all the 'fancy' picture options to 'Off' or 'Neutral'. 3. Reduce 'Colour', 'Contrast' and 'Brightness' to zero. This should give a blank, black screen. 4. Slowly increase 'Brightness' until their is a just perceptible lightening of the screen. 5. Slowly increase 'Contrast' until you have an acceptable black and white picture. Some further small adjustment of 'Brightness' may be necessary to achieve this. 6. If you have a 'Gamma' control slowly increase 'Gamma' until you have sufficient amount of detail in the 'blacks'. 7. Make further small adjustments of 'Brightness' and 'Contrast' to optimize the black and white picture. 8. Increase 'Colour' to achieve realistic flesh tones. The important thing is to get a decent black and white picture and touse a reliable(?) programme source. I used News 24 studio shots.

MD_Zero · 15-09-2008, 12:16

Quote:

Originally Posted by madmiller

Just turned all the picture options to (off) ,seems to of improved things, found this on internet quite helpful.

1.Ensure that the set has been switched on for at least twenty minutes. 2. Set all the 'fancy' picture options to 'Off' or 'Neutral'. 3. Reduce 'Colour', 'Contrast' and 'Brightness' to zero. This should give a blank, black screen. 4. Slowly increase 'Brightness' until their is a just perceptible lightening of the screen. 5. Slowly increase 'Contrast' until you have an acceptable black and white picture. Some further small adjustment of 'Brightness' may be necessary to achieve this. 6. If you have a 'Gamma' control slowly increase 'Gamma' until you have sufficient amount of detail in the 'blacks'. 7. Make further small adjustments of 'Brightness' and 'Contrast' to optimize the black and white picture. 8. Increase 'Colour' to achieve realistic flesh tones. The important thing is to get a decent black and white picture and touse a reliable(?) programme source. I used News 24 studio shots.

W4000 is known for a poor freeview picture, it can be made more "bearable" through changing the settings...I have a 40W4000 at my parents holiday home and its mainly used for HD via ps3/360 as the signal for tv there is weak and it looks awesome. For SD content though, its either stick with the old CRT or Plasma. Some will agree, some will disagree, go into a shop and ask for a demo of freeview on a plasma and lcd and make your own mind up

thepianoandme · 15-09-2008, 20:43

Quote:

Originally Posted by madmiller

Bloody awful, wish i never brought one ,the model I brought was the Sony KDL40W4000 thinking it was one of the best , Very disipointed with the SD digital pitcure
I was wondering what others thought .

A thorough search of this forum would have shown you there are plenty of people around who hate their LCD screen.

The bottom line is that despite gasps of amazement from some posters that standard def looks "excellent" you'll already be aware that its bloody awful.

There's really no need to buy an LCD or plasma unless you intend to go HD.

The key thing is to get the standard def material upscaled.

Some claim the tv's do good enough upscaling but there's enough posts from those who say it doesnt.

You need Sky HD to upscale your broadcast pictures and you need a Bluray player or upscaling dvd player for upscaling discs.

When I swapped from Sky+ to Sky HD the improvement in sd channels was immediately obvious.

The same for dvd's.

The only time I bother with the built in Freeview is for ITV1 which is appalling on both Sky and Virgin.

Unless you go for some HD dont expect better pictures than your old CRT

Orbitalzone · 15-09-2008, 21:57

I'm really quite surprised at how good my Sony 32W4000 performs on all types of sources... admittedly I can't get freeview so can only go by SkySD and SkyHD but must say that it compares favourably on SD broadcasts when compared to my 28" Sony crt (KV28FX20) which always gave fairly good results and no 100hz added processing.

t took some time to get the 32W4000 picture settings right but once I'd turned all the 'enhancements' off and set midway colour, contrast, brightness and reduced sharpness to 1 and backlight to 4 I got good results on SD, HD, blu ray and DVD.

If you sit 2 feet away you can find faults to your hearts content even with HD sources. Fortunately I mostly sit further back and enjoy the programmes, to futher improve SD picture quality I generally avoid the ITV channels

Kojack · 17-09-2008, 10:20

Quote:

Originally Posted by thepianoandme

A thorough search of this forum would have shown you there are plenty of people around who hate their LCD screen.

The bottom line is that despite gasps of amazement from some posters that standard def looks "excellent" you'll already be aware that its bloody awful.

There's really no need to buy an LCD or plasma unless you intend to go HD.

The key thing is to get the standard def material upscaled.

Some claim the tv's do good enough upscaling but there's enough posts from those who say it doesnt.

You need Sky HD to upscale your broadcast pictures and you need a Bluray player or upscaling dvd player for upscaling discs.

When I swapped from Sky+ to Sky HD the improvement in sd channels was immediately obvious.

The same for dvd's.

The only time I bother with the built in Freeview is for ITV1 which is appalling on both Sky and Virgin.

Unless you go for some HD dont expect better pictures than your old CRT

Couldn't agree more, we noticed a big increase in quality when changing from the Sky+ box to the Sky HD also we bought the toshiba EP-30 HD DVD player just for upscaling DVDs which it also does a great job to be honest we don't watch that much HiDef & will prob drop it in November when our 12months is up.

OranguMaTang · 17-09-2008, 11:19

Quote:

Originally Posted by madmiller

Just turned all the picture options to (off) ,seems to of improved things, found this on internet quite helpful.

1.Ensure that the set has been switched on for at least twenty minutes. 2. Set all the 'fancy' picture options to 'Off' or 'Neutral'. 3. Reduce 'Colour', 'Contrast' and 'Brightness' to zero. This should give a blank, black screen. 4. Slowly increase 'Brightness' until their is a just perceptible lightening of the screen. 5. Slowly increase 'Contrast' until you have an acceptable black and white picture. Some further small adjustment of 'Brightness' may be necessary to achieve this. 6. If you have a 'Gamma' control slowly increase 'Gamma' until you have sufficient amount of detail in the 'blacks'. 7. Make further small adjustments of 'Brightness' and 'Contrast' to optimize the black and white picture. 8. Increase 'Colour' to achieve realistic flesh tones. The important thing is to get a decent black and white picture and touse a reliable(?) programme source. I used News 24 studio shots.

Get a copy of Digital Video Essentials and take at least some of the guesswork out of it. Alternatively see if your tv has been reviewed at www.hdtvtest.co.uk, they often have correctly calibrated settings you can use.

OranguMaTang · 17-09-2008, 11:27

Quote:

Originally Posted by thepianoandme

A thorough search of this forum would have shown you there are plenty of people around who hate their LCD screen.

The bottom line is that despite gasps of amazement from some posters that standard def looks "excellent" you'll already be aware that its bloody awful.

There's really no need to buy an LCD or plasma unless you intend to go HD.

The key thing is to get the standard def material upscaled.

Some claim the tv's do good enough upscaling but there's enough posts from those who say it doesnt.

You need Sky HD to upscale your broadcast pictures and you need a Bluray player or upscaling dvd player for upscaling discs.

When I swapped from Sky+ to Sky HD the improvement in sd channels was immediately obvious.

The same for dvd's.

The only time I bother with the built in Freeview is for ITV1 which is appalling on both Sky and Virgin.

Unless you go for some HD dont expect better pictures than your old CRT

The only improvement from going to SKY HD will be the use of an HDMI cable, not the upscaling. The general view of SD pictures from the Sky HD box is pretty poor with many preferring their old SKY+ picture. I can't see any difference myself but it's certainly no better. The only way you are going to get better SD pictures other then calibrating your TV is by using an external video processor to do all the deinterlacing and scaling, and then you are talking £600 to £1600, in may cases more than the actual cost of the tv itself.

be more pacific · 17-09-2008, 14:43

If you want to continue using SD sources such as Sky+, a VCR or a Freeview PVR, you can run these items through an upscaling DVD recorder with HDMI. I have never bothered with the awful built-in digital and analogue tuners on my TV because my Sony RDR-GX350 (only £89.99) upscales everything beautifully.

Hope this helps.

Nigel Goodwin · 17-09-2008, 15:06

Quote:

Originally Posted by be more pacific

If you want to continue using SD sources such as Sky+, a VCR or a Freeview PVR, you can run these items through an upscaling DVD recorder with HDMI. I have never bothered with the awful built-in digital and analogue tuners on my TV because my Sony RDR-GX350 (only £89.99) upscales everything beautifully.

What make of TV do you have?, I've never seen a GX350 improve anything, nor any other upscaling DVD recorder.

Deacon1972 · 17-09-2008, 15:15

Quote:

Originally Posted by be more pacific

If you want to continue using SD sources such as Sky+, a VCR or a Freeview PVR, you can run these items through an upscaling DVD recorder with HDMI. I have never bothered with the awful built-in digital and analogue tuners on my TV because my Sony RDR-GX350 (only £89.99) upscales everything beautifully.

Hope this helps.

Sky+, VCR and Freeview don't support HDMI.

Connecting any of these to the GX350 would mean the DVD recorder would need to be able to do video up-conversion, converting analogue -> digital then outputting it through HDMI.

I don't know any DVD recorders that do this personally, especially not for under £100.

be more pacific · 17-09-2008, 15:32

So it doesn't upscale "on the fly" then?

Oh well, viewing over the HDMI still looks 100 times better than the Samsung TV's native tuners or scart AV, so the Sony recorder must be doing something right.

sherer · 17-09-2008, 15:34

well you don't have to go down the Sky route you could use Virgin Media and a V+ Box. I have this on my Sharp HD LCD set and that gives a superb picture but if I set it to the freeview SD pictures then the picture is very poor.

Here's a question for the OP, is it really that bad a picture or is it more that it just isn't the leap up in quality you were expecting ?

Deacon1972 · 17-09-2008, 15:44

Quote:

Originally Posted by be more pacific

So it doesn't upscale "on the fly" then?

Oh well, viewing over the HDMI still looks 100 times better than the Samsung TV's native tuners or scart AV, so the Sony recorder must be doing something right.

Using the internal tuner and DVD player will almost certainly be upscaled as it's digital, but it's very unlikely that any external equipment connect to it via an analogue connection will be.

be more pacific · 17-09-2008, 15:55

Quote:

Originally Posted by Deacon1972

Using the internal tuner and DVD player will almost certainly be upscaled as it's digital, but it's very unlikely that any external equipment connect to it via an analogue connection will be.

What about playback of DVDs recorded from an external source? Will that be upscaled?

sherer · 17-09-2008, 16:10

if you have an upscaling DVD player, not just a normal one connected via a scale, then it will upscale DVDs no matter what they were recorded from.

One point of note is that is you play a low quality AVI file burnt to DVD or a VCD or something then that will look even worse as the bad artifacts and poor quality will be magnified more on the bigger screen

be more pacific · 17-09-2008, 16:22

I've just adjusted my RDR-GX350's HDMI to output 720 x 576i. There was a visible drop in picture quality on the recorder's Line 1 feed and my TV no longer labelled the Sony as a 1080 source.

I don't know whether the Sony is truly upscaling its Line 1 feed from Sky+, but it's certainly doing something to improve the picture in the 1920 x 1080p mode.

Nigel Goodwin · 17-09-2008, 17:03

Quote:

Originally Posted by be more pacific

I've just adjusted my RDR-GX350's HDMI to output 720 x 576i. There was a visible drop in picture quality on the recorder's Line 1 feed and my TV no longer labelled the Sony as a 1080 source.

I don't know whether the Sony is truly upscaling its Line 1 feed from Sky+, but it's certainly doing something to improve the picture in the 1920 x 1080p mode.

The RDRGX350 is an analogue DVD recorder, not a PVR - so it accepts analogue inputs and digitises them, they can then be recorded to DVD or sent out via HDMI.

However, if this improves your picture substantially, it means your TV is a very poor one - so it makes your DVD recorder even more useful.

late8 · 17-09-2008, 17:11

Be a propper man and get a Plasma

It's only me · 17-09-2008, 17:47

Quote:

Originally Posted by madmiller

Bloody awful, wish i never brought one ,the model I brought was the Sony KDL40W4000 thinking it was one of the best , Very disipointed with the SD digital pitcure
I was wondering what others thought .

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gort

First thing, make sure you use Standard instead of Vivid in the Picture Mode settings, which I think is the default setting for Sonys (could well be wrong there). After that, fix the settings in Standard, reducing things like the backlight, contrast, turning the colour tone to neutral, and reducing the sharpness a tad lower. There are other settings to fiddle with, too, like brightness, colour, etc.

I haven't got your Sony, but when I first got mine, the picture was "awful" on SD. However, after a bit of messing with the settings, I'm very happy with it.

Im vey happy with mine(kdl40w4000u), but as many have stated you really need to tinker to get the best from this set and any other lcd,
factory settings just don't do lcd-tv's any justice, spend a little time and you can get near crt quality.
when i get time i will note my settings down which im happy with as im still at work as i write this

be more pacific · 17-09-2008, 21:18

Can someone please explain this upscaling lark to me?

The HDMI signal from my Sony DVD recorder is always recognised by my TV as 1920 x 1080, regardless of whether I'm playing a DVD or monitoring/recording the feed from my Sky+ box. Here's a pic of the TV's Info screen.

If I go into the recorder's System Menu and reduce the resolution to 720 x 576, there is a noticeable drop in picture quality and the Info screen acknowledges the lower resolution.

People on here have said my DVD recorder can't be upscaling the picture. If that's the case, what is it doing to improve the picture in 1920 x 1080 mode?

Deacon1972 · 17-09-2008, 22:12

Quote:

Originally Posted by be more pacific

Can someone please explain this upscaling lark to me?

The HDMI signal from my Sony DVD recorder is always recognised by my TV as 1920 x 1080, regardless of whether I'm playing a DVD or monitoring/recording the feed from my Sky+ box. Here's a pic of the TV's Info screen.

If I go into the recorder's System Menu and reduce the resolution to 720 x 576, there is a noticeable drop in picture quality and the Info screen acknowledges the lower resolution.

People on here have said my DVD recorder can't be upscaling the picture. If that's the case, what is it doing to improve the picture in 1920 x 1080 mode?

I don't think anyone has said your DVD recorder was not upscaling the picture.

It will be upscaling the tuner and DVD side of the recorder.

What I said was - it is very unlikely it would be able to upscale anything connected to it via an analogue connection as the recorder would need to be able to perform video up-conversion, this doesn't come cheap, I would be very surprised if it was included in a recorder that cost under £100.

Features like this are normally found on much higher equipment.

14-09-2008, 21:45	#1
madmiller Forum Member Join Date: Oct 2002 Posts: 254	picture quality lcd Bloody awful, wish i never brought one ,the model I brought was the Sony KDL40W4000 thinking it was one of the best , Very disipointed with the SD digital pitcure I was wondering what others thought .

14-09-2008, 22:26	#2
bobcar Forum Member Join Date: Sep 2004 Posts: 14,718	Quote: Originally Posted by madmiller Bloody awful, wish i never brought one ,the model I brought was the Sony KDL40W4000 thinking it was one of the best , Very disipointed with the SD digital pitcure I was wondering what others thought . What is horrible about it specifically? If you are using the out of the box picture settings then it will usually look horrible. If the screen is bigger than you had before then the picture quality will automatically be worse because you will see more of the faults in a compressed transmission. What is DVD like? That should be better and will indicate whether it is compression artifacts you are seeing.

14-09-2008, 22:56	#3
Jimmy Connors Forum Member Join Date: Apr 2003 Location: Home For The Bewildered Posts: 86,545	I am over the moon with the quality of my new LCD. It's very sharp and well just perfect really. I nearly bought a Sony too. Ended up with a SHARP and it's really good. Especially with a DVD playing through a HDMI cable. OP like the previous poster said. Fiddle about with the picture settings. My settings (straight from the box) were actually very crisp - but I managed to make them bettter with a little tweaking. I thought Sony were very well regarded?

14-09-2008, 23:11	#4
Gort Forum Member Join Date: Mar 2005 Posts: 5,053	First thing, make sure you use Standard instead of Vivid in the Picture Mode settings, which I think is the default setting for Sonys (could well be wrong there). After that, fix the settings in Standard, reducing things like the backlight, contrast, turning the colour tone to neutral, and reducing the sharpness a tad lower. There are other settings to fiddle with, too, like brightness, colour, etc. I haven't got your Sony, but when I first got mine, the picture was "awful" on SD. However, after a bit of messing with the settings, I'm very happy with it.

14-09-2008, 23:58	#5
madmiller Forum Member Join Date: Oct 2002 Posts: 254	Just turned all the picture options to (off) ,seems to of improved things, found this on internet quite helpful. 1.Ensure that the set has been switched on for at least twenty minutes. 2. Set all the 'fancy' picture options to 'Off' or 'Neutral'. 3. Reduce 'Colour', 'Contrast' and 'Brightness' to zero. This should give a blank, black screen. 4. Slowly increase 'Brightness' until their is a just perceptible lightening of the screen. 5. Slowly increase 'Contrast' until you have an acceptable black and white picture. Some further small adjustment of 'Brightness' may be necessary to achieve this. 6. If you have a 'Gamma' control slowly increase 'Gamma' until you have sufficient amount of detail in the 'blacks'. 7. Make further small adjustments of 'Brightness' and 'Contrast' to optimize the black and white picture. 8. Increase 'Colour' to achieve realistic flesh tones. The important thing is to get a decent black and white picture and touse a reliable(?) programme source. I used News 24 studio shots.

15-09-2008, 12:16	#6
MD_Zero Inactive Member Join Date: Apr 2008 Location: London Posts: 2,163	Quote: Originally Posted by madmiller Just turned all the picture options to (off) ,seems to of improved things, found this on internet quite helpful. 1.Ensure that the set has been switched on for at least twenty minutes. 2. Set all the 'fancy' picture options to 'Off' or 'Neutral'. 3. Reduce 'Colour', 'Contrast' and 'Brightness' to zero. This should give a blank, black screen. 4. Slowly increase 'Brightness' until their is a just perceptible lightening of the screen. 5. Slowly increase 'Contrast' until you have an acceptable black and white picture. Some further small adjustment of 'Brightness' may be necessary to achieve this. 6. If you have a 'Gamma' control slowly increase 'Gamma' until you have sufficient amount of detail in the 'blacks'. 7. Make further small adjustments of 'Brightness' and 'Contrast' to optimize the black and white picture. 8. Increase 'Colour' to achieve realistic flesh tones. The important thing is to get a decent black and white picture and touse a reliable(?) programme source. I used News 24 studio shots. W4000 is known for a poor freeview picture, it can be made more "bearable" through changing the settings...I have a 40W4000 at my parents holiday home and its mainly used for HD via ps3/360 as the signal for tv there is weak and it looks awesome. For SD content though, its either stick with the old CRT or Plasma. Some will agree, some will disagree, go into a shop and ask for a demo of freeview on a plasma and lcd and make your own mind up

15-09-2008, 20:43	#7
thepianoandme Inactive Member Join Date: Sep 2008 Posts: 74	Quote: Originally Posted by madmiller Bloody awful, wish i never brought one ,the model I brought was the Sony KDL40W4000 thinking it was one of the best , Very disipointed with the SD digital pitcure I was wondering what others thought . A thorough search of this forum would have shown you there are plenty of people around who hate their LCD screen. The bottom line is that despite gasps of amazement from some posters that standard def looks "excellent" you'll already be aware that its bloody awful. There's really no need to buy an LCD or plasma unless you intend to go HD. The key thing is to get the standard def material upscaled. Some claim the tv's do good enough upscaling but there's enough posts from those who say it doesnt. You need Sky HD to upscale your broadcast pictures and you need a Bluray player or upscaling dvd player for upscaling discs. When I swapped from Sky+ to Sky HD the improvement in sd channels was immediately obvious. The same for dvd's. The only time I bother with the built in Freeview is for ITV1 which is appalling on both Sky and Virgin. Unless you go for some HD dont expect better pictures than your old CRT

15-09-2008, 21:57	#8
Orbitalzone Forum Member Join Date: Oct 2000 Location: Sussex Posts: 12,173	I'm really quite surprised at how good my Sony 32W4000 performs on all types of sources... admittedly I can't get freeview so can only go by SkySD and SkyHD but must say that it compares favourably on SD broadcasts when compared to my 28" Sony crt (KV28FX20) which always gave fairly good results and no 100hz added processing. t took some time to get the 32W4000 picture settings right but once I'd turned all the 'enhancements' off and set midway colour, contrast, brightness and reduced sharpness to 1 and backlight to 4 I got good results on SD, HD, blu ray and DVD. If you sit 2 feet away you can find faults to your hearts content even with HD sources. Fortunately I mostly sit further back and enjoy the programmes, to futher improve SD picture quality I generally avoid the ITV channels

17-09-2008, 10:20	#9
Kojack Forum Member Join Date: Feb 2005 Location: Pomgolia Posts: 1,162	Quote: Originally Posted by thepianoandme A thorough search of this forum would have shown you there are plenty of people around who hate their LCD screen. The bottom line is that despite gasps of amazement from some posters that standard def looks "excellent" you'll already be aware that its bloody awful. There's really no need to buy an LCD or plasma unless you intend to go HD. The key thing is to get the standard def material upscaled. Some claim the tv's do good enough upscaling but there's enough posts from those who say it doesnt. You need Sky HD to upscale your broadcast pictures and you need a Bluray player or upscaling dvd player for upscaling discs. When I swapped from Sky+ to Sky HD the improvement in sd channels was immediately obvious. The same for dvd's. The only time I bother with the built in Freeview is for ITV1 which is appalling on both Sky and Virgin. Unless you go for some HD dont expect better pictures than your old CRT Couldn't agree more, we noticed a big increase in quality when changing from the Sky+ box to the Sky HD also we bought the toshiba EP-30 HD DVD player just for upscaling DVDs which it also does a great job to be honest we don't watch that much HiDef & will prob drop it in November when our 12months is up.

17-09-2008, 11:19	#10
OranguMaTang Forum Member Join Date: Aug 2007 Posts: 712	Quote: Originally Posted by madmiller Just turned all the picture options to (off) ,seems to of improved things, found this on internet quite helpful. 1.Ensure that the set has been switched on for at least twenty minutes. 2. Set all the 'fancy' picture options to 'Off' or 'Neutral'. 3. Reduce 'Colour', 'Contrast' and 'Brightness' to zero. This should give a blank, black screen. 4. Slowly increase 'Brightness' until their is a just perceptible lightening of the screen. 5. Slowly increase 'Contrast' until you have an acceptable black and white picture. Some further small adjustment of 'Brightness' may be necessary to achieve this. 6. If you have a 'Gamma' control slowly increase 'Gamma' until you have sufficient amount of detail in the 'blacks'. 7. Make further small adjustments of 'Brightness' and 'Contrast' to optimize the black and white picture. 8. Increase 'Colour' to achieve realistic flesh tones. The important thing is to get a decent black and white picture and touse a reliable(?) programme source. I used News 24 studio shots. Get a copy of Digital Video Essentials and take at least some of the guesswork out of it. Alternatively see if your tv has been reviewed at www.hdtvtest.co.uk, they often have correctly calibrated settings you can use.

17-09-2008, 11:27	#11
OranguMaTang Forum Member Join Date: Aug 2007 Posts: 712	Quote: Originally Posted by thepianoandme A thorough search of this forum would have shown you there are plenty of people around who hate their LCD screen. The bottom line is that despite gasps of amazement from some posters that standard def looks "excellent" you'll already be aware that its bloody awful. There's really no need to buy an LCD or plasma unless you intend to go HD. The key thing is to get the standard def material upscaled. Some claim the tv's do good enough upscaling but there's enough posts from those who say it doesnt. You need Sky HD to upscale your broadcast pictures and you need a Bluray player or upscaling dvd player for upscaling discs. When I swapped from Sky+ to Sky HD the improvement in sd channels was immediately obvious. The same for dvd's. The only time I bother with the built in Freeview is for ITV1 which is appalling on both Sky and Virgin. Unless you go for some HD dont expect better pictures than your old CRT The only improvement from going to SKY HD will be the use of an HDMI cable, not the upscaling. The general view of SD pictures from the Sky HD box is pretty poor with many preferring their old SKY+ picture. I can't see any difference myself but it's certainly no better. The only way you are going to get better SD pictures other then calibrating your TV is by using an external video processor to do all the deinterlacing and scaling, and then you are talking £600 to £1600, in may cases more than the actual cost of the tv itself.

17-09-2008, 14:43	#12
be more pacific Forum Member Join Date: Apr 2005 Posts: 16,034	If you want to continue using SD sources such as Sky+, a VCR or a Freeview PVR, you can run these items through an upscaling DVD recorder with HDMI. I have never bothered with the awful built-in digital and analogue tuners on my TV because my Sony RDR-GX350 (only £89.99) upscales everything beautifully. Hope this helps.

17-09-2008, 15:06	#13
Nigel Goodwin Forum Member Join Date: Apr 2006 Location: North Derbyshire Posts: 41,789	Quote: Originally Posted by be more pacific If you want to continue using SD sources such as Sky+, a VCR or a Freeview PVR, you can run these items through an upscaling DVD recorder with HDMI. I have never bothered with the awful built-in digital and analogue tuners on my TV because my Sony RDR-GX350 (only £89.99) upscales everything beautifully. What make of TV do you have?, I've never seen a GX350 improve anything, nor any other upscaling DVD recorder.

17-09-2008, 15:15	#14
Deacon1972 Guest Join Date: Feb 2008 Posts: 8,103	Quote: Originally Posted by be more pacific If you want to continue using SD sources such as Sky+, a VCR or a Freeview PVR, you can run these items through an upscaling DVD recorder with HDMI. I have never bothered with the awful built-in digital and analogue tuners on my TV because my Sony RDR-GX350 (only £89.99) upscales everything beautifully. Hope this helps. Sky+, VCR and Freeview don't support HDMI. Connecting any of these to the GX350 would mean the DVD recorder would need to be able to do video up-conversion, converting analogue -> digital then outputting it through HDMI. I don't know any DVD recorders that do this personally, especially not for under £100.

17-09-2008, 15:32	#15
be more pacific Forum Member Join Date: Apr 2005 Posts: 16,034	So it doesn't upscale "on the fly" then? Oh well, viewing over the HDMI still looks 100 times better than the Samsung TV's native tuners or scart AV, so the Sony recorder must be doing something right.

17-09-2008, 15:34	#16
sherer Forum Member Join Date: Aug 2004 Posts: 5,718	well you don't have to go down the Sky route you could use Virgin Media and a V+ Box. I have this on my Sharp HD LCD set and that gives a superb picture but if I set it to the freeview SD pictures then the picture is very poor. Here's a question for the OP, is it really that bad a picture or is it more that it just isn't the leap up in quality you were expecting ?

17-09-2008, 15:44	#17
Deacon1972 Guest Join Date: Feb 2008 Posts: 8,103	Quote: Originally Posted by be more pacific So it doesn't upscale "on the fly" then? Oh well, viewing over the HDMI still looks 100 times better than the Samsung TV's native tuners or scart AV, so the Sony recorder must be doing something right. Using the internal tuner and DVD player will almost certainly be upscaled as it's digital, but it's very unlikely that any external equipment connect to it via an analogue connection will be.

17-09-2008, 15:55	#18
be more pacific Forum Member Join Date: Apr 2005 Posts: 16,034	Quote: Originally Posted by Deacon1972 Using the internal tuner and DVD player will almost certainly be upscaled as it's digital, but it's very unlikely that any external equipment connect to it via an analogue connection will be. What about playback of DVDs recorded from an external source? Will that be upscaled?

17-09-2008, 16:10	#19
sherer Forum Member Join Date: Aug 2004 Posts: 5,718	if you have an upscaling DVD player, not just a normal one connected via a scale, then it will upscale DVDs no matter what they were recorded from. One point of note is that is you play a low quality AVI file burnt to DVD or a VCD or something then that will look even worse as the bad artifacts and poor quality will be magnified more on the bigger screen

17-09-2008, 16:22	#20
be more pacific Forum Member Join Date: Apr 2005 Posts: 16,034	I've just adjusted my RDR-GX350's HDMI to output 720 x 576i. There was a visible drop in picture quality on the recorder's Line 1 feed and my TV no longer labelled the Sony as a 1080 source. I don't know whether the Sony is truly upscaling its Line 1 feed from Sky+, but it's certainly doing something to improve the picture in the 1920 x 1080p mode.

17-09-2008, 17:03	#21
Nigel Goodwin Forum Member Join Date: Apr 2006 Location: North Derbyshire Posts: 41,789	Quote: Originally Posted by be more pacific I've just adjusted my RDR-GX350's HDMI to output 720 x 576i. There was a visible drop in picture quality on the recorder's Line 1 feed and my TV no longer labelled the Sony as a 1080 source. I don't know whether the Sony is truly upscaling its Line 1 feed from Sky+, but it's certainly doing something to improve the picture in the 1920 x 1080p mode. The RDRGX350 is an analogue DVD recorder, not a PVR - so it accepts analogue inputs and digitises them, they can then be recorded to DVD or sent out via HDMI. However, if this improves your picture substantially, it means your TV is a very poor one - so it makes your DVD recorder even more useful.

DS Forums

picture quality lcd

17-09-2008, 17:11	#22
late8 Forum Member Join Date: Jul 2005 Posts: 7,052	Be a propper man and get a Plasma

17-09-2008, 17:47	#23
It's only me Forum Member Join Date: Jun 2006 Location: Norfolk Posts: 687	Quote: Originally Posted by madmiller Bloody awful, wish i never brought one ,the model I brought was the Sony KDL40W4000 thinking it was one of the best , Very disipointed with the SD digital pitcure I was wondering what others thought . Quote: Originally Posted by Gort First thing, make sure you use Standard instead of Vivid in the Picture Mode settings, which I think is the default setting for Sonys (could well be wrong there). After that, fix the settings in Standard, reducing things like the backlight, contrast, turning the colour tone to neutral, and reducing the sharpness a tad lower. There are other settings to fiddle with, too, like brightness, colour, etc. I haven't got your Sony, but when I first got mine, the picture was "awful" on SD. However, after a bit of messing with the settings, I'm very happy with it. Im vey happy with mine(kdl40w4000u), but as many have stated you really need to tinker to get the best from this set and any other lcd, factory settings just don't do lcd-tv's any justice, spend a little time and you can get near crt quality. when i get time i will note my settings down which im happy with as im still at work as i write this

17-09-2008, 21:18	#24
be more pacific Forum Member Join Date: Apr 2005 Posts: 16,034	Can someone please explain this upscaling lark to me? The HDMI signal from my Sony DVD recorder is always recognised by my TV as 1920 x 1080, regardless of whether I'm playing a DVD or monitoring/recording the feed from my Sky+ box. Here's a pic of the TV's Info screen. If I go into the recorder's System Menu and reduce the resolution to 720 x 576, there is a noticeable drop in picture quality and the Info screen acknowledges the lower resolution. People on here have said my DVD recorder can't be upscaling the picture. If that's the case, what is it doing to improve the picture in 1920 x 1080 mode?

17-09-2008, 22:12	#25
Deacon1972 Guest Join Date: Feb 2008 Posts: 8,103	Quote: Originally Posted by be more pacific Can someone please explain this upscaling lark to me? The HDMI signal from my Sony DVD recorder is always recognised by my TV as 1920 x 1080, regardless of whether I'm playing a DVD or monitoring/recording the feed from my Sky+ box. Here's a pic of the TV's Info screen. If I go into the recorder's System Menu and reduce the resolution to 720 x 576, there is a noticeable drop in picture quality and the Info screen acknowledges the lower resolution. People on here have said my DVD recorder can't be upscaling the picture. If that's the case, what is it doing to improve the picture in 1920 x 1080 mode? I don't think anyone has said your DVD recorder was not upscaling the picture. It will be upscaling the tuner and DVD side of the recorder. What I said was - it is very unlikely it would be able to upscale anything connected to it via an analogue connection as the recorder would need to be able to perform video up-conversion, this doesn't come cheap, I would be very surprised if it was included in a recorder that cost under £100. Features like this are normally found on much higher equipment.