Digital Cable Quality on an HDTV problem.?

Question

I just recently bought an Samsung DLP 46" HDTV that has 1080i maximum resolution. The HD channels on the TV look amazing and I have no problems with them. The only problem I have is on regular channels that are 480i. They bad and fuzzy and quality isnt that great. I dont know if its a cable problem because on a standard TV I have thats plugs in from the same source looks great. Is it because of the size of the screen or does my cable need more signal power? I have Time Warner Cable and have a Cable Box with it too.

Oh yes by the way I do use HDMI on my receiver though I still get bad regular channels.

Answer 1

This is normal. I have it, too. Everyone has it. That is just what we HDTV owners are going to have to put up with for a few more years until all channels are HD compliant. The federal government is on the HDTV side and has already mandated that all channels will be HD in the near future.

We'll just have to watch crappy regular channels for the time being. Make sure you're using HDMI cables for true, uncompressed high-def video!

The reason why you're channels look bad? Your HDTV needs high-octance fuel to run. Regular cable is just like regular unleaded. It doesn't have the resolution (720/1080) to give your HDTV the high-def signal it requires. Therefore, it makes due with the standard cable television signal and produces an unimpressive picture. Buy an upconverting DVD player ($45-150) with an HDMI cable (for 1080 16:9 screen size) and you'll feel better when you're not watching your HD channels.

Answer 2

Even having an HDTV box doesn't make all of the channels instantly HD. I know my cable company only offers a few selections in HD and all the rest are in the standard mode. If you bought an HD box you will receive the standard HDTV channels that your cable company gives you, usually your local channels plus a few national networks but you won't be given HD movie channels unless you purchase the premium stations. If you already subscribe to a premium service like HBO or Showtime usually you will also receive their HD channels too, but usually they are not located in the same place as all of the other movie channels. I know all of my HD channels start in the 600's so don't look for the HD channels where your used to seeing the regular broadcast, those channels will still be going out as an SD channel. For example, Channel 27 on my HD box is regular SD ESPN, you have to go to 627 for the HD version of ESPN. That's probably the majority of the problem. For the best HD signal like everyone else has said, you should have the HDMI cables, don't buy $100 cables though, you can go to Target and they have some perfectly good ones for around $20. They work as well as the expensive ones. The cable will give you much improved Video and Audio and it's less cumbersome since you only have one cable to plug in compared to composite cables. Once you locate the HD channels on your box and have the cable in place you should see a dramatically different picture than what you were seeing before. The cable modem will not affect the TV picture at all. I have an additional room with cable and a cable modem and all of them go through the same pipeline (cable) with no problems.

Answer 3

If you want to get technical, your DLP is scaling to 1080i. The only projection TV that could actually display 1080i are CRT's which is a dead technology.

Drop your resolution to 720p.

Also, depending on what type of cable box you have (I believe that time warner HD-DVR box has HDMI out), try to see if it is capable of out-putting a signal through HDMI. The cool thing about that cable is that it could actually roll back to an analog signal and display a better picture from non HD content. Plus it's fully uncompressed digital video and audio-- you'll be maximizing your lines of resolution.

Try it out!

I hope this helps!

Answer 4

Some HD televisions just can't produce a good image with a standard 480i signal. Mine, a Mitsubishi 62" DLP, doesn't have this problem but I have friends whose HD TVs do.

Answer 5

If you have digital cable, it is possible that Time warner broadcasts in both analog and digital.
Make sure you always watch the Digital channels (they usually have a dash. For example if 5 is analog 5-1 or 5.1 will be digital).
Digital channels, even in standard def. will look better on your TV.

Answer 6

You are probably watching analog channels, and your high resolution TV is exposing all of the defects in the picture. Digital channels, even when not broadcasting HD pictures, should look very good.