New Plasma Telly - Poor Picture

[Lordbenny]

Just bought a 42" LG plasma TV, HD Ready but not 1080. Got it home and the picture isnt as good as my 10 year old flat screen JVC!

I'm mainly watching SKY Standard Definition (SD), at the moment I've got the snooker on and the balls have a ghost around them and the screen is pixelating (is that what you call it). You really notice it when the sky channel info banner is up at the bottom of the screen

I'm using a standard scart lead between the Sky box & the screen, it worked fine before. Maplin have told me that using gold & diamond encrusted ones won't make that much difference.

How long do you have to 'bed the screen' in for or is this just a 'fobb-off' from Richer Sounds.

PLEASE help, I told the Mrs the TV would be better than the old one and even she can notice that it's not!

[Viper_Larry]

Try an HDMI lead - should make a big difference. You can get them off eBay for around £8

[Plotloss]

Have you got the Skybox outputting RGB SCART or Composite SCART?

Assuming you're plugged into an RGB capable SCART on the television then changing the Skybox video format output will help a lot if its not already RGB

[Boozy]

not much point if it's a standard definition picture, won't work I don't think (for the HDMI cable)

Edited by Boozy on Wednesday 17th December 14:21

[JulianHJ]

Viper_Larry said:

Try an HDMI lead - should make a big difference. You can get them off eBay for around £8

Is that going to make a difference on SD images, and does a standard Sky box even have HDMI?

From the countless PH telly threads, I was under the impression CRT is better most of the time than flat panels for normal transmissions...

[Ikemi]

Lordbenny said:

Just bought a 42" LG plasma TV, HD Ready but not 1080. Got it home and the picture isnt as good as my 10 year old flat screen JVC!

I'm mainly watching SKY Standard Definition (SD), at the moment I've got the snooker on and the balls have a ghost around them and the screen is pixelating (is that what you call it). You really notice it when the sky channel info banner is up at the bottom of the screen

I'm using a standard scart lead between the Sky box & the screen, it worked fine before. Maplin have told me that using gold & diamond encrusted ones won't make that much difference.

How long do you have to 'bed the screen' in for or is this just a 'fobb-off' from Richer Sounds.

PLEASE help, I told the Mrs the TV would be better than the old one and even she can notice that it's not!

Have you checked whether the picture settings are abnormally high (i.e contrast/brightness/sharpness)? Panasonic have a 'dynamic' setting, which increases all of these - To be honest the picture looks similar to what you described. I always have mine on 'normal' and then modify the settings to re-create a more natural tone

HDMI or component lead will make all the difference too ...

You used to have to run-in plasma screens for approximately 200 or so hours on a low brightness setting, making sure not to leave any static images on-screen for a long period of time. It was done to reduce burn-in, whereby a static picture continously appears faintly in the background whilst you view other images. However I am sure this is now an obsolete task with newer panels ...

[spants]

pictures tend to be harsher on lcd/plasmas than the old crt models. The artifacts are due to mpeg2 compression and because the screen is clearer - you can see them better!....

Best to get some HD type signals - try bluray dvd (samsung bd-p1500 is quite cheap & rent films from lovefilm.com) or sky hd.

I have a 52" samsung lcd and the picture is amazing especially on the xbox360.

HTH
Tony

[HRG]

IIRC some Sky channels have less bandwidth than others which means the picture will be worse on certain channels.

If that's not the case then I'm talking complete bks

[hornetrider]

Good advice above.

First things first. Check your picture settings. Turn down sharpness or any digital noise reduction facility. Also check on avforums for the optimal settings for your model of tv.

Is it a cheapy cheap mcheap Scart? Go to richer sounds and get a nice cambridge audio one for 20 squid - or even better a HDMI lead.

At the end of the day SD won't be brilliant on a huge screen, but by going through the above you can make the best out of it.

[Lordbenny]

Viper_Larry said:

Try an HDMI lead - should make a big difference. You can get them off eBay for around £8

Sky dosn't have HDMI

[Lordbenny]

hornetrider said:

Good advice above.

First things first. Check your picture settings. Turn down sharpness or any digital noise reduction facility. Also check on avforums for the optimal settings for your model of tv.

Is it a cheapy cheap mcheap Scart? Go to richer sounds and get a nice cambridge audio one for 20 squid - or even better a HDMI lead.

At the end of the day SD won't be brilliant on a huge screen, but by going through the above you can make the best out of it.

Thanks, I'm off to get a decent aScart lead then!

[Plotloss]

HDMI isnt all its cracked up to be anyway.

Up until HDMI 1.3a Component video over coaxial was still capable of a superior image.

[Plotloss]

Lordbenny said:

hornetrider said:

Good advice above.

First things first. Check your picture settings. Turn down sharpness or any digital noise reduction facility. Also check on avforums for the optimal settings for your model of tv.

Is it a cheapy cheap mcheap Scart? Go to richer sounds and get a nice cambridge audio one for 20 squid - or even better a HDMI lead.

At the end of the day SD won't be brilliant on a huge screen, but by going through the above you can make the best out of it.

Thanks, I'm off to get a decent aScart lead then!

STOP

See my post above about video output format first.

Thats free.

[Lordbenny]

Plotloss said:

Have you got the Skybox outputting RGB SCART or Composite SCART?

Don't know....what's the difference?

[hornetrider]

Plotloss said:

Lordbenny said:

hornetrider said:

Good advice above.

First things first. Check your picture settings. Turn down sharpness or any digital noise reduction facility. Also check on avforums for the optimal settings for your model of tv.

Is it a cheapy cheap mcheap Scart? Go to richer sounds and get a nice cambridge audio one for 20 squid - or even better a HDMI lead.

At the end of the day SD won't be brilliant on a huge screen, but by going through the above you can make the best out of it.

Thanks, I'm off to get a decent aScart lead then!

STOP

See my post above about video output format first.

Thats free.

Well yes. But. If he's using one of those black plastic McCheapsville scarts that come free in the box then a higher quality one will deliver a better picture, all other things remaining the same.

[Plotloss]

With Composite all the components of the picture are muxed together and split out again into their component parts and then converted into RGB for the display to display.

With RGB the box sends RGB and a muxed set of Syncs which means that the display has to do a lot less signal processing.

The 'movement' you are seeing could be a feature of the screen trying to process a composite signal which is being interfered with along the signal path. If you switch to RGB and it improves then try a proper SCART.

Regardless of what people on the internet try to tell you all cables are not created equally. There is no sense in going mad but there is a definite difference between very cheap and mid-range cables.

[hornetrider]

Lordbenny said:

Plotloss said:

Have you got the Skybox outputting RGB SCART or Composite SCART?

Don't know....what's the difference?

RGB is better. Go into your sky box settings and make sure its outputting RGB. Also make sure the scart is plugged into a scart socket labelled RGB on your tv.

[Lordbenny]

Just change the Sky settings to PAL and its much better, however, the snooker balls still look like they're surrounded by a white ring.

[Plotloss]

hornetrider said:

Plotloss said:

Lordbenny said:

hornetrider said:

Good advice above.

First things first. Check your picture settings. Turn down sharpness or any digital noise reduction facility. Also check on avforums for the optimal settings for your model of tv.

Is it a cheapy cheap mcheap Scart? Go to richer sounds and get a nice cambridge audio one for 20 squid - or even better a HDMI lead.

At the end of the day SD won't be brilliant on a huge screen, but by going through the above you can make the best out of it.

Thanks, I'm off to get a decent aScart lead then!

STOP

See my post above about video output format first.

Thats free.

Well yes. But. If he's using one of those black plastic McCheapsville scarts that come free in the box then a higher quality one will deliver a better picture, all other things remaining the same.

Interference is less of an issue on RGBS than it is on Composite due to the composition of the signal.

[HRG]

Is the TV picture still set to "Dynamic"?