After a bit of advice on tv’s, just brought a Samsung hdtv 1080p…
I have tv service from virgin and have the standard virgin box. Now my dilemma is my current picture is worse on the new hdtv than on my old crt, so I looked at the virgin HD box but note you only get 2 channels in HD which I would never watch. …. would getting an hd virgin box and in turn using hdmi cables improve the quality of the standard 50 or so channels? I know getting the hd box would mean all the channels would still be non HD (except the pay for films)
My only other thought was I have really cheap scart cables would getting gold plated, insulated ones really help, or an hdmi to scart lead?
Just after ways of improving the quality without changing to sky as I have all my services from Virgin.
Thanks for any advice
LCDs always look crap when compared to CRT
LCDs often have crap settings from the factory, check out some of the AV geekery on the web for recommendedsettings
HDMI cable may help but it just changes what is doing the upscaling from SD to HD.
Basically, standard def digital broadcast quality is terrible, and on a lovely big 1080p TV will look even worse. Something you can try is doing a search for your TV model on avforums.com and seeing what settings are recommended (you can soften SD signals, turn off sharpness etc) which helps a bit.
I have a suspicion that expensive cables make very little difference at all, although many people do swear by them.
You need to try different screen display options from within the Virgin Box's "display" settings, you'll find one that works better than the picture you're getting at the moment.
Once that's done, HDMI will imprive the picture and upgrading to a HD box from Virgin will give HD only for their HD channels, but by the sounds of it this isn't what's causing your really bad pictutre, it's because you need to try a different screen display option on the Virgin Box's set up
I've got a V+ HD box and also a Samsung 32in 1080p tele. They're connected via HDMI with the appropriate settings on the box.
Picture quality on normal channels is excellent as the box upscales. I'd say dvd quality. Quality on the HD channels obviously is perfect. At present there are only a couple of HD channels (BBC etc), but more are coming, particularly if you have the top tv package.
Best bit is pretty much all the on-demand movies are available in HD.
So, get the HD box, it's worth it.