TV Technical Query

[Andy]

I've just got one of these new Sony Bravia 32" flat screen TV things, only a few weeks after coming into the 21st Century and taking out a subscription to Sky+.

(As an aside I have resisted Sky for years and years as I hardly ever watch much TV and see no good reason to pay around £40/month to watch several hundred more channels with barely anything decent on them, although to be fair the Discovery and National Geographic Channels offer some interesting stuff. However pressure from teenage kids about Prison Break, plus the SkySports channels for football and cycling means that I have succumbed.)

Anyway, having linked it all up, yep, great, the TV is quite good but possibly not as good as the analogue one that it replaced. I know this is because I am using pretty cheap, bog standard SCART lead connections between the screen and the Sky+ box and DVD player.

As yet I have no plans to get the Sky HD package, so in the meantime what is the best way to maximise the quality of the Digital screen image, what Scart leads would be best to get? More importantly, where can I get them at a reasonable price as opposed to paying Currie's or wherever sixty odd quid?

Look forward to some info and thanks in advance guys.

 

[zimzum42]

Make sure you have the TV set up properly, there are normally loads of options for widescreen, stretch, squish, etc etc.....

Some options will result in a better picture than others.

As for cheap leads, try things like ebuyer,, even richer sounds, they normally do good cables. You can get gold scart leads, but i don't know how much they improve things.....


Good show tomorrow night at 10pm on History Channel, Ice Road truckers, it's really good, trucking accross frozen lakes in canada....

try these channels as well, there is often something good on! 155, 169, 194, 281.

Oh, and channel 360 is always a laugh!


Don't bother with HD, not yet anyway. they are still having problems with it, and i reckon it's more money than it's worth at the moment
SKY plus is an amazing thing though, future of TV i reckon!

 

[Eat MY Dust]

Is it LCD or Plasma? If it, and you're replacing an tube TV, the picture will not be as good, there's nothing you can really do to make it match. More expensive cables should technically result in a better picture, but may not be all that noticable.

Mrs EMD was talking about getting LCD/plasma, but 'll keep a hold of the old lump of a TV for now as the picture quality is so much better.

 

[starseven]

Hi Andy

Sometimes LCD screens are not as good as expected , they seem sensitive to signal and can be worse than analogue on normal TV. The picture is sometimes too bright for real film and works best with animated films etc.

Iys just one of the down sides of lcd and why a lot of people prefer plasma screens.

I got used to it after a while, by the way SKY+ is the only way to watch the box no ads and programs you want, when you want them.

 

[Andy]

Is it LCD or Plasma? If it, and you're replacing an tube TV, the picture will not be as good, there's nothing you can really do to make it match. More expensive cables should technically result in a better picture, but may not be all that noticable.

Mrs EMD was talking about getting LCD/plasma, but 'll keep a hold of the old lump of a TV for now as the picture quality is so much better.

Its a Sony LCD TV. Yes, EMD, I had a huge lump of a JVC sitting in the corner as well, attraction of the flat screen was size and in theory the better picture quality. Got a good deal on the TV from Morrisons of all places (expensive shopping trip that for Mrs Andy) but obviously need to spend a bit more to optimise things.

 

[Elmer Fudd]

As an aside I have resisted Sky for years and years as I hardly ever watch much TV and see no good reason to pay around £40/month to watch several hundred more channels with barely anything decent on them.............

SHHHHH!Don't let simoncc see this ! Sky+ is the saviour of life for him.
£480 a year to basically watch repeat TV ? More money than sense mate.
Anyway, your choice. Scart leads:- Tandy used to do good ones but I think they've disappeared into the Neverland. If you've got a Richer Sounds close to you, go there or buy on-line.
Oh, and gold plated are the bogs dollix **!
I'll elucidate on that, multi strand oxygen free copper cable with gold plated connectors are the really big bogs dollix !

 

[walker]

Buy yourself some gold Scart leads ( there around £35-30) that will make a little difference without having to break the bank to much as gold is a better conductor for sound and vision other than alu.

 

[litespeeder]

Another voter for richer sounds, oxygen free gold type conduct better resulting in better picture transfer

 

[trustysteed]

i bought some gold plated scart leads and didn't notice any difference in either sound or quality with them! you can get gold (and other) leads a lot cheaper than from richer sounds, just shop online.

 

[PrettyboyTim]

I don't think you'll get much improvement with expensive leads, but you probably can get some improvement by fiddling with the setup of your TV. My TV (a Toshiba) has some settings for reducing digital artefacts from SD TV signals. You may also find that meddling with the brightness, contrast etc will help.

 

[twowheelsgood]

leads will make little or no difference, certainly for short cables.

The best bet is to get a sky or free to air box that supports HDMI or even VGA.

Failing that use the RGB output via SCART. You may need to go into the sky box menu to enable this and only one of your SCARTs may support it. This will give you a much better picture than the standard composite.

You'll have to accept that current TV signals were designed to work with CRT technology and considering how old the technology is, it hides the shortcomings very well. Worse still, standard digital channels are compressed to hell (a good analogue picture from a well set-up ariel is much better than the output of a freeview box). Your hi-def, sharp TV will show up the artifacts brilliantly.

LCD and Plasma won't show any benefit until HD channels come online. It isn't just the high-definition itself, new methods of encoding the picture that degrade in a less noticeable way (it tends to blur rather show blocks and artifacts). My fairly ordinary LG screen gives a good picture via my cable box. The internal analogue tuner is almost unusable due to vertical lines and noise.

 

[Trembler49]

I have a 42" TV and SKY HD, I have 1 major and 1 minor gripe.

Major problem - We were promised lots of HD channels, where are they?

Minor problem - HD TV is brilliant, an order of magnitude better, but, and this sound silly...but..

When I am watching nature programs or lots of landscapes, my brain gets overwhelmed by the sheer amount of detail, particularly city scapes. I get a sort of TV agrophobia. Anyone else get it?

 

[Arch]

I'm a bit of a technophobe and luddite, I admit, but I keep seeing the ad for the latest HD tv that 's on at the moment, and it goes on about 68 million lifelike colours and I think, can the human eye really see all those? Won't it be like the paint cards in B and Q, hundreds of identical white-with-a-hint-of-x? I can't say I've ever watched a colour tv and thought it didn't do the world justice...

But then I'm currently on black and white, so any colour tends to overexcite me...

 

[Andy]

Failing that use the RGB output via SCART. You may need to go into the sky box menu to enable this and only one of your SCARTs may support it. This will give you a much better picture than the standard composite.

/quote]

Any more info that you can give me on this 2wheelsgood?

Cheers
Andy

 

[Spoked Wheels]

A good scart lead does improve the picture quality but the cable must be good quality, not any gold cable. You don't really need to pay silly money for a cable either.... I paid £20 I think for my QED cables and they are top quality IMO.


I just had a quick look at the place I bought them from and they are but still affordable at £18.99

I had an old Sony TV when I got them and it did improve the picture quality - now I have a Panasonic Plama screen and the picture quality is fantastic.

Something to read about QED scart cables here

Rick