I was wandering around wally world yesterday, no more CRTsets they said the last were gone last Christmas. I was checking out the pic on the flat screen, looked great in HD but lousy in SD. Is that normal?

I have no intention of getting a flat screen, I guess my eye sight just is not that great, but was suprised by how BAD some of them looked (again SD).

I also noticed that if you got off to the side the colors seemed odd.

Most HD tv's look pitiful in SD. Most of the time the picture appears noisy and grainy. Give them any HD, even 480P and they get a lot better. I have a Funai/Emerson that displays a good SD picture. It only came with a analog tuner so that may have something to do with it.
It only has component and composite inputs also. I use it with a Digital stream OTA box for DXing at the camp.

It's normal, most of the time SD looks pretty bad but it really depends on the source.
I watch TCM on my Plasma and it looks pretty decent.

DirecTV gives some SD channels more bandwidth than others, at Wally World they probably had them all stretched out to 16:9 also which compounds the problem.

Of course SD didn't look all that good on a 50 or 60 inch Analog SD Projection set back in the day either.

Most HD tv's look pitiful in SD. Most of the time the picture appears noisy and grainy. Give them any HD, even 480P and they get a lot better. I have a Funai/Emerson that displays a good SD picture. It only came with a analog tuner so that may have something to do with it.
It only has component and composite inputs also. I use it with a Digital stream OTA box for DXing at the camp.

You're pulling in KLFY on the coast, right? :thmbsp:

Yes,KLFY in Bay Saint Louis!
I use a Finco 400-A clone. It's a remarkable antenna!

Most HD tv's look pitiful in SD. Most of the time the picture appears noisy and grainy. Give them any HD, even 480P and they get a lot better. I have a Funai/Emerson that displays a good SD picture. It only came with a analog tuner so that may have something to do with it.
It only has component and composite inputs also. I use it with a Digital stream OTA box for DXing at the camp.


480P is not HD...

I know, but at least it gets them to clear up to a watchable picture.
A number of the early LCD small sets only go to 480P. I'm amazed mine is still working

Yes 480P isn't HD, but if the source is a DVD player with a DVD that was sourced from a film shot on film, it will look significantly better than 480I upconverted to 480P. DVDs of films are MPEG 2 encoded at 480P 24 frames a second and were usually, via a "3:2 pulldown" converted to 60Hz. And then you throw away half the scan lines to get 480I. Might as well have it keep those lines. When my brother bought himself a flatscreen HDTV I helped him set up his DVD player to feed it 480P.

---

What matter MOST is quality of video processing in the flat panel TVs epecially 480 to 1080 or 720 to 1080. They suck even on high end TVs. I avoid buying 720p TVs as panel is 1366x768 means upscaling quality issues always in play regardless of any resolution; 480, 720 or 1080.

What I did is buy a 1080p TV this means panel is 1920x1080 so pixel to pixel is matched. And obtained upconverting player, *specificially* panasonic DMR-EZ28K. This can upconvert any inputs and output either component or HDMI at any resolution but I stuck it in at 1080p output via HDMI from built in RF tuner. The processing built into this player did much better than I expected. But not the *BEST* but better than TV on their own. And big plus for me as deaf person is player's ability to embed EIA-608 closed caption into digital video stream and out through the HDMI port.
Other upconverting dvd players does not do this, forcing you to use vastly inferior subtitling and hard to read/hard to see. Lot of many TVs lost the EIA-608 decoding via component input even at 1080.

Still, I really would like to find *best* upscaling box and I'm not sure about DVDO series. But unfortunely DVDO company I contacted will not implement the EIA-608 embedding closed caption or let alone convert EIA-608 to EIA-708. A task very easy especially EIA-608 transmission speed is only 120 characters per second.

In my situation I would have to buy standalone scaler and another box for closed caption decoding. I researched these but I'm not sure what is best option is. I don't mind going with broadcaster equipment type.

Cheers, Wizard

Panasonic still offers a tube type tv. I have also seen some WalMarts still selling a 27" Sansui. Freds was still selling 32" AOC sets.
Not everyone wants a wide flat screen. One group is RV'ers who mostly rely on Direct TV in SD. Others are people who watch analog SD from off air repeaters.
Saw WalMarts in Colorado and New Mexico selling inexpensive 27" sets.
In Antonito, CO, there is no cable tv and about 1/2 the homes only have a UHF antenna for the local repeaters.
Panasonic:
CT-2789VYD
27" PROLINETM Stereo Color Video Monitor/Receiver

U.S. List Price $470.00
http://catalog2.panasonic.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ModelDetail?storeId=11201&catalogId=13051&itemId=66811&catGroupId=15016&surfModel=CT-2789VYD&displayTab=F

---