SD playback quality on LCD TV's

[Chris K]

Hi,

I still prefer a CRT but I expect to be forced soon to buy a LCD TV because my CRT is getting too aged.

Over the past two years I often walked into the local AV shops to check out how SD playback from cable and DVD would look. But over here all demo models are connected to HD cable, preferably on a "nature channel" with slow moving beach or forrest impressions. No way to ask the salesman, "please play a DVD on this model for me".

I don't expect to have much interest in blu-ray in the future but have a large collection of DVD's that I want to play as good as possible.

I may be wrong but I have the impression that the older HD-ready LCD TV's with their lower resolution do better on SD than the true HD models?

Suggestions from those who have good experiences with SD playback on their LCD TV are much appreciated.

Thanks,
Chris

[manono]

I may be wrong but I have the impression that the older HD-ready LCD TV's with their lower resolution do better on SD than the true HD models?

I don't know about that. I have a 1080p 46" Sony and DVDs look great. And way better than they ever looked on a CRT.

[jman98]

Your assumption is not correct. Please note that to get good quality out of SD on an HDTV you only have to worry about 2 things.
1) The connection from your video source (ie. DVD player, etc.) MUST be a high quality connection. High quality connections are:
DVI
HDMI
component (NOT composite - do not confuse them)
2) When you are watching a 4:3 video source, watch in 4:3 on the TV. Don't stretch it to 16:9. 4:3 SD stretched to 16:9 ALWAYS looks terrible.

[Chris K]

1) The connection from your video source (ie. DVD player, etc.) MUST be a high quality connection.

I'm aware of that and used also always the best connection available on my CRT's.

But LCD TV's need to use a bunch of tricks that don't apply to CRT's. Scaling, deinterlacing, color enhancement. Aside from real HD playback, I'm afraid that most people gradually have become used to the degradation of video display.

[gll99]

Your assumption is not correct. Please note that to get good quality out of SD on an HDTV you only have to worry about 2 things.
1) The connection from your video source (ie. DVD player, etc.) MUST be a high quality connection. High quality connections are:
DVI
HDMI
component (NOT composite - do not confuse them)
2) When you are watching a 4:3 video source, watch in 4:3 on the TV. Don't stretch it to 16:9. 4:3 SD stretched to 16:9 ALWAYS looks terrible.

I concur with jman98. This is my experience also.

I had the same concerns about sd signals before I bought my HD sets. I can't vouch for an sd signal over composite because I don't use that connection on my tv but over hdmi it's pretty good.

Blu-ray playback is the ultimate of course but I might add that DVD playback from a PS3 (adjusted to output 1080p over hdmi) or an upconverting DVD player with hdmi like the Philips dvp-5990 (92) produces excellent results with standard DVD. I also have an hdmi equipped HD cable box and most sd channels look much better on a 42" and 46" HDTV than on my older high end 32" sd set. I too do not usually re-size when the source is a 4:3 signal. If the sd signal is bad on the tv then it is the fault of the original source or the cable provider and not the tv set. .

[budwzr]

If you buy a newer player, it will upsample for you and look great. BD players are backwoods compatible and around $100 now.

[pepegot1]

My Samsung does a great job of up-conversion. It is set to 16:9 They advise you not to leave it on 4:3 as it could cause burn problems. My 4:3 DVD collection looks great on it. I set the DVD player to 16:9 and progressive 480P. No problems

[Chris K]

They advise you not to leave it on 4:3 as it could cause burn problems.

Does Samsung advice that? I thought that was only applicable on plasma's?

[intracube]

But LCD TV's need to use a bunch of tricks that don't apply to CRT's. Scaling, deinterlacing, color enhancement. Aside from real HD playback, I'm afraid that most people gradually have become used to the degradation of video display.

I think the issues you mention apply particularly to early LCD TVs, and models at the lower end of the market. Newer flatscreens generally do a good job of upscaling, and have much less apparent smearing from what I've seen.

One area that LCDs still have particular trouble with is the shadows/blacks. Over the years, I've heard comments from people saying, 'Oh yeah, LCDs are much better at that now' - every time I look at the latest screens, they still have the problem; areas of the screen that should be black are grey - and don't come close to a properly set up CRT. Which is why I've mostly stuck with CRTs.

I'm hoping that the new LED backlit screens* might offer a significant improvement.

*some LED backlit screens don't have locally controllable LEDs. Those that do can supposedly give a much better contrast ratio. Haven't had the chance to look at one yet.

[redwudz]

I have a LED laptop and LED 24" Viewsonic monitor and the black levels aren't that great. But on the Hanns 22" monitor (fluorescent) I had before, they were very good. I suspect black levels vary among LCD monitors and TVs quite a bit and you may not be able to adjust some of them to pure black.

Shop around a little. There is still Plasmas out there and they seem to have better black levels. LED monitors do seem to have better brightness levels, if you need that, and I find the color balance is generally better, even 'off the shelf'.

I also have a fairly large video projection screen and DVD SD looks fine. Of course compared to HD Blu-ray, the HD quality is much better. Sort of spoils you for SD.

[Chris K]

I googled a bit for reviews but for me there are a few restrictions like; specifically needing a 32'' and many of the recommended models are not locally available here (I don't buy on-line).

http://www.hdtvorg.co.uk/news/articles/2008010501.htm

The Samsung 32B450 is available at my local dealer (it's not a full HD). Someone has experience with this model or one of the Philips models? In the shop, skin colors of the Philips' look more natural than avarage.

http://www.trustedreviews.com/tvs/ This one has more recent reviews.

I'm also afraid that a lot of owner enthusiasm about a certain brand/model is rather subjective. As for my relatives; most had low-end CRT's. If they offered a bigger screen for the same price or less, then that was the one. They never looked at the back for a connection other then a Scart with composite-in. They all have LCD's now saying it looks much better then their old CRT.

[Squash]

They advise you not to leave it on 4:3 as it could cause burn problems.

Does Samsung advice that? I thought that was only applicable on plasma's?

Samsung cautions about LCD screen-burn from 4:3 format in the manual for my 2008/2009 model LN40A650. From the manual:

"Watching the LCD TV in 4:3 format for a long period of time may leave traces of borders displayed on the left, right and center of the screen caused by the difference of light emission on the screen.
Playing a DVD or a game console may cause a similar effect to the screen.
Damages caused by the above effect are not covered by the Warranty."

They also warn about still images:

"A still image may cause permanent damage to the TV screen
Do not display a still image on the LCD panel for more than 2 hours as it can cause screen image retention. This image retention is also known as “screen burn”. To avoid such image retention, reduce the degree of brightness and contrast of the screen when displaying a still image."

My previous LCD TV, a cheap Westinghouse, developed burn marks on the left and right after a couple of years. At first, I could clean them up by running a loop of full-screen videos with lots of rapidly-changing colors, static, etc., but eventually even that didn't help.

I've been more conscientious about preventing burn-in on the Samsung than I was with the Westinghouse. Time will tell.

[Chris K]

@Squash

I have a Samsung SyncMaster monitor in use for more then five years and it still looks as if it came right out of the box.

But I do not doubt Samsung has its reasons to warn.

[intracube]

Samsung cautions about LCD screen-burn from 4:3 format in the manual for my 2008/2009 model LN40A650. From the manual:

"Watching the LCD TV in 4:3 format for a long period of time may leave traces of borders displayed on the left, right and center of the screen caused by the difference of light emission on the screen.

I've seen examples of plasma screens with screen-burn, but never LCD TVs/monitors. I would have thought that the taskbar on my laptop would have left some residual mark after all these years, but I can't see any evidence of discolouration.

I wonder if manufacturers are just trying to cover themselves; even if the risk of screen-burn is very low.

[Squash]

I wonder if manufacturers are just trying to cover themselves; even if the risk of screen-burn is very low.

You're probably right. Doing a search over at avsforum for LCD TV screen burn, the name "Westinghouse" came up a lot (which was the brand I had the problem with). Someone commented that it's not really the screen burning in, but rather an anti-glare coating or polarizer film becoming discolored, due to cheap manufacturing. Hopefully these problems have been corrected.

And I bought the Westy back around 2003, so that's pretty ancient. I'm sure they've learned a lot by now.

[ricoman]

I think you'll be happy with the PQ of SD sources on your HD LCD TV. The problems were a couple of years ago before the changeover to digital transmission. If you have a digital box or a fairly recent DVD player it should look much better than your old CRT, assuming the CRT wasn't an HDTV (believe it or not, I have a wide screen CRT HDTV with component connections and it looks very good). So don't worry, dive in and enjoy.

[usually_quiet]

DVDs look pretty good on 720p, 1080i and 1080p TVs.

It's just my opinion, but SD TV (both analog or digital) is another story. That looks better to me on a 720p TV. Analog cable here in in N. America suffers from noise in the signal. SD digital TV, both over-the-air and cable, suffers from an overly low bitrate. Maybe Europeans have it better.

[intracube]

SD digital TV, both over-the-air and cable, suffers from an overly low bitrate. Maybe Europeans have it better.

Not in the UK for many of the channels - Particularly digital terrestrial. Satellite is better.

The Germans show how it should be done with some of their channels; ~9Mb/s MPEG-2 with peaks upto 12Mb/s. Although they have their share of low bitrate channels.

[victoriabears]

It is very unlikely I will ever go HD, I do not like the way North American TV is broadcast, some of the content is excellent but the presentation sucks big time. I do not have cable or satellite TV

What I do watch is mainly downloaded divx and DVD's on my 2008 Sony Bravia TV using either a Philips 5980 or Pioneer 420 dvd player and 99% of the picture quality is very good to excellent.

If you are happy with the CRT then carry on, I only changed to LCD as I wanted the biggest screen my family room would cope with/

[Chris K]

For the present, I found a nice solution to replace my aging CRT.

It appeared that Samsung wanted to give their old 4 series (LE32B450) a second life.

http://www.hdtvtest.co.uk/news/samsung-le32c450-le26c450-20101001847.htm

I bought one and hooked it up with my Philips DVP 5990 through HDMI and my Topfield terrestrial receiver through Scart RGB (component is also possible). Actually the Samsung has a build-in DVB-T and DVB-C receiver but it's inferior to the Topfield.

The Samsung has a nice USB media player which plays h264 in avi, mp4 and mkv. Also Divx/Xvid, mpeg1,2,4, WMV and VC1. Only checked out a few h264 mp4 and avi's yet. They played fine. It should also play h264 and mpeg2 transport streams. I have a WD Elements 1TB connected to it without problems so far (NTFS formatted).

Since the whole thing didn't cost me too much and displays my DVD's better then expected (After calibration), I think I've found me a nice toy to play with for now . BTW; excellent big remote control included.

EDIT: The specs say the player accept sources up to 1920x1080 for all codecs (downscaling to 1366x768 of course which is the panel resolution).

[handyguy]

Plasma does SD better than LCD. Today they have LED TVs-not sure about those.

SD depends on your TV's 4:3 pull down filter, which are better these days.