i need hdtv help

sublime90

sublime90

CAGiversary!
yesterday i just picked up a 32" samsung lcd 720p hdtv. my xbox looks amazing on it but my cable tv looks like a pile of turd on it. do i need to get an hd cable box or something or just tweak the settings? im new to this stuff, thanks
 
What resolution is the cable box displaying in? You might want to talk to your cable provider or possibly consider Satellite. I have DirecTV and would never switch back to cable. Let me know if you have any other questions.
 
Yeah in order to have HD cable, you need an HD box. Otherwise you're just putting SD into widescreen which yes, looks like crap
 
A couple of things:

1) If you have cable or a dish, you need to make sure that you have the right equipment (with Direct TV, that will probably mean a new dish and new receiver). DON'T make them charge you for it....they probably will try. Threaten to change to Dish Network if you have to, but its stupid to pay for the upgrade. Around here, they charge you for it, unless you bitch.

2) With most cable companies, you need to have them turn on the HD service. Ours is free (although I get the tier programs), but yours might be different with the dish.

3) HD channels with cable companies are usually NOT the same number as the regular channels. With our Time Warner, all the HD channels are in the 600's. Check where they are with Direct TV.

4) A lot of standard def TV looks like shit on an HD set. You'll eventually giving up watching anything that's not HD.

5) Make sure that when you watch standard channels your set is not "stretching" the picture to fill. You should get black bars on the left and right. Stretching to fill will just make a bad picture worse.

If the TV looks good for the XBox, its likely a problem with the cable/satellite and not the TV.

TBW
 
[quote name='TheBlueWizard']5) Make sure that when you watch standard channels your set is not "stretching" the picture to fill. You should get black bars on the left and right. Stretching to fill will just make a bad picture worse.[/quote]


Indeed. Using widescreen mode for content that is not optimized for widescreen viewing makes that content look wide and terrible.
 
yeah thats what i figured. i put the tv mode to 4:3 ratio to watch regular cable. i have comcast cable and as of right now i dont even have a box hooked up, just the cable wire straight to the tv. my mom was telling me comcast has hd cable boxes. not sure how acurate she is but monday im making a trip to the cable company to see whats up.
 
sublime - get a Comcast DVR box.

A) It's a fantastic service

B) You get the HD signal free of charge through it

I think you'll pay more for the HD specific box then you would the dvr. And with the dvr you get to record your shows and set up series recordings and so forth. I couldn't watch tv without it.
 
Yep, need to get the HD box from comcast. It runs about $6 a month or so. Will be more for you since you'll have to rent the remote too since you don't have digital cable currently (thus no remote charge on your bill).

So with those charges, taxes etc., probably $10 a month more or so--and more if you decide to add the digital SD channels--though I wouldn't bother since they look like ass anyway.

I don't know about the DVR being cheaper.....I know the HD-DVR fee in my area was $20 a month when I inquired last year so I didn't bother as I don't watch enough non-sports stuff to need the recording feature (sports I'll only watch live). I'd love to have it as I had the DirecTivo a few years back when I had DirecTV and loved it, but not for $20 a month.
 
For now you can let the TV autoscan and if it has a QAM tuner it should be able to pick up a few HD channels (mostly local). I do this because I do not have a cable box but I pick up the local channels in HD to watch sports.
 
cool, not sure if my tv has QAM dont know what that is. tomorrow i'll be picking up an hd box from comcast should be good to go.
 
That works too. I'm looking forward to when cable boxes don't mess with the signal at all though. I've seen people with far nicer TVs that look shittier than mine on HD channels when we both have TW. (Not to mention Uverse looks suspiciously like every channel is upscaled rather than broadcast in 720+ too).
 
today i hooked up my cable box and wow, im watching espn right now in HD and its amazing. i only have about 20 channels in HD but thats fine because i only watch sports on tv anyways and all the sports channels are HD. i have one more question, my tv only has 2 HDMI ports and i have my cable box in 1 and my xbox 360 in the other. thats all fine but it leaves me without my dvd player, anyone know where i can find an HDMI switch so i can get a few more hdmi ports for relatively cheap? i was looking on amazon an found this
http://www.amazon.com/HDMI-1-Out-Au...?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1228176978&sr=1-11
and i might settle with that, if anyone knows where i can find one cheaper much appreciated. thanks again
 
An easier bet is to just hook whichever of those (cable, 360, DVD) that you use the least up with component. I can't tell a difference in picture between hdmi and component on my TV anyway.
 
[quote name='Maklershed']sublime - get a Comcast DVR box.

A) It's a fantastic service

B) You get the HD signal free of charge through it

I think you'll pay more for the HD specific box then you would the dvr. And with the dvr you get to record your shows and set up series recordings and so forth. I couldn't watch tv without it.[/quote]
Comcasts' DVR sucks though, i used to have Dish Network and theirs was so much better. The Comcast box i have screws up constantly and it's the second one iv'e had. It's actually frozen up before.
 
It upscales DVDs, but probably not as good as the PS3. The thing I like about the PS3 (which some probably don't) is you can give it a simple 2x upscale multiplier. So you have black bars all around but it's a clean even scale, as opposed to just scaling until it fits your TVs native resolution.
 
Cable's a rip, just get an antenna and/or a HTPC... and/or watch stuff through your Xbox (Hulu, Netflix, local files)

Like 75% of what your cable company offers in HD will be locals anyway. And like 90% of what's worth watching in HD will be locals. When I had Comcast the only non-broadcast (read: not free with an antenna) channel I ever watched in HD was Discovery. Everything else sucked.

Save your money.
 
[quote name='JolietJake']Comcasts' DVR sucks though, i used to have Dish Network and theirs was so much better. The Comcast box i have screws up constantly and it's the second one iv'e had. It's actually frozen up before.[/QUOTE]

I agree. I hated my comcast DVR. It would lock up constantly and had a horrible menu display. A friend of mine has dish network and theirs is much better.
 
Cable's a necessity for me for sports. Got to have the ESPNs, TNT/TBS, Foxsportsnet etc.

I've never been into the home theater PC crap either. Too messy and nerdy to have a PC sitting in the home theater system and it would stick out badly in mine since I have a small TV stand rather than a big cabinet. And I've never had the patience for setting up networkign crap.

But if all you watch is stuff on networks for the most part then cable/satellite is definitely not worth it.
 
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