Parisis

Improved Cable Pictiure

I purchased My 47in Panasonic last May and love it with progressive scan DVD but was very displeased with the Comcast cable Picture(Standard Cable) (DE,PA). Over the summer I did all the convergence and tweaking recommended by this and other groups and the TV got better and better. Lately thogh after not touching the TV for months the cable picture has improved unbelievably. What could hav e happened? Digital and HDTV is now available in my area.Could they have installed new lines or equipment.
Needless to say I am pleased but am curious as to why.

BTW I am ready to jump to their HDTV offer and would love to hear from some folks in this area.

HT on a Budget!

Onkyo 502, Infinity Primus 160's , Polk R15 Center and rear, Infinity US1 Sides, Yamaha SB205 Sub, Pany 47in RPTV, Samsung DVD Recorder, Comcast Hi Def.
Kingwin Media Hard Drive (MP3 source)

Jack Briggs

The picture quality of standard cable TV varies wildly, even from a single provider. Bandwidth is allocated differently to different channels on a daily basis. A channel that may have looked pretty decent one day can be barely tolerable video garbage the next. Note how, when surfing the channels, they vary considerably from each other.

Your cable provider puts picture quality at a lower priority than other considerations.

And your new RPTV is better than any of the pictures it will receive on an analog cablecast. It magnifies the flaws that have always been there.

Time to consider HD.

ChuckSolo

Jack, you seem to have hit the issue right on the nose. I have been experiencing this yo-yo, up and down situation with cable channel quality since I have had my Cox digital cable installed last week. The only channels that don't fluctuate in quality are the HD channels. I have noticed the worst channel is the WGN feed from Chicago. The resolution and overall quality of the channel is at best horrible. For some reason, CBS is by far the best in PQ with NBC a close second. Both UPN and The WB are passable. TNT is pretty darn good, but the Sci-Fi channel, my favorite, and TBS are almost as bad as WGN. When I viewed regular analog cable with my direct view 36" Panny, most of the channels looked decent. Now on my 40" RCA HDRPTV the quality varies wildly.

ThomasL

Parisis,

Depending on where you live, it probably is more than likely that Comcast boosted/improved the signal when they rolled out HDTV. We had the same experience here back in August when it was rolled out in our area. Before this occured, I used to have a signal amp right where the cable signal came into the house. After the upgrade, my signal was overamplified - it was obvious that the signal strength from the street had improved. More evidence that something had been upgraded by Comcast was that the week before the rollout, we saw Comcast trucks everywhere in town working at the poles.

With that said, what Jack said is also correct. The signal quality of individual stations can vary day to day if not hour to hour

cheers,


--tom