BryanDO

bought new Panasonic 47" HDTV, picture on normal cable is grainy, please help.

Hey guys, I bought a Panasonic PT-47X54 recently and without a digital cable source or quality DVD player (just a PS2)I haven't been able to test the quality or set it up properly. Anyways, on regular cable, the picture seems grainy, inside the colors you can see the pxels kind of move with the picture, very annoying. Is there any way to fix this or do I just need a digital signal? Thanks alot...

william_h

cable is your problem basic cable does indeed look like crap.

you need a digital signal either directv or dish or whatever your satellite co offers.

BryanDO

Thanks William, another quick question, what feature do I look for in a DVD player for the absolute best quality picture other than component out? Also what brands are good and what brands should I stay away from, I'm just looking for something around the 100 US dollar mark. Thanks...

ChuckSolo

First of all, even digital cable looks marginal on big screen TVs. I have an RCA 40" HD RPTV and most cable channels look very grainy. The larger the display the more you are going to see the imperfections in the picture. What looked great on a 27"-32" direct view TV is not gonna look the same on a big screen rear projection TV. The exception to this is the HD cable channels which look absolutely spectacular on some shows and great on others. Discovery HD Theater is one of the spectacular ones. The first thing you should do is calibrate the TV using an Avia disc or other calibration software or get it done professionally.
As for the DVD player, the standard 480p from the component connections on my Gateway DVD recorder looks great on my RCA, but, I also have a Samsung HD DVD841 upscaling player hooked to the DVI input. The DVI input/output is strictly digital and bypasses any digital to analog conversion that occurs with the other types of connections. The picture looks fantastic on most discs when upscaled to 1080i. I say most discs because there are some discs that can look pretty grainy when upscaled to 1080i. Get a progressive scan DVD player and don't settle for less. These days progrssive scan players can be had for well under 100 bucks. Getting a player with Faroudja chip technology will also yield a better picture than one without. I doubt that you can get a DVI/Faroudja equipped player for 100 bucks or less, but good quality progressive scan player can. Prior to getting my two most recent players, I always had great luck with Panasonic DVD players. Hope this helps.

BryanDO

Thanks alot Chuck, I've picked up the latest copy of widescreen review and seen they have a review on the Bravo D2 DVD which got rave reviews for picture quality. Thing is no one around my parts sells them. I'm going to be using HDMI for my DVD player so hopefully that will help produce a clean picture. Just kind of frustrated right now since I dropped a whack of cash on a HDTV TV (Im 20 so it seems like a whack of cash to me And didn't get the results I expected. Guess I need to upgrade everything around the TV now huh.

LanceJ

Jeez I hope the TV manufacturers keep making 35" CRT flat-screen monitors until next February (tax return time). That Toshiba I saw tonight at Best Buy for only $600 sure looked nice.