[MooPai]

Hi,

I am newbie to HDTV and Home Theater equipment and have some questions, I hooked up my new 60" Sony SXRD this weekend. I did not order the HD service yet from my cable company yet. I hooked up the Dishnetwork and FTA receivers but noticed very poor picture quality. I tried to adjust through the settings of the TV with no luck. On the Dishnet receiver I used the S-Video directly to the TV since the receiver does not support the Green, Blue and Red and on the FTA I used the Green, Blue and Red directly to the TV. Even thus I used the Green, Blue and Red on FTA the picture quality is still very poor. The only place where I am experiencing a reasonable quality is when I run the DVD. Is there anything I can do to improve the quality on the Dishnet and FTA?

The other question I have, when I hooked all of my equipment for the first time I was getting sound from the Home Theater speakers and the TV speakers, then I ran into some problems in hooking up the VCR so I changed few things in the setup and next thing I noticed that I was no longer getting any sound from the TV just the Home Theater speakers. When I run the FTA receiver I only get sound from the four side speakers nothing from the center one. Any idea what is going on with my setup? Thanks.

[Austan]

The thing about HDTV sets is that it makes a GREAT Signal look GREAT, but they also make a BAD signal look very BAD.

The Dishnetwork signals you are getting are not HD, so expect your HDTV to show every last bad detail about those signals. I've noticed that FTA movies looks like a camcorder copy of a movie. They come out really dark and lack any vibrant colors.

Also sounds like your FTA receiver is outputting stereo and not any sort of "Surround Sound".

Try to find the "Rest to Factory Settings" button on your HDTV menu. Looks like you turned off the speakers on your HDTV set.

[MooPai]

Austan, what about the picture quality on the FTA, I am using the GREEN, BLUE and RED outputs for video directly to the TV. The quality on the FTA is worse than the Dishnet.

[Lew Crippen]

It is not at all surprising that FTA PQ is worse than Dish—after all, Dish (like DirectTV) is competing in the marketplace for paying customers and needs to strike a balance between cost and quality. Unencrypted reception via FTA is only concerned with cost.

What you are now clearly seeing with your new display is how bad regular NTSC really is—of course you may wish to calibrate your display.

On the plus side, Dish has a pretty good HD package.

[Austan]

It does not matter what cables you are using when the source material is bad to begin with. Take out an older TV and plug the FTA into it using what ever cable you wish. You will still see that the picture is dark and the colors look washed out. It's not the cables that are making the picture look bad, its the source itself.