Be honest, how does standard analog cable look on a large HDTV? (1 Viewer)

[Chad Hendrickson]

I have a simple question.
I know that DVDs look great but...
Honestly, how does a standard NTSC analog cable signal look on a 65" HDTV?
I have heard that it looks pretty bad. If this is the case, is there anything that can be done to make it look better?
Please let me know your thoughts.
Chad
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[Andy_S]

I saw it demoed at a Audio/Video store today. It looks pretty bad. It was a 65" Mitsubishi Platinum Plus set.
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[Aaron Arzoumanian]

Well I just got a Toshiba 65H80 last Friday and how does the standard cable look.... ummm I am not sure I could find the colorful words to describe it, in other words it's bad really bad. I have noticed that some channels seem to look better then others.
I have a friend who is going to set up his Direct TV signal to see if it's any better if it's better I am going to drop the cable all together and go with a direct TV HD setup.
Couple of questions since we are on this topic, does anyone one know if the Toshiba dst-3000 will improve the picture quality of cable?
Thanks,
Aaron
Actually I did find something that describes it

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[Edited last by Aaron Arzoumanian on July 19, 2001 at 05:09 PM]

 

[Brian Schucher]

Although i cant comment on cable, I can say "most" of my DirecTV channels look great on my 65H80. As they say "garbage in garbage out"

 

[EddieN]

I'm with Brain on this one, DirecTV looks great hooked up via S-video, especially PPV. I used to have Time Warner "digital" cable, hooked up via s-video also, and it was like Aaron said:

I'm on a 40H80 ... I hope the CBS / Dish thing goes through, then I'll be on Dish and not DirecTV.
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- Eddie

 

[Andy_S]

I'm new to this HD thing, so forgive me if this is a stupid question, but would a "line doubler" improve standard cable picture at all?
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[Chuck Sullivan]

I have a TW65X81, AT&T Broadband cable, Directv, and a DST3000. Cable bad, real bad. DST3000 makes cable watch able so yes it does improve it. I'm not sure why but running the cable signal through my s-vhs player and then out to the tv via s-video improves picture quality a whole bunch and this is how I keep it. Directv looks good, to very good and is definitely a lot better than cable. And of course HDTV is unbelievable.

 

[Scott Stieglitz]

That's what I was afraid of. I'm having my 65H80 delivered in a week and I also have AT&T "digital" cable. I'm probably going to keep it for awhile since a dish won't be feasible in the place I'm in now. The only positive thing about AT&T is that they're providing the Chicago CBS-HD feed to various Chicagoland communities. The 'burb I'm in is supposedly one of the lucky ones, but I won't know for sure until I have a box that can receive the digital signal.

DST3000 makes cable watch able so yes it does improve it. I'm not sure why but running the cable signal through my s-vhs player and then out to the tv via s-video improves picture quality a whole bunch and this is how I keep it.

Chuck, you said that watching cable through the DST3000 improves it. Better than what? Hooking the cable directly to the TV? Also, you said that running the cable through the vcr was the best for you. Does this way include the DST3000 in the setup?

 

[Andy_S]

Scott,
You're in Schaumburg and getting a 65H80?? Let me know when you get it! I'm coming over!
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[Chad Hendrickson]

My parents have a 4 year old 50" Hitachi standard RPTV.
I calculated that a 65" widescreen HDTV has about the same height.
How will the image of a standard analog cable signal compare on these two TVs? Does it look the same? Will the HDTV show more flaws?
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[Michael St. Clair]

For pure picture quality, analog cable in many cities is better than digital cable or DirecTV or DishNetwork!
That's my honest opinion, and I hate cable companies.

 

[Matt Heebner]

I will agree that Directv looks pretty good on my Mits....but the locals over Directv look like garbage compared to the premium and PPV. My wife was watching a movie on PPV the other night, and from a distance, at first, I thought she was watching a DVD.
Of course the Directv info, ordering, and ultimate tv channel seem to come in crystal clear, and better than anything else .....
Matt
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[Larry Fletcher]

Okay so let me get this straight.(newbie here looking to get a widescreen hdtv.) I live in a condo/townhouse and I do not think i am able to get direct tv or any other kind of antenna. So my regular cable will look like crap on a widescreen hdtv? Am I S.O.L?

 

[Danny R]

I would have to say that all things being equal, NONE of the products are perfect. I live in Atlanta and had only analog cable until last month. There were three reasons I switched: the upper stations were very full of snow, there was a lack of stations (about 40-50), and also because we lost cable pretty frequently during storms and didn't get it back for hours.
When I switched over to Dish I was very disappointed in the quality of stations and consider most stations to be worse than the cable I had. Snow is better than pixelation in my opinion. Some of the premium and my locals were perfect, but with many others it was like I was watching a computer screen with only 256 colors at times. There was a huge lack of shading, so that I saw bands of color where there should be a graduated fade. In one scene showing a crowd, the faces of the distant people were all square blocks of one shade. Such things don't happen with analog cable as these are compression problems.

 

[Eram Syed]

I have a sony 53hs10 and have both analog cable and dishnet. I find that dishnet is very clear, almost DVD quality except for a few channels running old shows such as TVland. Even cable looks better than it did on my old 27 inch sony.
I think the signal clarity varies by area for both cable and dish and the line doubler in your TV also makes a huge difference.
I have read good things about the TV you are buying so I think that it will probably have a good line doubler.
Eram

 

[Jeff_N]

My Sony 61HS10 RPTV produce a much cleaner analog cable picture than my other direct view TVs (13", 20", 27"). I was prepared for the worst, but was plesantly surprised. DirecTv is also very nice. The DirecTv picture is just as good as my non-progressive DVD player.

 

[Charles Dodge]

To be fair I think cable and DBS both look better on an HDTV RPTV than they do on a similar sized analog RPTV. At least with the HDTV and its built-in line doubler you get rid of the annoying scan lines, which bother me alot on the larger analog RPTVs.

 

[Howard Williams]

I've have the Mits WS-73907 for about 7 weeks now. I converted from cable to DirecTV almost immediately. Cable was pretty bad. I'm not real happy about most of DirecTV either to be totally honest. I kinda cringe when I show off this Monster television to friends and family if I'm displaying DirecTV or VCR. DirecTV and VCR sources definatly look better on my ancient Sony 53" XBR. I'm very happy and lucky to have both. I've done almost no tweaking on either unit.
I'm not optimistic that any amount of tweaking will show much improvement since DVD & HDTV and even Digital TV (via OTA antenna) all look fantastic, unbelievlble and pretty darn good respectively. You should see my chest puff up when I display those sources for visitors which are usually followed by "Wow, that is nice". In the end, I have no regrets going with DirecTV but their signal has much room for improvement.
I've heard many suggest getting an IScan Pro to help clean up DirecTV. I'll look into that more later. Right now I need to get some lighting control.
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[Jim Ferguson]

An iScan isn't really going to do much to "clean up" anything. It won't improve overcompressed and blurry signals from DirecTV. Its only real contribution will be possibly improved de-interlacing of film-based sources. That would include movies over DirecTV (if you still watch those, which I don't) and most primetime TV shows. The improvements would come in the form of less deinterlace artifacts, but they won't do anyting for the compression, blurriness, or the flat washed out images.

 

[Mark Zimmer]

The line doubler in the Toshiba 65H80 will make a lot of channels on my analog cable (Charter) look pretty good, actually. Some look pretty bad. Luckily, the ones I'm most likely to watch (networks, TCM, AMC) look the best (other than the home shopping channels, which always look fabulous no matter where you are). IIRC, the classical music and public access channels are the very worst, and barely watchable.
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