Fuzzy Football Players (1 Viewer)

[Teresa C.]

Half of the reason we wanted a new projector ht system was for movies, the other half was to watch football. DVD's work great on our new system - good clear pictures, but football is not so great. The close-up shots are fine, but the far-waway shots are blurry. You know, when the camera pulls back to watch the play unfold. Looks out of focus, but the focus is adjusted all the way.

Any recommendations on what might be causing this? We have an Optoma H55 projector, DirecTV satelite dish. What kinds of things might I try to improve the picture quality from the TV feeds?

 

[Neil Joseph]

At what resolution is the direct TV feed? Is it 640x480?

 

[Teresa C.]

The resolution coming off DirecTV is the normal 640x480 tv signal, I assume. But when I see it on my smaller tv (29"), it looks clearer than on the big screen.

 

[Dave Poehlman]

I think it may just be a poor broadcast. I noticed "blurry ghosts" on my RPTV during Fox's coverage of the Packers.

I really wish Fox and my Time Warner would pick up HDTV for NFL games.

 

[Vince Maskeeper]

The brutal truth is that standard broadcast TV looks like poo. When you blow this up to projection size, it amplifies the flaws ten fold. You're just looking at the limitations of the source material.

There might be a few things you could do to improve this however- but I'm not sure if the improvement would be as drastic as you'd like.

What is the native display resolution of the projector? Chnaces are an internal doubler/scaling device is being used to process the image to make it compatible with the native panel of the unit. 90% of these are low quality- and negatively affect picture. A quality outboard scaler or well-tweaked HTPC would likely do a better job scaling the Direct TV picture to the native resolution of the projector.

But even so, again, you're dealing with a picture that is likely made up of less than 300 true lines of resolution. Then blow that up- and you get a soft blurry image.

Your best bet is to campaign your various providers for more HD sports.

-Vince