Does SD look crappy on a HD set?

[TheSiege]

title says it all

 

[LikeLinus]

Depends on the display about how bad it is. It's not going to look great though. It's usually blurry.

Tube HD TV's handle it the best. My 50" Panny plasma handles SD pretty good. My 42" LCD doesn't handle it as well, but it's watchable.

 

[randomlinh]

SD cable looks like crap on our HDTV. We deal with it, but it's crap. DVD's look fine to me, not near HD, but very acceptable. XMBC was ok as well, depended on the source material, but the aspect ratio was never right for me.

 

[DeliciousTacos]

OTA analog channels look ok on my 32" Insigna TV, but it isn't a very large TV so your results may vary.

 

[slayer202]

It does look pretty bad on mine, but after your eyes adjust it usually looks just fine

 

[Jumpem]

It doesn't look anywhere as good as HD, but it's not terrible.

 

[Exterous]

The larger your tv the worse it will look.(same # lines over larger area) Think low resolution on a big monitor

 

[Born2bwire]

It doesn't look bad to me. It really depends on the source material, if the signal is noisy then the artifacts really show up bad. But in the past few months I've felt that the cable signal has improved a lot and the picture looks decent considering it's SD. When I visit family and watch the shows on their SD TV's, I don't feel like my HD TV looks that much worse.

 

[redly]

if you have a crappy HD set, and a crappy SD signal...then yes

 

[darkswordsman17]

Originally posted by: Born2bwire
It doesn't look bad to me. It really depends on the source material, if the signal is noisy then the artifacts really show up bad. But in the past few months I've felt that the cable signal has improved a lot and the picture looks decent considering it's SD. When I visit family and watch the shows on their SD TV's, I don't feel like my HD TV looks that much worse.

Yeah. SD on a good HDTV will look as good as SD on a mediocre/bad SDTV (the thing I like about HDTV is that its causing people to buy higher quality TVs than they were before). I sold my old SD Sanyo 27" to a friend and he has digital cable hooked up to it. I had thought it had a nice picture, but my 30" HD (CRT) Sanyo looks quite a bit better even with SD, and HD or DVD looks considerably better still.

 

[Kaido]

I have a 720p projector and XBMC. I got 720p instead of 1080p because I play SD content.

Internet-quality or TV tuner stuff looks mediocre.

TV shows rips (like off a TV Show on DVD) looks pretty nice

DVDs look really nice, but soft compared to HD.

HD of course looks great. XBMC can play 720p Xvid encodes that look pretty dang nice, especially for HD TV shows.

 

[sniperruff]

depends on which TV. had a MAG 1080i 32" HDTV and SDTV sucked

my current olevia 1080i 232v looks acceptable in SDTV.

 

[isekii]

sdtv on my sharp aquos looks fine with me.

 

[LtPage1]

It looks crappy because the screens are bigger. You blow up that few lines of resolution to even ~30", it's gonna look worse than on your old 24" curved screen tube TV.

 

[ultimatebob]

SD looks like pretty crummy on my 40" Sony Bravia... it looks far better on my old 32" Sony WEGA.

Upsampled DVD's look good, though. HD content looks great, and it's absolutely amazing as a 40" 1080p computer display! I want another one for my desk

 

[TheSiege]

ok so follow up question, I don't have any HD sources as of yet, probably OTA eventually, do I really need to spend the extra cash for 1080p or is 720p fine. And I'm looking in the 37 or 42in range and LCD???

 

[Goosemaster]

Originally posted by: TheSiege
ok so follow up question, I don't have any HD sources as of yet, probably OTA eventually, do I really need to spend the extra cash for 1080p or is 720p fine. And I'm looking in the 37 or 42in range and LCD???

longevity vs immediate price savings vs prevalence of higher contrast ratios on higher end sets


you have to decide. If it was me I'd get a 1080p set since they are pretty easy to find and won't achieve complete complete obsolescence immediately if they have hdmi...

 

[laurenlex]

Originally posted by: TheSiege
ok so follow up question, I don't have any HD sources as of yet, probably OTA eventually, do I really need to spend the extra cash for 1080p or is 720p fine. And I'm looking in the 37 or 42in range and LCD???

720p is fine unless you will be sitting very close to the TV.

 

[Quasmo]

Originally posted by: laurenlex

Originally posted by: TheSiege
ok so follow up question, I don't have any HD sources as of yet, probably OTA eventually, do I really need to spend the extra cash for 1080p or is 720p fine. And I'm looking in the 37 or 42in range and LCD???

720p is fine unless you will be sitting very close to the TV.

Or unless you have a 120" screen

 

[dudeman007]

Upscaled DVDs on my Toshiba A2 look absolutely fantastic on my 42 inch Sony. SD not so much.

 

[TheSiege]

hmm im still not sure

 

[spidey07]

Originally posted by: LtPage1
It looks crappy because the screens are bigger. You blow up that few lines of resolution to even ~30", it's gonna look worse than on your old 24" curved screen tube TV.

That's the truth right there.

Sit two feet away from a 36" SDTV and you'll see all the crap in there. Scan lines give the illusion of "sharpness", but that doesn't make it better.

Today's HDTVs do a really good job with SD, but the correct viewing distance for HD means you're going to be seeing all the crap that SD has. Imagine a 55" monitor running a 640x480 resolution. It ain't gonna be pretty.

 

[Gothgar]

it doesn't look bad till you get a HD channel on and compare, then it looks like shit forever.

 

[LS21]

DEPENDS ON THE SOURCE!

I mean, thats kinda obvious, but er... heres the thing... SDTV defined is picture with 480 horizontal lines of resolution right? standard DVD look very good on my TV. Good quality signal SDTV looks very good on my TV (from ATT).

Comcast broadcast SDTV looks very poor on my tv. over the air transmission look poor most of the time ... due to poor reception



so SD can look good. most of the time it doesnt

 

[TheSiege]

ok so if my new HD tv is 37in and it is sitting next to my 27in SD tv will the content being shown on my HD set look worse then the SD set, assuming they are receiving a picture from the same source?