TV Technical Query

[marinyork]

I have a 42" TV and SKY HD, I have 1 major and 1 minor gripe.

Major problem - We were promised lots of HD channels, where are they?

Minor problem - HD TV is brilliant, an order of magnitude better, but, and this sound silly...but..

When I am watching nature programs or lots of landscapes, my brain gets overwhelmed by the sheer amount of detail, particularly city scapes. I get a sort of TV agrophobia. Anyone else get it?

WTF! You think there aren't many HD channels on Sky! Try cable!

As for the opening post, fiddle with the settings, factor defaults can be awful. Wouldn't buy any new leads at all.

 

[meenaghman]

Cables in general tend to be the problem (Scart is a french invention after all.. ie good idea shame about the implementation) I find with Scarts that the orientation of the cable makes it more likely to be badly fitting with the weight of the cable pulling or tending to pull it out of the socket. Ideally someone should invent a little spring clip such as the old parallel cables on printers to hold them into position. I've had to turn the freeview box upside down so the cable is oriented without a twist, using some blocks to allow ventilation. unfortunately dont think you can do this with Sky+ as its got a hard drive. The following site says not to run it on its side even.
http://www.sjstv.co.uk/skyfault.html
or http://www.satcure.co.uk if you believe problem may be reception related.

 

[Elmer Fudd]

Cables in general tend to be the problem (Scart is a french invention after all.. ie good idea shame about the implementation) I find with Scarts that the orientation of the cable makes it more likely to be badly fitting with the weight of the cable pulling or tending to pull it out of the socket. Ideally someone should invent a little spring clip such as the old parallel cables on printers to hold them into position. I've had to turn the freeview box upside down so the cable is oriented without a twist, using some blocks to allow ventilation. unfortunately dont think you can do this with Sky+ as its got a hard drive. The following site says not to run it on its side even.
http://www.sjstv.co.uk/skyfault.html
or http://www.satcure.co.uk if you believe problem may be reception related.

Agree with that, scart leads should enter the back centre of the plug and have clips to hold them considering the weight of the things and how flimsy the connections are.

 

[marinyork]

Sky + boxes go weird on you even if you don't re-orient them, if you put stuff on top they can lose the signal completely or partial loss.

 

[redshift]

Sigh. If only the transmitted pictures looked like the ones we actually produce at work. Unfortunately, that's not going to happen any time soon, and the biggest problems you have are the new screen (not as good as a CRT) and the transmission system bandwidth (heavy and lossy compression to get it all into the available space). Frankly, if your interconnection leads make a significant difference, I'd be surprised - unless they're made of wet string, of course!

(Personal bugbear - first Widescreen, and now HD are touted as 'advances,' but then implemented poorly and mostly with an eye to the cost and availability of bandwidth. Result: Lots of people buy into new kit, which is almost immediately superseded by better systems which are incompatible. Manufacturers make boatloads of cash from upgraders, and the media companies are looking into a kit abyss, where it costs ten times what you think it does to upgrade - £30,000 per camera maybe, lenses extra - and a year later we start all over again. Great business model, but only if you make screens.)

 

[yenrod]

What a joke about these 'leads' the deal is this: as long as you have ALL the pointy bits then difference isn't an issue Titanium will be the next suggestion OR even aircraft grade MetalMatrixComposite

Still, sorting to the RGB is prob. your best bet...

I seen a HD picture film in a shop and it was pretty incredible..though the whole of the media providers need a kick up the jacksy in this country !

I often quote France = mega-download speeds ~ a real proper situation but no, the stupid anal british can't sort out the situaition for love nor money !

 

[Ghost Donkey]

The benefits of expensive leads can be questionable (depends on the lead) and there's a huge market in stupidly over engineered or sometimes just over priced cables. I never used gold when I worked in broadcasting and we had the budget for it. There's no doubt the really cheap ones (£1 for a scart etc) can make things worse. You don't want to indroduce analogue noise on a digital screen. They don't like it.

Getting a dvd player with HDMI output might be an idea. It's the kind of input your tv was designed to use. Get an ebuyer HDMI lead too. It's a digital signal so no noise/artifacts should be introduced by not having a cable made in a vacuum by specially designed robot monkeys with PhDs. I think you can get the dvd players from around £50.

On board processing chips can be good as has been said. It's still a bit of a minefield out there. I won't be going HD until I have something to watch on it. I wouldn't save space with a flat panel as my tv has to live in a corner.