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riverawynter said:

To have an S-Video cable for SD's and an HDMI for HD's, wow. That would be suicidal. I would have to get ready to go home by taking 4 aspirin tablets to hear my wife B***H all night at me for that setup.

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It's not really that inconvenient. I assume your tv has several videos. Simply set up your s-video or rca jack in video 2, for example. When watching SD channels, simply press the video on your remote and when the display shows video 2, you are there. It's no different from changing the video output for your dvds -- you just press a button to get the right video output.

Suicidal? It takes maybe 5 seconds and you don't even have to get out of your chair! Before remotes, people used to have to get up evey time they changed channels. I doubt many of them committed suicide over it...

I've been a Dish subscriber for about six years now. I got my first HDTV on Halloween (two TVs, actually) and continued using my Dish 501 receiver for about 5 weeks. I got quite familiar with how SD looks on both sets.

Today, I got a 622 & 211 installed. I must say that the SD quality is inferior to what I just had yesterday. I did change the TV setting on both receivers from 480i to 1080i right away (both TVs are 1080p, native) and I can't believe that it's still different from my 501 receiver. The HD content, for the most part, looks very impressive. I have few beefs there. Just some tweaking, I suspect. But the SD PQ is an issue for me.

I like the suggestion of using HDMI for HD and then switching to S-Video for SD because I was using S-Video on my 501 receiver. Perhaps that's the answer.

The only thing I can complain about right now on HD (other than the HD-Lite suspects) is the black level on most stations is poor. I think it's the receiver because when I change channels and wait 2-3 seconds for image to show up, it's a charcoal gray, not black. Hmmmmm......If anyone has advice on that, let me know.

One is RPTV 1080p and the other is LCD 1080p.

spike

Adjustments

spike1201 said:

I've been a Dish subscriber for about six years now. I got my first HDTV on Halloween (two TVs, actually) and continued using my Dish 501 receiver for about 5 weeks. I got quite familiar with how SD looks on both sets.

Today, I got a 622 & 211 installed. I must say that the SD quality is inferior to what I just had yesterday. I did change the TV setting on both receivers from 480i to 1080i right away (both TVs are 1080p, native) and I can't believe that it's still different from my 501 receiver. The HD content, for the most part, looks very impressive. I have few beefs there. Just some tweaking, I suspect. But the SD PQ is an issue for me.

I like the suggestion of using HDMI for HD and then switching to S-Video for SD because I was using S-Video on my 501 receiver. Perhaps that's the answer.

The only thing I can complain about right now on HD (other than the HD-Lite suspects) is the black level on most stations is poor. I think it's the receiver because when I change channels and wait 2-3 seconds for image to show up, it's a charcoal gray, not black. Hmmmmm......If anyone has advice on that, let me know.

One is RPTV 1080p and the other is LCD 1080p.

spike

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It sounds like you need to readjust the monitors. Record the HD test pattern off HDNET. It is going to be broadcast 12/10 (sun) a 6:50 E.S.T. Adjust from that to get you picture peaked out. There is a thread either on Sat Guys or DBSTalks about doing just this. You are now in a different world of TV than the SD world you have been used to. If one can afford it you should have a service man come out and calibrate your monitors. The way the sets come to the customer is adjusted for in store view which is all jacked up to be super bright and the colors very vivid. Most sets are going to look wrong unless you get a good setting that will give good compromise between the two or have two different setting 1 for HD & 1 for SD. In the statement above you are talking about the black level that is an indication that 3 things need adjusting 1 brightness level is too high, 2 contrast is too high, & 3 sharpness control is peaked to high. All of these sound like the way that units are set up for watching on the showroom floor.

First of all, thanks for the tip on HDNET b'casting a test pattern. That's good information.

Thanks for your recommendations on adjusting my TV. Rereading my post, I think I may have not painted the picture as best I could have. Here's my update.

I'm aware of "torch mode". My main HDTV is a JVC RPTV and I've made the adjustment from "Dynamic" (the default picture setting) to "Theater Pro". It took some time for my eyes to adjust, but I'm confident now that it's a better setting. Brightness, contrast, saturation and sharpness are all returned to decent settings and it's a warmer color temperature. However, it's in this Theater Pro mode that I still feel the black levels are poor. Here's why...

I adjusted my TV using Theater Pro as a starting point, then followed calibration directions from a THX DVD. JVC's Theater Mode nearly nailed every test on there. Maybe this kind of calibration is not appropriate for HD receivers, but watching DVDs and Dish SD after that was quite good (resolution of SD aside). Now that I have a 622 hooked up to it, SD is rather poor again, but I've not changed the TV picture's settings. Only the receiver has changed. My two biggest gripes are:

- Black levels are different for every channel (SD & HD)
- SD often has interlacing that never smooths out (like the CNBC static logo and the tickers crawling across the screen, for example.)

These are new issues for me going from my 501 receiver to the 622.

HD content (those that are truly 1920x1080) look amazing, aside from occasional black levels being inconsistent from station to station.

Lastly, I've explained everything above from the experience I've had with the 622 on my JVC RPTV. But I have nearly identical issues with my 211 on a Sharp Aquos LCD. Before this TV, it had Comcast cable running on it for five weeks. Black levels on the Comcast channels were a bit better than what I'm seeing now with the 211.

So, in review...

I'm going to take your advice and record the HDNET test pattern. Thanks for the headsup. I'll continue tweaking my settings to get what I like. But if this problem sounds familiar to anyone in the same boat and can see something that I'm missing during this transition from 501 to 622 & 211, let me know!

spike

Your cable might be all digital now, my local cable company started digital simulcast of all the analog stations so if you have a cable box and tune to channel 3 it tunes a digital feed instead of the analog channel 3.

grb said:

It's not really that inconvenient. I assume your tv has several videos. Simply set up your s-video or rca jack in video 2, for example. When watching SD channels, simply press the video on your remote and when the display shows video 2, you are there. It's no different from changing the video output for your dvds -- you just press a button to get the right video output.

Suicidal? It takes maybe 5 seconds and you don't even have to get out of your chair! Before remotes, people used to have to get up evey time they changed channels. I doubt many of them committed suicide over it...

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Clearly you don't live with the average woman.

My universal remote is programmed to execute marcos to turn on/off the equipment to watch TV and switch things around to watch a DVD. It all works fine if you don't wave the remote around once you pushed the macro button. Frequently I hear "The TV is messed up again. Can you fix it?". I *never* have that problem myself.

Yeah most SD from any provider does not look that good on HDTV's. Some SD Channels are better than others but it still SD on a HDTV.