42" Vizio and 622

[Tac]

I just purchased a 42" Vizio after seeing one at my father-in-laws. He uses it with standard cable and had a pretty good picture and figured that with E* and HD programming it would look even better.

I have it hooked to my 622 via HDMI.

The HD channels look very good. However, SD does not. The picture is very pixelated, and grainy. Does anyone have a Vizio with this problem or a fix? Should I hook it up with component cables?

 

[Dgenx321]

Welcome to the world of compression from Dish.

 

[KAB]

Is this your first HDTV? Sat SD does not look good on any HD set larger than 37" or so.

 

[Tac]

I did have a 32" HDTV and they did look a little grainy, however much worse with the 42". Would component cables make any difference?

The biggest issue is that my wife mainly watches the big 4 locals and in our city they our only in SD and the over the air is only digital not HD and the quality is poor.

Do we know if All American Direct will offer HD locals any time soon?

 

[rockandchelle]

I would say try the Component cables, I was using HDMI for a while, and the picture just didnt' look as good. To me the SD channels on my 40" Samsung look good using Component Cables.

 

[WhitePolarBear]

I would say try the Component cables, I was using HDMI for a while, and the picture just didnt' look as good. To me the SD channels on my 40" Samsung look good using Component Cables.

I am not stepping into the HD world any time sooon. But it sounds like the HDMI could be not as the ideal solution as it was promoted. Is there any reason for that?

 

[Tac]

I will try the component and see what happens.

 

[Tac]

Does anyone else use component cables over HDMI because component makes the picture look better?

 

[ptech]

Is this your first HDTV? Sat SD does not look good on any HD set larger than 37" or so.

this statement may have been true until Samsung came out with the new 120Hz LCD TV. I first purchased the same TV with a 60Hz processor and yes the picture was crap however I returned it for the 120Hz system and quite a few of the SD channels are so clear that they start to resemble some HD characteristics. If you get a chance, stop by and check one out. The picture is unbelievable. Oh and yes, the HD channels are super.

Does anyone else use component cables over HDMI because component makes the picture look better?

Try them both and see what works best for you. I use both depending on what system i'm hooked up too. they both are good.

 

[KAB]

Does anyone else use component cables over HDMI because component makes the picture look better?

In recent discussions on the matter, general opinion has been split just about 50/50. However, I do not believe either will help your SD disappointment.

 

[boba]

If your locals are available as OTA Digital try connecting a TV antenna either indoor or outside depending on where you live in relation to the broadcast towers. You will probably be surprised at the picture quality compared to DISH.

 

[JH1949]

My OTA digital (not HD) locals look better than Sat SD (not HD) locals on a 30" LCD HDTV connected to Vip622 with component cables.

 

[ncinsguy]

one of my big screens is a vizio 42 lcd. my ota is hd and beautiful. especially the football games. all ota locals have to be transmitting in hd by now i'm not sure what you mean by digital ota, most primetime shows are in hd. locals through dish looked worse than their other sd channels, they looked blurry to me. i'm using hdmi to connect. just hook an antenna up to your tv and i'm sure it will look better than the locals through your receiver and you'll save the $5 fee.

I did have a 32" HDTV and they did look a little grainy, however much worse with the 42". Would component cables make any difference?

The biggest issue is that my wife mainly watches the big 4 locals and in our city they our only in SD and the over the air is only digital not HD and the quality is poor.

Do we know if All American Direct will offer HD locals any time soon?

 

[Tac]

If I go with the ota digital locals through the receiver and cancel my dish locals, will I still receive my program guide description for the ota locals through the receiver?

 

[duckydan]

If you cancel your locals you lose the program guide info... its the only reason I pay $5 a month for locals because setting a DVR using times is a pain in the arse.

 

[JH1949]

all ota locals have to be transmitting in hd by now i'm not sure what you mean by digital ota, most primetime shows are in hd.

FYI: the Feb 2009 conversion is analog to digital NOT necessarily analog to HD digital.

For example, the OTA stations in a smaller rural town near me cannot afford separate HD stations for each of the Big4.

Instead digital 13.1=ABC HD, 13.2=Fox SD, 13.3=CW SD and 53.1=PBS national SD, 53.3=PBS children SD, 53.4=PBS local HD.

 

[jeepers94]

Is this your first HDTV? Sat SD does not look good on any HD set larger than 37" or so.

I replaced a 32" lcd with my Samsung 5884 58" plasma,and the 58" has a much better picture than the 32" had,in both hd and sd.

 

[Andrewwski]

Vizio is about as bad as you can get, that's probably why. They have the world's worst scalers, so they really don't handle SD well at all.

I've seen Dish on a 57", where compression was noticable, but nothing terrible.

 

[bernietr]

I don't have issue on my setup

I just purchased a 42" Vizio after seeing one at my father-in-laws. He uses it with standard cable and had a pretty good picture and figured that with E* and HD programming it would look even better.

I have it hooked to my 622 via HDMI.

The HD channels look very good. However, SD does not. The picture is very pixelated, and grainy. Does anyone have a Vizio with this problem or a fix? Should I hook it up with component cables?

I don't have this issue.
TV 2 will be Composite out but is still very good for 480i

ViP 622 AT250HD DPP 1000.2 L4.47 Net enabled
VIZIO VX42L LCD 720P HDTV
Zenith XBS344 DVD/VCR Surround Sound Audio Receiver
Panasonic DMR-E30 DVD Recorder
Toshiba HD-A2 HD DVD Player
LG DN798 Up converting DVD Player
GoDVD CT-200 Video Enhancer (Digital Video Duplicator)

 

[Jim S.]

ptech:
What's the theory behind the 120Hz displays scaling SD so much better? I thought the intention of the higher refresh rate was to fix motion blur, which I've never noticed on my small LCD display, and also to fix deinterlacing issues with 24fps source material. (Which I've never looked for, as I don't own any HD disc players, but I doubt I'd notice anyway -- the extent of my video snobbery is solely hate of overcompression.) I wonder if the new sets have really managed to implement some sort of smoothing which can deal with compression artifacts.

jeepers94:
When I was in Circuit City over the weekend trying to decide whether I could tolerate a 42"+ LCD with Dish's SD compression, the salesman told me that plasmas didn't show problems as bad as LCDs. But when he switched the sets to an SD local channel from DirecTV (it was on ESPN-HD, which didn't look so great either on the really big sets), they all looked uniformly terrible.

One unknown here, however, is the issue of whether the sets were being fed with 480 signals or whether the channels were being upscaled by the receiver. I didn't ask because I figured the salesman wouldn't know, and I have no idea how to navigate a DirecTV receiver. I know Dish doesn't have native resolution passthrough, but I've seen a lot of people recommend using composite for SD channels to let the TV do the scaling. I haven't tried it yet because the back of my receiver is hard to get to the way I have things set up now, but it seems like it would be a major annoyance to switch inputs every time I switch channels.

I'm pretty concerned with this issue. Right now my 622 is feeding a 27" SD CRT and a 21" HD LCD. I'd really like to upgrade the 27" CRT sooner rather than later, but I want to go with a large enough set to make it worthwhile while also not spending a lot of money. As it happens, Vizio was one of the brands I was looking at because people on another forum seem to mostly agree that they're the best of the low end and can give a semi-respectable picture by calibrating them to sensible levels instead of the blown-out level the stores put them on.