Can't read Program Guide on Standard Def TV

[Taank]

Voom is looking great on my bigscreen hdtv in my basement.... but all I have
in my bedroom is an old 32" SD TV, and lying in my bed 10-13 ft away I cannot
read the program guide. I can get closer to the tv and see what it says....but
the text still looks very poor. The PQ seems pretty good....just the text cant
be made out. With Dish Network I could read it fine, the text was much bigger.
Can the text be made bigger anyway, or am I outta luck in the bedroom?

 

[Vicki]

I sure hope you get a solution for this!! You should have seen it on my 20" 20-year old Panasonic!

I left VOOM a few months ago (not because of that), and am now coming back. That lousy old set is still there, though, and it would sure be nice to be able to read the guide. My picture was great though!

 

[Couch Patato]

On my 20" JVC in the bedroom I cycled through the diff. Res. to see which one looked best. I settled on 720p. I can read the text okay from 8'.

 

[Vicki]

I don't remember if I tried that on the bedroom set. My Hitachi only got 1080i, and I remember that I had to set that, rather than use the "native" setting.

I'm about 8'-10' away, but I could read the news crawls underneath the guide just fine. I'll try the different settings when I'm back up and running.

Sure hope this works for you, Taank.

 

[Taank]

well, my bedroom tv is actually 27" not 32, I was wrong. I cycled through
all the resoutions and the text looks like crap on them all. Didnt think
I was going to have to buy a new TV for this, the goal was $1 out of pocket.
But it looks like a TV is gonna be needed if I want to watch in the bedroom.
Do you think that a new television of the same size would do a better job
on the text? I can't go up in size much in the bedroom..... for half a second
I was thinking about getting like a 37" plasma or something, but that would run
me like $1,675 online so I dont know about that. Now I'm looking at a
27" tv/vcr/dvd combo for $499. If i start looking at these 32" widescreen
edtv or hdtv's then I might as well just go to the 37" plasma for the price
difference.

ARG!

 

[rvsixer]

I cycled through
all the resoutions and the text looks like crap on them all.

Chances are your older TV does not have HD inputs (i.e. component or DVI/HDMI), so cycling through the HD resolutions won't change the picture in any way. Same goes for 20" JVC's .

If the TV has at least an S-Video (small round DIN connector) input try that, picture should be better than composite (small round RCA connector, which is what my 26" is hooked up to and looks like :down).

Rob.

 

[Taank]

switched tv's to my 2 year old 25" apex tv which has s-video.
Text was improved slightly, but still not viewable from 10'.
I have rearranged my bedroom to where I am now about 8' from
the tv and I can read it if i try hard! Arg. Why in the world
isnt there just an option to enlarge the guide display?! I know voom
is for HD on peoples nice big screen tv's..... but these same people dont
normally have 65" widescreens in every room of their house.

 

[Taank]

If only I could browse through program at the text size that is
displayed when you hit the info button. That would work just fine.

 

[rvsixer]

I know voom is for HD on peoples nice big screen tv's..... but these same people dont normally have 65" widescreens in every room of their house.

Yes I did not think s-video would be a great improvement. Don't need a 65", any size ED/HD monitor with HD inputs will be very readable.

Rob.

 

[Taank]

well if I get a new tv it would either be like a 30" flat tube widescren HD ready for like $800-$1000 OR a 37" plasma which I guess is EDTV since its 852x480..
for $1600

both these options are far from my goal of voom costing me $1 to get.

 

[Couch Patato]

I should say that I'm using s-video as well.