Samsung OTA & Inputs

[Cynthia Blue]

I bought a Samsung SIR-TS160 from Ebay for OTA only HDTV for my folks. I hooked it up to my own Vizio Plasma via component, just to check it out.

It finds the OTA stations just fine, and even gives me some limited guide data. My TV doesn't have a DVI input, so I'm using component for now.

The picture is nothing even close to what my Vizio shows when it is straight from the Antenna or through the satellite via HDMI. Is this because I have the Samsung hooked up via Component and not DVI? My Dad's TV has a DVI input so I would use that for him, I just want to make sure that it's the cable, not the box, that is giving me the not-so-good picture.

Or is this as good as the Samsung gets... and I bought a bad one?
Thanks.

 

[Cynthia Blue]

Actually, I'm incorrect. It's not component, it's AV. I don't have a component cable it seems... so maybe the AV is not very good quality and once we move to Component or DVI, it'll be a lot better.

 

[dougruss]

Actually, I'm incorrect. It's not component, it's AV. I don't have a component cable it seems... so maybe the AV is not very good quality and once we move to Component or DVI, it'll be a lot better.

You are correct.........Component or DVI will be a big improvement !

 

[Cynthia Blue]

Excellent, thank you. I wish I could sneak it over to the parent's house and check it out before Christmas. I'm probably more excited than they are lol.

 

[lilyarbie]

With regular AV cables, you're really not even getting a 480i resolution quality picture. You're actually getting more like half of that resolution. The composite color and luminance signals are encoded into one analog signal. When they are decoded and encoded like this, you lose both color information and picture information (i.e. resolution).

 

[Jim5506]

If you have a spare A/V composite cable (Red/Yellow/White RCA plugs) it is a way to get your component video working, although it might not give you the best picture over component, it's still better than what you are seeing. Use the red in the red; yellow in the green and white in the blue plugs.