Is this TV supposed to suck?

[Azaroth]

So, the last time I bought a flat screen (about four or five years ago), I went with the cheapest 42 inch I could get my hands on. It sucked.

I learned one lesson: You get what you pay for, and good brand names are important.

Well.

This time, I purchased a Sony. Sony Bravia V-Series 52V5100 52-Inch 1080p LCD HDTV.

I was scared in the store because none of the pictures on the 52 inch TVs looked anywhere near perfect. The Sony seemed like it was probably the best choice.

Now that it's home, I can definitely tell that the picture has background, grainy distortion - especially up close.

Is this normal? Is it just a fact of life with big TVs, or do I have some sort of gripe here.

Relying on people with more TV knowledge than I have. Help out a clueless newb.

[Nac]

Lurker who works at Sears.  Almost all the TVs in my store have a crappy coax signal for the display.  Use your own judgment.  If you think the TV is crap, return it before the return period expires.  All brands can make a shitty TV.

[Quinton]

What's your signal source?  Are you viewing broadcast or cable TV?  HDMI/DVI output from a PC or PS3 or whatnot?

I'd be concerned about a modern 1080p LCD display that had problems with a 1080p HDMI stream from a device that supported that resolution.  Not sure what to expect from upscaled content, CATV or otherwise.  My assumption is that the built-in upscaling is going to be mediocre in most cases.

A 52" TV is probably not optimized to look at its best close up though.

[01101010]

What's your signal source?  Are you viewing broadcast or cable TV?  HDMI/DVI output from a PC or PS3 or whatnot?

I'd be concerned about a modern 1080p LCD display that had problems with a 1080p HDMI stream from a device that supported that resolution.  Not sure what to expect from upscaled content, CATV or otherwise.  My assumption is that the built-in upscaling is going to be mediocre in most cases.

A 52" TV is probably not optimized to look at its best close up though.

From my years at Best Buy, never judge a tv on the showroom floor and always calibrate it as best you can at home when it gets home and 3 months after you have had it. Best Buy now sells some shit for a couple hundred to have them come calibrate it for you with their magic machine, it works, but its more for insane theater set ups rather than your normal living room. Tweak your own settings. Looking at a TV on the showroom floor sucks due to those tvs being run on settings no where near normal. Add in the fact that many of the bigger screen tvs really need to be watched 8-10ft back (6-8ft for 40+" and 8-10 for 50+" etc.), and you can't get an accurate assessment of a tv's picture in the store at all.

As for the tv, personally, I'd put Sony just below Samsung for quality. The V-series are decent home tvs for what I hear. The XBRs are their "top-o-the-line" TVs but the difference is not going to be astounding to anyone not deep into TV picture quality. I'd be pretty happy with getting that TV and it should be a very good movie/tv/gaming tv

[caladein]

If you think there's something genuinely wrong with the set I'd do a couple things:

• Get a good 1080p source going into the set: Blu-Ray movie, 360/PS3, maybe a really solid OTA channel (even though it'll be either 1080i or 720p).
• Reset it to default settings and turn off any of the crap the TV might be doing to the image: Frame Smoothing and Image Sharpening are two that come to mind.
• Put the set into "Movie Mode" or something similar.

If something still looks fucked up with the image (versus just it being "off" a bit), I'd get it replaced/returned.

If you're just not happy with the image quality, you'll want to calibrate the set.  Here's my favorite how-to: http://revision3.com/systm/HDTVcalibration

[Pennilenko]

What's your signal source?  Are you viewing broadcast or cable TV?  HDMI/DVI output from a PC or PS3 or whatnot?

I'd be concerned about a modern 1080p LCD display that had problems with a 1080p HDMI stream from a device that supported that resolution.  Not sure what to expect from upscaled content, CATV or otherwise.  My assumption is that the built-in upscaling is going to be mediocre in most cases.

A 52" TV is probably not optimized to look at its best close up though.

These are important questions, if the OP does not have the tv hooked up to some sort of HD tuner, cable or satellite(tuned to an HD station), connected using an HDMI cable, then he is going to experience shitty quality. TVs have gotten cheaper because there is less frills regarding their ability to process and clean analog signals.

Echoing what other people have said, Hooking the system up to a blueray player or ps3 using HDMI with a blue ray disc for testing is the best method to see if your tv sucks or you just have sucky source.

[Selby]

My last "new" TV was bought in 2005 and the ONLY way it looks really good is on an HD channel or through the HDMI source via a Blueray player or somesuch.  Basic cable channels look like complete ass.  My current TV is ca. 1997 and it looks just fine on crappy basic cable ;-)

[Murgos]

Avsforums are a good place to go to learn how to calibrate your TV and also what issues certain models may have.

[MahrinSkel]

I've gotten thrown out of stores because I brought my own video source (portable DVD back in the day, laptop with component outputs when I was looking for an HDTV) and hooked it up to the floor models.  Fuck 'em, if they won't let me be sure what I'm buying is worth it, I'll spend my money somewhere else.  Not like the old, *old* days, when TV's only had one input and I couldn't have done that without muscling the TV around and disconnecting it.  Since I always wanted something with front/side inputs, I didn't even need to move it, just figure out how to navigate the menus from the front panel (again, if I couldn't do that, I didn't want it anyway).

Usually I got away with it because the salespeople were too surprised to figure out what to say.

--Dave

[ffc]

Big HDTV's look grainy up close and/or when displaying standard definition stuff.  If you watch anything in HD from a respectable distance (12ft+) with factory settings and you don't think "wow that's amazing" then get a new TV.  

Calibrating the TV using avsforum.com, cnet.com, a THX disc, an AVIA disc, or a DVE disc will further improve what should already be a nice picture.  A step up from that is to buy a calibration device like a Spyder to further dial things in.  The best option is to get an ISF tech to tweak the service menu but that's a couple hundred dollars.

Setting the TV to movie mode as caladein mentioned and turning down the backlight from full torch to 5ish (the brighter the room, the higher the backlight should be) are the first general steps to calibration but step zero is determining whether your grainy picture is due to source/closeness or a broken TV.

[Morfiend]

I want to second, or third the input source.

If you dont have one, rent a Blue-Ray player and get an animated movie like Cars, then hook up via HDMI or component cables. That will give you the best picture. It should look amazing.

The reason for getting Cars is that some movies have added film grain and can throw you off when trying to tell how good the picture quality is. Cars will look amazing.

[Salamok]

Also If you haven't yet turn that 4:3 -> 16:9 stretch setting off.  On the one hand part of a TV's quality is going to depend on minimizing artifacts when it scales stuff but stretching to a completely different aspect ratio then having a discussion about quality is retarded.

I'm still thrilled with my 47" 240hz Vizio I bought a few months back, looks like they just released a new 55" LED lit model too.  My current feelings are if you can't afford/justify an 8 series Samsung just get a high end Vizio.  

I was looking at some Sony's when I bought mine and I didn't see anything that made me feel I was getting more for the extra $$ over the Vizio plus I thought the gray case on the Sony was ugly.

[Azaroth]

After dinking around some, it's becoming more and more likely that it's largely an input problem as was suggested in the thread here.

The satellite is SD, and looks like absolute shite. Really, really awful. Grainy background, distortion around letters, etc. DVDs seem to be fine.

[Quinton]

The satellite is SD, and looks like absolute shite. Really, really awful. Grainy background, distortion around letters, etc. DVDs seem to be fine.

As far as I can tell, the SD inputs on most modern HDTVs (composite, svideo, etc especially) are (at best) an afterthought so they can can have the checkbox on the spec sheet.  It's sad because if you have a classic console or something it's gonna like like crap and there's not much you can do about it, but generally with a solid 720p or 1080p source you should get a really nice picture (and if you don't, return the TV).

[caladein]

Yeah, with SD sources it's component or don't bother.

[Trippy]

As far as I can tell, the SD inputs on most modern HDTVs (composite, svideo, etc especially) are (at best) an afterthought so they can can have the checkbox on the spec sheet.  It's sad because if you have a classic console or something it's gonna like like crap and there's not much you can do about it, but generally with a solid 720p or 1080p source you should get a really nice picture (and if you don't, return the TV).

For SD consoles you don't want the TV to process the SD signal other than some really simple stuff otherwise you get input lag. The same applies to the HD signal which is why some HDTVs have a special "Game" mode.

[Lt.Dan]

After dinking around some, it's becoming more and more likely that it's largely an input problem as was suggested in the thread here.

The satellite is SD, and looks like absolute shite. Really, really awful. Grainy background, distortion around letters, etc. DVDs seem to be fine.

If you're talking about Austar then not only is it SD, it's also compressed up to wahzoo.  I've seen it look shit on 32" LCDs.  Non HD Foxtel is a bit better but you still get occassional digital artifacts (blocking, blurriness, shadowing on text).

DVDs will probably be good if your DVD player has built in upscaling to 720i or 1080i.  You will still get some grainyness on some TV shows off DVD since they are often compressed to fit onto budget release DVDs (the BSG mini-series is terrible for this).

[Cyrrex]

Although I know have a Samsung LCD for my main set, one huge reason I originally had a Pansonic Plasma was because their processing of an SD signal absolutely killed any LCD set's ability to do the same thing.  Not even remotely a contest.  My new Samsung (which is superior in every other way) doesn't come close to my Panny in terms of converting an SD signal.

In short, if SD viewing (dvds or broadcast) is really important to you, than consider not getting an LCD tv.

[Stewie]

We are thinking of getting a new TV. Our current LCD rear projection is getting a pretty bad blue cast around the middle of the picture.
We are thinking a nice Samsung 52"-55" 1080p 120hz LCD or maybe jumping up to an LED.
Is the LED worth the extra money? one of our main concerns is life of the set and our current one is just over 4 years old. (we do watch a metric shit tonne of TV though)

We don't mind spending the extra money if we know that the TV will last much longer and of course I want to get one because I likes me the latest and greatest!
Any thoughts on LED vs LCD?

[Nebu]

Any thoughts on LED vs LCD?

I'd love to hear opinions on plasma as well.  Aside from the weight, power consumption, and heat, what are the drawbacks of plasma?  They're really coming down in price.   

[Nerf]

I've always watched TV on projectors, rear-projection DLP and LED DLP rear-proj.  The girlfriend has a 50" plasma, and I've been watching that for awhile and exclusively now that we moved in together.  The only complaint I've got is that eye fatigue seems more pronounced than with the other forms of TV, but that could be my allergies being worse at her place than my parents place.

Aside from that, I like it, games are sharp and TV/blurays look great.  The big-ass DLPs are still the best bang for the buck though, as they're being phased out.  My brother picked up a 67" LED DLP for around $1800 from bestbuy less than a year ago.  Bonus points to the big DLPs that they are 3D-ready.

[Trippy]

We are thinking of getting a new TV. Our current LCD rear projection is getting a pretty bad blue cast around the middle of the picture.
We are thinking a nice Samsung 52"-55" 1080p 120hz LCD or maybe jumping up to an LED.
Is the LED worth the extra money? one of our main concerns is life of the set and our current one is just over 4 years old. (we do watch a metric shit tonne of TV though)

We don't mind spending the extra money if we know that the TV will last much longer and of course I want to get one because I likes me the latest and greatest!
Any thoughts on LED vs LCD?

LEDs are LCDs, it's just another form of backlighting.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LED-backlit_LCD_television

One thing that article doesn't mention is that CCFLs take longer to reach their set output level so when you first turn on a CCFL-backlit LCD the colors won't quite look right, though most people probably wouldn't notice the effect on their TVs unless they always use the same "startup" images. It's more noticable on computer displays since your desktop doesn't vary as much.

[Nerf]

Trippy, Aren't the LED backlights supposed to last much longer and be much cheaper to replace than other bulbs though?  I know most non-LED replacement bulbs are $300 or so and need to be replaced every 3? years.  I was of the understanding that LEDs are supposed to last around 5 years or more and cost maybe $100-120 to replace.

[Trippy]

Any thoughts on LED vs LCD?

I'd love to hear opinions on plasma as well.  Aside from the weight, power consumption, and heat, what are the drawbacks of plasma?  They're really coming down in price.   

Burn-in, funky resolutions, brightness fading over time.

Burn-in isn't as much of an issue anymore as current displays have methods for minimizing the problem. Playing video games on them may still be problematic, though (check the manuals of the display you are interested in).

Compared to LCDs, Plasmas tend to have weird native resolutions. So a "720p" might be 1024 x 768 ("stretched" pixels to match 16:9 aspect ratio) instead of the 1366 x 768 you find on LCDs (square pixels at 16:9) and "1080i" might be 1366 x 768 instead of 1920 x 1080. A "1080p" Plasma should be 1920 x 1080 but I would double-check the specs to makes sure you weren't getting something at 1440x1080 ("stretched" pixels again).

Plasma's brightness "half-life" (the amount of time it takes to lose half the brightness) is quite a bit longer than they used to be but the effect is still there. If you are the type that watches a lot of TV and keeps your TVs around for a long time this might be an issue.

[Nebu]

Thanks Trippy.

For the long haul, I'm guessing that a 1080 resolution, 120Hz LED set is the way to go then?

Second, for sharpness, how large can you go before the picture starts to show its size?  I'd rather have a smaller set and retain sharpness than go for something absurdly large.  I started looking originally at 42" sets, but am starting to consider 50" or larger as it's a long-term investment.  I have a decent size family room, but the couch is probably within 10', so too large a set may be pointless.

[Trippy]

Trippy, Aren't the LED backlights supposed to last much longer and be much cheaper to replace than other bulbs though?  I know most non-LED replacement bulbs are $300 or so and need to be replaced every 3? years.  I was of the understanding that LEDs are supposed to last around 5 years or more and cost maybe $100-120 to replace.

LED backlighting is too new to say anything definitive. Nowdays for CCFL LCD TVs the average usable lifespan of the CCFL tubes is over 60,000 hours. LED backlights are not necessarily easier to replace either as CCFLs are in fact just tubes while LED backlights are clusters of emitters which can complicate replacement if only a few emitters are bad.

[Sky]

I know I'm the resident DLP fanboy here, but I don't understand why it's a 'dying' tech. Unless you need to hang it on the wall, it's a really good tech. The real crime is Samsung not making big DLPs anymore (over 55"), I really wanted one of their LED light engines. But the big win of DLP over LCD and Plasma is that you pop in a new lamp (Nerf, Samsung DLP lamp is about $100 and the Mitsu is $150) and the picture is as good as the day you first calibrated it. About every three years, so there is some ongoing cost to it. A DLP used as a pc monitor will have overscan, but it's easily adjusted in nvidia's control panel and turning off geometry correction in the service menu nabs you the 1:1 pixel mapping of a native 1080p direct-view.

I just paid $1439 for a 65" DLP, free shipping no tax. As Nerf says, nice bonus is that it's 3d ready, see the nvidia 3d thread :) 74lbs, 30 lbs lighter than my 61" Sammy.

Nebu, I had a 720p 61" for over six years and it was great as both a tv and monitor. With the 1080p, the text can be a bit small as a monitor but it's still stunning and it's amazing as a tv. About 10' viewing distance, too. As sharp as the picture source allows, and even SD signals are fine to watch. Only annoying back when FOX didn't have an HD channel and we'd be switching between an HD game and FOX's SD game. My father bought a 46" 1080p a few years ago, and he's about 7' away, I feel it's too small.

[Trippy]

Second, for sharpness, how large can you go before the picture starts to show its size?  I'd rather have a smaller set and retain sharpness than go for something absurdly large.  I started looking originally at 42" sets, but am starting to consider 50" or larger as it's a long-term investment.  I have a decent size family room, but the couch is probably within 10', so too large a set may be pointless.

There are way too many factors too consider when picking a size. I would suggest just looking at lots of displays. Also the technology you pick will have an influence. E.g. some display technologies including LCDs exhibit a "screen-door" effect which can become more noticible at larger sizes.

http://myhometheater.homestead.com/viewingdistancecalculator.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optimum_HDTV_viewing_distance

[Trippy]

I know I'm the resident DLP fanboy here, but I don't understand why it's a 'dying' tech.

Because rear-projection can never give as good an image as direct-view and as large-screen direct-view technologies continue to drop in price DLP's main advantage diminishes.

[Nebu]

http://myhometheater.homestead.com/viewingdistancecalculator.html

Good stuff.  Thank you Trippy and Sky. 

[Sky]

Because rear-projection can never give as good an image as direct-view and as large-screen direct-view technologies continue to drop in price DLP's main advantage diminishes.

That's debatable, though. What qualifies as 'good'? I have a pixel-perfect image with great color and brightness and decent blacks. Unless you're a serious videophile it doesn't matter a bit.

I know this is a stretch, but LCDs have a lot of ghosting issues with 3d vision, DLPs have none.

[ghost]

When I last bought a TV I thought the pictures all sucked, too and only found that the plasmas were up to what I wanted.  I ended up buying a Panasonic, since Sony doesn't make them anymore and it had the best picture I could find.  I've been very happy with it so far. 

[Stewie]

Everyone seems to be leaning in any direction that is not LCD.
any particular reason why? It seems most sets in stores now are lcd. I cant find dlp in any local stores and plasmas are getting fewer and fewer.

Is LCD not a good option at all?

[Sky]

Would you buy a monitor from Best Buy? Brick & mortar is dead. 

[Nebu]

Brick & mortar is dead. 

Brick & mortar is where you go to kick tires before you buy online, tax-free!