New 42' Plasma

[cashew1970]

Morning all....

I have taken the plunge, and a new 42' Plasma is turning up on monday :-)

Quick questions:-

Its a Hisense Firstline FS4211HI 42" Plasma TV [FS4211HI] from EBuyer (Bargain at just over £800!!).
Is anyone aware if I will have to play with the teletext workaround on this box?

If so, is there any problem changing things before the event?
Is this something I can do with a file rather than getting Tivo CS involved.

I have all the Mode 0 stuff working...

Does anyone else with a plasma have any other hints and tips for me re set up and cabling?

Currently I have everything (VHS, TIVO, Vinyl Record player, XBOX360, and Sky box) connected to my Sony amp, and the tv pic is sent to the current tv from the Video out (Phono/RCA socket) to a scart lead socket on the TV.

So currently, I get no sound or picture to the TV inless I use the internal tuner, or the Amp is turned on (Not that this is a problem!)

Cheers

Martin

[teresatt]

If you've gone to all the trouble of getting Mode 0 set up on your TiVo, it will be a shame to send the picture as composite to your plasma. You really need to try to get RGB from TiVo to the screen which your amp will very most probably not do. It's criminal to connect an XBox 360 via composite, you must try to use the component lead and see if your plasma will accept high defintion. Even SD via component will give a better picture from your XBox than composite.

The problem with large screens is that they show up all defects in a picture as it is enlarged so much.

[cashew1970]

The Plasma has Audio Out... so I guess that I will be able to feed the sound back to the Amp from the TV, and get the video direct..
I take it there us a scart to RGB lead ou there to do what you suggest?

The Plasma is HD compatible, but not true HD ready.... (Doesn't bother me as I have no plans to go HD yet!)

Cheers

[teresatt]

Any fully wired scart cable will do RGB.

It's worth trying to feed an HD picture into your plasma and seeing how it looks. I only have an SD plasma, but my son's XBox 360 looks amazing outputting 720p via component. There is a distinct improvement in the picture even though it's a downscaled picture. A lot depends on how good the processing is in your screen. My Panasonic PWD6 loves 720p.

[cashew1970]

So if i feed a fully wired scat from the Tivo to the Plasma (It has 2 scarts) and then run phono leads from the Tivo to the amp, will taht give me the best possible picture, (And sound via the amp when it is turned on)?

I could then run the XBox leads direct to the plasma, but take the audio leads into the amp

[teresatt]

That should pretty well do it. Just make sure you set TiVo to output RGB and your plasma scart is set to pick up RGB.

[SimonMallion]

I agree with all the above ie. mode 0 and using an RGB scart. TiVo will look quite watchable as long as the bitrates are high enough.

Also, definitely try to connect your Xbox 360 to your plasma via VGA or Component, Composite output on the plasma will look ugly.

One last thing: find out the native resolution of the plasma and change your Xbox 360 output settings to output the same resolution - ie. 1:1 pixel mapping (you will only be able to do this if you use a VGA lead or Component.) Text should look crisp and no blurring around the edges.

[sanderton]

Unfortunately that TV is not high def, it's one of the last of the old 852 x 480 displays - lower res than a standard TV - so Mode 0, which is 720 x 576 be more than fine as your TV will have to downcale that to display it.

Unfortunately that means you won't be getting the best from the XBox 360, as a 720p output from that will be massively scaled to fit the low res of the TV. It does have a 480p mode, which will probably be best.

Be warned though, digitally processed signals into a plasma or LCD can look disappointing as the clearly defined pixels make artifacts clearer too. I would consider experimenting by removing mode 0 (which won't give you a lot of advantage on a low res display) and upping the bitrate to reduce artifacts.

[Paperface]

I have taken the plunge, and a new 42' Plasma is turning up on monday :-)

Wow 42'!? When did TV's get so big? ;)

Surely you mean 42" ?

[teresatt]

Well, my son's XBox 360 looks pretty stunning running 720p into my 42" SD plasma. From my normal seating position of about 8' it looks so good that I can't imagine how much better it would be on an actual high def screen. Getting closer to it though, I can see that a higher resolution screen would be an improvement. It doesn't bother my son though. He's sitting on the floor about three foot away from it playing Kameo and he's totally engrossed.

When high def is more established and cheaper, I will hopefully upgrade to a 50" screen, and I'd really like to think that I'll be feeding it with a high def TiVo.

[Lysander]

I run mode 0 with an SD display. It makes a huge difference - one that I am very pleased with. You must go RGB into the plasma though - otherwise I think you may be disappointed.

[cashew1970]

Thanks for all of your pointers.

Have gone and bought my nice expesive scart leads (But not the stupidly expensive ones... I really did not know that they can cost over £70 in some places!!) , and phono ones for the sound...

Now bring on Monday........... I will let you know my thoughts....

Cheers again

Maritn