How do SD DTivo shows look on HD set?

[KF9WM]

I'm way behind times but I have been enjoying the crystal clear picture on my 32" JVC and SD SAT-60 or DSR 708 for several years. With the push to upgrade to HDTV, I've been doing some research and am leaning toward a Samsung LN-T4655F (46" LCD) as of now. The more research I do, the more I find out just how clueless I am on the whole HDTV subject.

My question is: Given that all of my DTivos are SD units, how will the picture quality be on the new, larger screen HD set as compared to the 32" SD set? As a DirecTV customer for the past 11 years, I know that they would probably give me a pretty good deal on their HD DVR and dish. I'm just concerned about how SD programming would look on the new set. The good thing is that I'm only 26 miles from the various transmitting towers in Indy so OTA signals will be easy to snag.

For that matter, will the change to HDTV in 2009 even affect my DirecTivos?

[leeherman]

I can't speak specifically to your question, but I have a ReplayTV (SD only) and now an S3 connected to my Sony 40" XBR LCD TV.

I find that SD programming on the HD set does not look as good as the same programming on either my 20" or 26" tube sets. I'm not sure how much is due to the SD/HD thing versus the size of the HD set relative to the tube sets.

I do notice that SD programming recorded at best quality on the S3 looks somewhat better than SD programming recorded at the best quality on the ReplayTV when both are viewed on the HD set.

Hope this doesn't confuse you!

LH

[RaGINaR]

Just got a new TV. SD doesn't look very good on my new set :). It's a 42" 720p and the picture is grainy at best. It's do-able, and you're right; most of the sat companies are offering some sick deals on switching to HD right now.

Check it out! :)

~Chris

[John T Smith]

That all depends on the TV and what is has inside to handle the SD signal

If the TV has an UPCONVERT chip/processor, it will make the SD signal fit the HD screen as best as possible... you will get "about" 2/3 of an HD look from the SD signal

Be sure to ask about the specific TV you are considering

[liberty91362]

SD quality on an HDTV may depend on where your programming comes from.

We bought a 40" Sony Bravia LCD last year, not intending to upgrade to HDTV programming right away. However, on TW Cable, the SD shows were way below the quality we were accustomed to on our Standard Def TV. There was also a funny effect we noticed, where people's faces seem rubbery, like they're morphing or something. Also, dark colors get a pixelated fog over them, so shows like 24 and Battlestar Gallactica, which tend to be a little dark, were hard to watch.

We figured out pretty quickly that we had to get HD programming, if only to match the quality of our old tube tv. We changed our programming to Time Warner Cable HD, and then the HD channels looked great, but the zillion channels still only available in SD, like SciFi, UPN, CW, Food, History, etc., were still almost unwatchable. Especially PBS, the most beautiful HD channel of all, which in standard-def looks like everything was filmed in a bad sandstorm, and makes everybody's faces look like rubber.

Then I got a too-good-to-be true offer from Verizon to change to DirecTV with Tivo, and we did. It turned out Verizon totally misrepresented the price (another story), but the picture quality is vastly better than it was with TW cable, and even the standard def channels look really good, except for PBS, which is better, but still sometimes unwatchable for most shows from England, like Masterpiece Theatre (don't know why). The DirecTV Tivo works perfectly, 100% of the time, and I have the best TV reception I've ever seen (except for PBS). My assumption is that satellite TV is just better quality. Unfortunately, HD versions of the PBS channels are not available via satellite. Only some cable carriers. Unfortunately it's a trade-off. PBS in HD, or watchable SD channels. I keep researching this, hoping one of the satellite carriers will add PBS HD.

Now our big problem is figuring out how to get the additional HD channels DirecTV is offering, without losing Tivo. It's hard to have to choose between Tivo and more HD Channels. I'm very annoyed at DirecTV because of the bait and switch on the HD DVRs, because I paid a LOT of money for the DirecTV Tivo box just last year, and now they have the nerve to leave messages on my message machine telling me I need to upgrade to receive not only the new channels, but to continue receiving the ones we get now. They say in the message, "this HD equipment upgrade is completely free of charge to dedicated customers like you", but when I called they told me they were going to charge $199 (it might have been $299) to our next bill. I told them no, because I am not inclined to pay them more after having already paid them $299 just last year for equipment they knew would be obsolete so soon.

We're in a pickle now, because DirecTV has added a whole bunch of really great HD channels, and they're the only way we can get all the channels we want in HD. But we'll lose Tivo and pay them a bunch of money for it. I haven't decided what to do yet.

[liberty91362]

Something else I should have mentioned. Our old Tivo and standard-def DVDs looked horrible on the HDTV. I found out that component cables gave us a much better picture than composite cables, and then we bought a cheap progressive-scan DVD player, which also made a big improvement. DVDs look fine now, although I wish they were in HD.

[classicsat]

You could get an upconverting DVD player, or etter yes one of the HD players. That is all I am going to say, you can look elsewhere for the details.

Now, the 2009 date is for analog broadcast TV shutoff. It has nothing to to with HDTV. If you are receiving TV only from DirecTV, you will not be affected at all by the digital TV transition, since DirecTV is 100% digital. As long as SD MPEG2 channels exist, your DirecTV TiVos should continue to work.

The short term concern has purely to to with DirecTV's transition from MPEG2 to MPEG4 for their HD channels, and that to receive MPEG4 HD, you need to give up "TiVoing" in HD, as there is no way to record those channels in HD using TiVo powered recorders.

You have to give up HD and use a DirecTV TiVo or Standalone Series 2 with a DirecTV receiver, give up TiVo in favor of DirecTV's non-TiVo HD-DVR, or give up DirecTV for cable, to use a Standalone HD-TiVo.
You could keep the DirecTV TiVo for DirecTV, get a Standalone HD-TiVo for OTA, and a non-DVR H21 for newer DriecTV HD.

As for PBS-HD, DirecTV would likely have to carry your local affiliate in HD, rather than the national PBS-HD feed.
Those older BBC shows would definately be in SD, and the PAL to NTSC converted video likely does funny things to HD upconversion, or your affiliate isn't doing it correctly.

[dcstager]

You should just enjoy the illusion of a sharp DTivo picture on your 32" SD set a while longer. By the time your TV and Dtivo stop working, the HDTV technology will have advanced even further and be even cheaper.

Watching 4x3 material on a 16:9 set is never ideal. You don't want to burn in lines from watching it pillarboxed and you don't like watching the image distorted to fit the 16:9 screen either.

With all the hacks, I can pull the unmodifed direct digital copy of the datastream off the Dtivo. On average it's 1900 bps at 480x480. Literally right in the middle of the Super Video CD range and nowhere near DVD quality. Local channels are a little better -- about 2100 bps at 544x480, but still just mid-super video CD quality. So, that is all DirectTV is sending down the line best case scenario -- SVCD video.

The flaws in this are readily apparent on an HDTV set. Still looks okay on a good quality 32" direct view SD television.

I have not got rid of my Dtivo because it just operates so well and so reliably. It's my backup for everything but I hardly ever watch it anymore. I had to go with a dual-tuner HDTV box from the cable company. The picture is great - the software of the machine sucks, but it works. I hoping the Comcast Tivo box makes it my way. If I had it to do over, I would have stuck with my 36" Sony 4x3 direct view set and DirectTivo. It's still too early to adopt.

[KF9WM]

You should just enjoy the illusion of a sharp DTivo picture on your 32" SD set a while longer.......

The hard truth is that my picture appears sharp to me because that is what I am used to. Compared to other tube sets, it gives an incredible picture. After seeing real HDTV in the stores, I now know what I'm missing. I'm just afraid that the older shows that I regularly watch are going to look pitiful. I also watch a lot of football and auto racing which would look awesome in HD. What to do...?

To be honest, I am not ready to give up my Tivo powered DVRs.

[KathyLee]

I am in the exact same situation. We've loved our S1 Tivo's for many years. And never had any problems with Directv since we joined in 1996. I've seen HD and it looks impressive. At least recently, DTV has added many new stations. I wasn't going to switch until there was more content. In our situation, we'd have to upgrade our dish, the multiswitch, the TV, and the A/V receiver! So, it's a big investment.

We do like Racing and Football as well, and it would be cool to see in HD, but the SD shows from the tivo looks pretty bad on an HDTV. So it's a step backward if you still want to watch them on an HDTV. As someone already pointed out the choices are:

1. Directv HD-DVR - giving up Tivo software
1a. Can keep other tivos/SDTVs in the house going
2. Switch everything over to cable - can buy an HD Tivo, but throw away other tivos.
3. Wait until directv and tivo get back together ;-)

BTW, upconverted DVDs look great on an HDTV. I'm having enough trouble trying to choose when to switch to HDTV, I'm certainly not going to get into the HD-DVD/Blu-ray format fight! Perhaps downloaded content will be prevalent by the time that choice really has to be made :-)

[classicsat]

Yes, you can still keep/use your existing DirecTV receivers/DVRs and get their HD-DVR.

[John T Smith]

I bought a simple digital signal switcher, but I **think** this place also has standalone upconvert boxes... and they sent me a coupon notice as a customer... and it did not say the coupon code was specific to me, so here it is in case anyone wants to go look at their product list

Happy Holidays From AVTooL Box! Receive 15% off through December,

Visit our online Store www.avtoolbox.com and enter the word
Turkey as the coupon code to start Shopping !

[MrPink]

The real problem is in the de-interlacing. Your SD TiVo is in standard NTSC format, which is interlaced. This is NOT the native mode of HD displays, which is progressive, or non-interlaced. In order to display an interlaced signal, it must be processed by something to a non-interlaced state.

So far, every de-interlacing solution I have seen looks downright hideous.

I've just run across this myself. Yestrday, I replaced a 27" Trinitron with an LCD HD monitor, and am very unhappy with the display of SDTV signals. De-interlace artifacts up the yin-yang, and worse, because the high-frequency response of the display is so much better than the CRT, all one can see is MPEG artifacts. (I don't have a choice in what the signal is, as the DTV is distributed all over the house, and this set isn't anywhere near where a theoretical HD-TiVo would be.)

Blechh.

So far, the solution is to turn the sharpness down, and sit as far away from the display as possible when viewing SDTV from the DTiVo.

Kind of a shame, really. How I wish we had done NHK full-analog HDTV, like I saw back in.. oh... 1983!

-Pink

[ForrestB]

I'm very satisfied with the picture on my LCD HDTV's when viewing shows on my SD Directivo. I've found most HDTV's aren't setup right for SD content from the factory. On both of my HDTV's, I needed to turn the color, contrast, brightness and sharpness down from the nominal 50% values down to approximately 35% to 40%. I suggest spending 15 minutes when setting up your new TV - you'll be surprised at the improvement.

[liberty91362]

Mr. Pink - Do not despair. It's possible to get a great SD picture on an HD TV. We have a Sony Bravia LCD with DirecTivo. For us the solution was changing from cable to satellite. We used to have a gorgeous Sony XBR tube TV, which had a fantastic picture. It was quite a shock to see the degradation in SD programming on the new HD Sony. Some channels (notably PBS and Sci Fi) were unwatchable. With the change to satellite programming, some SD channels look even better than before, because even with the old TV, our cable signal always had interference patterns, or ghosting, or faint bars running through the picture, even with all digital channels. Also, my company now has a big HD TV in the conference room at work, with TW Cable, and I am able to compare. For some reason, the reception is better via satellite for the SD channels. With cable, there is that same funny morphing effect on the SD channels which may have to do with interlacing, I think. It looks like the picture is made of jello. My dilemma now is: Great picture via satellite with no Tivo (eventually), or crummy picture via cable with Tivo.

[MrPink]

Hi, Liberty:

Yes, I agree that some HD sets look better on SD signals than others. It really does depend on the de-interlacing solution provided. The Sony's definitely look better than most.

In my case, I'm using a DirecTivo just like you. It sits in The Very Best Room and gets distributed throughout the house on an RF signal. That's the simplest and most painless way to make it work everywhere, with IR repeaters in all the secondary rooms for control.

Something I have not tried yet is using the composite or S inputs with this display on _this_ signal. It may be that it might work better than it does with an RF input, though I can't imagine de-interlace performance being any different. Detail, noise, color fidelity yes, but de-interlacing? Nuh-uh.

And just in case you're an electronics history buff, I still run a Japanese (not Mexico) first-production ORIGINAL KV-25XBR (circa 1983 or so) in the VBR, and the CRT on that pup is as crisp and clean as it was the day it was new. Subsequent XBRs were also excellent, but there is no other consumer CRT on the planet that compares to the original. I am exceptionally lucky that mine has been so long-lived.

Anyway, I am still exploring solutions, but where this display is physically located may mean it sits on an RF signal for a very, very long time.

-Pink

[vobguy]

I have a samsung LCD 46, I think the same model or one year older; and it looks terrible on SD from my Series 2 DirecTV Tivo - especially compared to HD I get from OTA. I have found myself watching races and sporting events on OTA, but missing the Tivo features; I switch back to the Tivo source to do rewinds if I want to see something again, and it is looking through a vaseline smeared lens in comparison.

But it does not just look bad compared to the HD, it looks bad compared to my "old" SD Sony Wega.

In fact, it looks so poor, that I am now contemplating the previously unthinkable - getting a DirecTV HD DVR at least for the big screen in the living room.
:eek::eek::(:(

[dcstager]

It's all an ilusion. As I pointed out in my earlier post the bit rate and resolution of the directtv stream is very low: 1900 bps @ 480x480. That is the raw, unaltered feed direct from the satellite to you. At that rate and resolution, the picture detail is not present to begin with regardless of how it's interlaced, de-interlaced, modulated, or smoothed.

The illusion of a good picture is still there on direct view sets. A good Sony XBR being one of them. It will look watchable in 4x3 mode on an HDTV set. However, I avoid watching 4x3 material in pillarbox mode on a 16x9 set because of the burn in danger. I avoid watching 4x3 material streched to fit a 16:9 set because the image distortion is too noticable and distracting.

It's best to watch a DTivo on a directview 4x3 set and enjoy the illusion of quality a while longer. However, reality check warning: it's a fuzzy picture to begin with -- especially now that HDTV programming is becoming more common.

[dcstager]

One last comment -- HDTV football. It looks good but there is stlll a lot of pixellation. I'd guess the pixellation is due to resampling by the cable company or satellite company trying to fit more channels over the same bandwidth.

I think the only way HDTV football looks good is if you get the signal off the air via 8VSB as broadcast -- assuming the station has not split their broadcast bandwidth to get multipile digital channels. There may be some C-band people getting the raw datastream wildfeed -- but they are probably the only ones getting a super sharp HDTV football picture.

I have not seen a game that didn't have a lot of artifacting. It still looks good when there is very little motion, but the flaws are apparent to anyone paying attention.

[Dnamertz]

We're in a pickle now, because DirecTV has added a whole bunch of really great HD channels, and they're the only way we can get all the channels we want in HD. But we'll lose Tivo and pay them a bunch of money for it. I haven't decided what to do yet.

My feelings exactly. They want me to pay to lose Tivo???? From what I've heard about DirecTv's DVR, they should be paying me to use it.

[Scooter]

My feelings exactly. They want me to pay to lose Tivo???? From what I've heard about DirecTv's DVR, they should be paying me to use it.

You've been hearing all of these things where? In a TiVo forum, perhaps? ;) Don't forget about the thousands of threads in this forum with folks complaining about TiVo problems. Note: I like both TiVo and the HR20.

Scooter :)

[TolloNodre]

One last comment -- HDTV football. It looks good but there is stlll a lot of pixellation.

That depends on the broadcaster.
Some of the ESPN HD broadcasts are horrible.
Some not so bad.
The best are the live games on NFL-HD - VERY good...

[fhturner]

Hey Guys & Girls--

Hope you don't mind me dragging up an old thread, but I hoped to revisit some of the content here.

For years I've been using a 27" Sony V-series Trinitron, which was calibrated w/ Video Essentials, to view my SAT-T60 DirecTiVo, and I've always loved it. The picture is nice and smooth, w/ rich colors. I constantly brag on how good my DTiVo looks and works. On 12/26 I purchased a new Sony Bravia KDL-46V3000 HDTV, and love the quality of it...when watching HD content or SD DVDs upconverted w/ my Toshiba HD DVD player.

The SD content from the DTiVo has been a major disappointment. And I've tried like hell, but I cannot get the Bravia to match the "film-like" (for lack of better word) smoothness of my Trinitron. Compression (or maybe interlacing?) artifacts are abundant, and the colors aren't as rich. When the two are side-by-side, both sourced w/ S-Video, the 27" is noticeably better. I also wondered if the HDTV was just scaling the picture up enough that it started showing weaknesses. But measuring shows that the upsizing is really only about 1/3 bigger.


I may wind up getting DTV HD DVR sooner because of this, but frankly, I've been too spoiled by how awesome TiVo is from a usability standpoint. I know the DTV stuff is "improving all the time", but I like my TiVo!

We bought a 40" Sony Bravia LCD last year, not intending to upgrade to HDTV programming right away. However, on TW Cable, the SD shows were way below the quality we were accustomed to on our Standard Def TV.

This is my biggest hangup. DVDs (SD & HD) look awesome on the set, but of course most of my time will be spent watching TV. I love the DTiVo so much that I will keep using it for SD content, but I hate for a $2000 investment to result in a noticeably less appealing picture.

The real problem is in the de-interlacing. Your SD TiVo is in standard NTSC format, which is interlaced. This is NOT the native mode of HD displays, which is progressive, or non-interlaced. In order to display an interlaced signal, it must be processed by something to a non-interlaced state.

So far, every de-interlacing solution I have seen looks downright hideous.

So, is it the collective opinion that if the de-interlacing can be done better, we'll have a picture more similar in quality and smoothness to the CRTs we've "upgraded" from? Is this something that can be done w/ equipment from the AVToolbox link in John T Smith's post?

It's all an ilusion. As I pointed out in my earlier post the bit rate and resolution of the directtv stream is very low: 1900 bps @ 480x480. That is the raw, unaltered feed direct from the satellite to you. At that rate and resolution, the picture detail is not present to begin with regardless of how it's interlaced, de-interlaced, modulated, or smoothed.

While I don't doubt that the low bit-rate has something to do w/ the problem, I'm telling you that the differences I'm seeing w/ the sets side-by-side can NOT be due solely to blowing up the picture (only 1.33x, remember!) and exposing its flaws.

My feelings exactly. They want me to pay to lose Tivo???? From what I've heard about DirecTv's DVR, they should be paying me to use it.

LOL...even if the DTV DVR had gotten more widespread praise than I've seen, I still would want to have the exact same interface, etc., that I get w/ my SAT-T60. Heck, I'd even like for the remote to be the same! So, who do we "strongarm" into reuniting DTV & TiVo??? :D

Fred

[MacQ2]

A number of you have said you're not happy with the SD material on your HD LCD TV's via Tivo. Fair enough - thx for your comments.

Anybody with plasma have any different experience? Which plasma?

[john-duncan-yoyo]

It pays to check SD on the set before you buy a HDTV. Some do a good job others don't.