811 SD Picture Quality

[normang]

Since December, the video quality of the 811 for SD channels has been discussed ad-nauseum. While everyone's situation is a little different. The primary issue has always been the video has been dark, specially from the S-Video outputs.

Again, depending on one's hardware, you can use component, DVI, to view SD as well. But if you have a 4:3 TV, watching SD via component or DVI, you wind up watching it in a 16:9 window on a 4:3 set. To get full screen on a 4:3, you have to use S-Video out to get it. Watching SD via component or DVI is not as dark as using S-Video. Though I think even those outputs are not optimal, even for HD. Let alone SD..

Norm

 

[tomes]

Should post a quick update, that I managed to use the * button now (probably did something stupid, like choosing another source than sat, previously...). Not only does it work, after setting it up on one HD channel and one SD channel, it seems to understand that SD material should be partially zoomed (which is the one I preferred out of the bunch), while HD material should be shown as Normal. (So I don't have to keep switching every time I go to a HDTV channel after watching a SDTV channel, or vice versa) The PQ isn't half bad (I have a 58" CRT RPTV), and the EPG actually shows up well in both modes as well. I guess I can live with this for now. Longer term plan is to migrate the 510 I have into the livingroom, and use that for all SDTV broadcasts though.

 

[hdtv 2003]

My picture in SD is great and in HD on HD channels breath taking! I just bought a Monster Cable DVI and what a difference from the component vidio.

Today, I was talking with an executive CSR rep. This guy is extremely knowledgeable and visits this site from time to time. We were talking about 811 issues and he asked about my picture clarity under SD. I told him. unless, the receiver was set to 480p, the quality sucked.

He was not surprised and told me the engineers were dismissing user complaints about SD picture quality by saying users were simply seeing the difference between HD and SD. :shocked

Well, there is a difference. My 510 gives are better picture than the 811 UNLESS the 811 is set to 480p. It is so much of a hassel to change the 811 from 1080i to 480p, I just use my 510.

If you are dissatisfied with 811 SD picture quality, I urge you to tell E*, perhaps we can convince the ivory tower engineers a problem does exist. Either allow users to switch resolution with the HD/SD button on the remote or allow users to set different default values for HD and SD.

Perhaps I should ask you if you think there's a problem

Rick

 

[RJS]

I was told the same thing a couple weeks ago by a Dish Tech. I didn't believe him because the difference was obvious. Dish seems to think that if they ignore the problem it will go away.

 

[BudShark]

I've stayed out of this, but now I have an A to B comparison.

811 - Component: SD channels are bright, crisp, sharp.
811 - S-video: SD channels are moderate, sharp, less crisp
508 - S-video: SD channels are washed, not sharp, not crisp.

My wife complained immediately on the 508 quality. We did some A-B comparison and we both agree on the information above. The TV allows different settings per input, so this is after the settings were adjusted to the best possible.

By the way - I have one of the first 811s. I've had it since the week they were released (early December - 7th I believe)

Chris

 

[WeeJavaDude]

Since this came off the forum take it for what it is worth, but I heard that they are planning on allowing you to set what output you want depending on if it is HD or SD content so you can have 480p for SD and 1080i for HD. This would be great and should give help some people improve SD quality by using their internal scalers. I hope this is true.

 

[Carl B]

I took the 480p challenge and got the wife to offer her opinion also. Set to 480p, our E* SD input from an 811 via DVI to a Sammy HLN507W DLP (720p native w/ internal scaling) produced no improvement in PQ and argueably reduced the PQ.

For almost all DTV viewing I leave the 811 set on 1080i except for HDTV transmitted in 720p (ESPNHD/ABC), for which I switch to 720p, and for EDTV (Fox 16:9 broadcasts) transmitted in 480p, for which I set the 811 to 480p. For HDTV and EDTV broadcasts I match the 811 setting to the souce setting and let my Sammy's scaler do the hard scaling. My HDTV PQ is better than anything I've seen on a store demo and, yes, I wish switching was 1 or 2 clicks instead of 8!

I initially had an S-Video connection from the 811 to the Sammy as an alternate for SD, but the SD PQ, besides the darkness issue was not as sharp as SD via DVI. It was; however, sharper than the SD via S-Video from the 2700 which my 811 replaced.

I think a lot of the PQ versus 811 input setting versus 811 to TV cable issues are driven by the DTV the picture is being produced on. Some have very good internal scalers, some don't. Some don't do a good job with SD, some do. The 811 isn't perfect, but it does a more than adequate job as far as PQ is concerned (excluding the darkness issues, which should be fixed by software upgrades).

 

[MNHTUG]

How about SD via component from the 811?

I took the 480p challenge and got the wife to offer her opinion also. Set to 480p, our E* SD input from an 811 via DVI to a Sammy HLN507W DLP (720p native w/ internal scaling) produced no improvement in PQ and argueably reduced the PQ.

 

[snathanb]

How about SD via component from the 811?

On my set it looks better in 480p.