I have the 200 channels of dish network but do not subscribe to the hd channels. I am looking at a 42" hd flat screen tv and was wondering what the picture would look like in regular mode. I would like to have hd but for now it will not match my budget. Could I tell much difference in the pic quality say from 15 feet away?
Hd programs
- Thread starter Landon
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In my experience SD looks like absolute garbage on my 42" LCD no matter what distance I'm watching from.
I'm not sure what your favorite channels are, but have you considered dropping to a lower package and then adding HD for $10? You bought the Porsche....might as well get your money's worth and feed it with some high-octane gas.
I'm not sure what your favorite channels are, but have you considered dropping to a lower package and then adding HD for $10? You bought the Porsche....might as well get your money's worth and feed it with some high-octane gas.
I did this for 2 months with a 42" Westinghouse which has pretty darn good scalers... Driven from the S-video output of a 625, it was actually tolerable on most SD channels. A few did suck pretty badly, but the rest looked at least as good as they did on my 29" SDTV. Then in the bedroom I replaced a 19" TV with a Sylvania 32" HDTV driven by a 501, and the upscaled picture sucked so bad I returned the Sylvania! Then I bought a 32" Vizio which, after adjustment, looked acceptable on the 501 S-video output. I survived like that for another 2 or 3 months.
Bottom line: it depends on your new HDTV scaler. If it's good, you can survive awhlie without true HD (other than OTA). If it's bad, you probably will get motivated to upgrade to an HD receiver.
Bottom line: it depends on your new HDTV scaler. If it's good, you can survive awhlie without true HD (other than OTA). If it's bad, you probably will get motivated to upgrade to an HD receiver.
to me SD will never look like HD
720p on my 40inch sharp aquos looks amazing(I use 720p for fast action)1080i is more for regular stuff like news channels(cnn)
bottom line is if you are getting an HDTV it might be worth it for you to get a 622 or a 722 seeing you have a dual tuner receiver setup in your home already
or if you are okay with just adding 1 HD to your account, a 211k goes for roughly $150.00 and it can be turned into a DVR if you purchase an external hard drive along with the dish DVR service which is a one time fee of $39.99
if you are okay with SD, I recomend you use optical cable for audio and an S-Video cable.
720p on my 40inch sharp aquos looks amazing(I use 720p for fast action)1080i is more for regular stuff like news channels(cnn)
bottom line is if you are getting an HDTV it might be worth it for you to get a 622 or a 722 seeing you have a dual tuner receiver setup in your home already
or if you are okay with just adding 1 HD to your account, a 211k goes for roughly $150.00 and it can be turned into a DVR if you purchase an external hard drive along with the dish DVR service which is a one time fee of $39.99
if you are okay with SD, I recomend you use optical cable for audio and an S-Video cable.
I don't think it matters so much as to what you use but more what you are given. The ideal/optimum solution would probably be for Dish to output everything in native resolution (if your tv can do a 1:1 display of said data).
Scaler in TV
Then it would be up to how good the scaler in the TV is. Not sure wheter that is good or bad.
Then it would be up to how good the scaler in the TV is. Not sure wheter that is good or bad.
I figure that the HD add on (now featuring the platinum channels) is only $10 per month - so for the price of one fast food meal a month I can enjoy all my HDTV has to offer. I watch a lot of TV and the $10 was well worth it for me. You will be able to tell HD from SD from 15 feet away and let me tell you HD content is mighty purdy!
SD is gonna look nasty, you'd do better to figure out how to cut a couple of Starbucks lattes or something else out of your monthly spending to cover the cost of HD, it's worth it 
Let me put it this way: Will I see an improvement or nonimprovement if I use the flat screed tv over my regular analog TV to watch dish? I do receive a great pic on the analog and the flat screen can be in waiting for more moola. Times are rough. Dont drink latte, ha. To go to a lesser dish program I would lose my favorite news channel, Fox News. It is only on the Family pack and the one I have and above. Enjoy the movies on what I have and would hate to give those up.
IMHO, keep watching your analog TV until you can afford the $10 @ month for the HD package. I've got 4 HDTV's, from 26" to 73" and SD varies from awful to watchable on all of 'em. SD looks MUCH better on an analog TV.
Ed
Ed
I disagree with Ed and others who say it's not worth it going to a flat panel.
Here are the facts. If you have a decent scalar circuit in the flat panel HDTV, the picture it makes will look at least as good as it was on your SDTV at the same size and viewed from the same distance. If it looks worse than it did on your SDTV, then you bought a rather crappy HDTV.
Now there is a strong tendency to (1) buy the biggest flat panel TV we can afford which (2) winds up showing us a much larger picture than we ever saw before on our old analog sets and (3) because it's big and cheap it probably has a crappy scalar. I believe this is the true origin of all those naysayers above who say "Don't buy an HDTV until you can afford the HD service." Fooey. Many went for the size, and not the guts, of an HDTV.
Indeed, if you blow up a standard def picture to enormous proportions and put your nose on the picture, you're going to see the flaws and they are not pretty. That's not what the OP says he's going to do. On the HDTV plus side, even keeping SD satellite service for a few months, he will be able to watch OTA and clear-QAM and blue-ray and media player HD pictures on his HDTV at no extra charge. DVD videos, though SD, look pretty darn good too.
Edit: diagonal measure of SDTV X 1.24 = diagnoal measure of widescreen HDTV with equivalent SD picture size (ignoring overscan, rounded edges, front panel bezel lapping, etc.)
Here are the facts. If you have a decent scalar circuit in the flat panel HDTV, the picture it makes will look at least as good as it was on your SDTV at the same size and viewed from the same distance. If it looks worse than it did on your SDTV, then you bought a rather crappy HDTV.
Now there is a strong tendency to (1) buy the biggest flat panel TV we can afford which (2) winds up showing us a much larger picture than we ever saw before on our old analog sets and (3) because it's big and cheap it probably has a crappy scalar. I believe this is the true origin of all those naysayers above who say "Don't buy an HDTV until you can afford the HD service." Fooey. Many went for the size, and not the guts, of an HDTV.
Indeed, if you blow up a standard def picture to enormous proportions and put your nose on the picture, you're going to see the flaws and they are not pretty. That's not what the OP says he's going to do. On the HDTV plus side, even keeping SD satellite service for a few months, he will be able to watch OTA and clear-QAM and blue-ray and media player HD pictures on his HDTV at no extra charge. DVD videos, though SD, look pretty darn good too.
Edit: diagonal measure of SDTV X 1.24 = diagnoal measure of widescreen HDTV with equivalent SD picture size (ignoring overscan, rounded edges, front panel bezel lapping, etc.)
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A... that would be how good the scaler in the SATELLITE RECEIVER is. If the satellite receiver outputs at the native resolution of the TV the the TV's scaler doesn't do anything.
Setting things up so two devices rescale the image will never produce the optimum image. You should always set devices to either output the native resolution of the source material and let the TV or some other processor scale it or set the device to output in the native resolution of the TV.
Dish HD receivers can't output program native resolution so it should be set to the native resolution of the TV. The scaler(s) in the TV, A/V receiver or pre/pro should be set to pass the incoming signal. Also, the SD to HD upscaling in Dish receivers is not very good so you're kind of stuck with a less than optimum situation.
Although in the OP's case the satellite receiver IS outputting SD so the TV can do the scaling and image quality DOES depend on the quality of the scaler in the TV.
I've found SD DVDs look pretty good when upscaled with a decent DVD player. (I've got an Oppo BDP-83 and had a Samsung BD-UP5000 prior to that). But again the quality of the scaler makes a big difference. I credit SD DVD image quality on the players scaler AND the fact that there is time to make compression decisions during the mastering process -- something that can't be done with live programming. There's probably more bandwidth available on a DVD than allocated to an SD satellite channel. Live SD will never look as good as an SD DVD when viewed on an HDTV.
