do you have a big screen tv? we bought one and are very disappointed.

[luvflorida]

My husband purchased a 61" Samsung HD tv this past weekend. We were so excited and couldn't wait to hook it up. It is supposed to have excellent picture clarity, but we can't seem to get it to come in clearly. We've tried every button and setting and the picture is still fuzzy. Cable company came out today and hooked up a high definition box, but it didn't do anything to the picture quality. I understand not all channels broadcast in HD, and I know every channel will not come in clear, but none of the channels, (HBO, etc.), seem to be as clear as they should be.

The tv's in the stores always look so gorgeous. We are ready to return the set. Anyone else have experience with Samsung big screen tvs? What are we doing wrong?!?!

 

[RUDisney]

We have 2 big TVs and one is a HD wide screen. We haven't had any problems with either. The original one is an RCA that we bought at the factory store about 10 years ago and it is still going strong. The other is an Hitachi and again, no problems. You may just have the lemon of the bunch on your hands. If I remember right, Samsung rated high in Consumer reports

 

[mcnuss]

We have a big Sony and the picture is crystal clear. It's possible you do have a lemon, I would return it to be sure. One other problem could actually be your cabling...we had to replace all the cabling in our house bc the old cable was cheap and shot and our picture was rotten -- but it was rotten on every TV in the house. If your other TVs are clear, then it's the new TV.

 

[Towncrier]

We have had two big screen Pioneer TVs and have been happy with both.

How does the picture look when you play a DVD? You really cannot rely on broadcast signals to benchmark the performance of your set. You need a good, clean, strong signal in order to decide whether or not the set is the problem.

Standard television pictures start to look fuzzy when blown up to extremely large sizes. Have you ever noticed how crystal clear the picture is on a 5" television set? The more expensive big screen televisions have circuitry called a "line doubler" that uses digital signal processing to effectly double the resolution of the standard broadcast signal to help overcome this fuzziness.

Is the cable box hooked to the television using the S-video connector? Is the TV set looking at the S-video input? Our set can switch from the standard (and fuzzy) RCA video connector to S-video. Sometimes my kids accidently switch to the lower quality connection and it takes me a while to figure out what's going on.

Good luck. Hope you get it fixed before the big game.

 

[ToyStory Fan]

Make sure that the HDTV cable box is hooked up using the component video connections (S-video is good, but will not broadcast 1080 interlaced Hi def, only 720 progressive). Also, do not hook up any other inputs to the same input line (although the component should be it's own dedicated input channel). Also make sure that you have selected the proper input that corresponds with the component video in for the cable box.

If this doesn't clear up the picture there is an extremely remote chance that you have some elctrical line interference bleeding through into the video.(this would only happen if you are running the wires along the top of the fuse panel which is highly unlikely).

My guess is that you may have gotten a bad set. I have a few friends with Samsung DLP's and they are extremely happy. I have a Toshiba, but not a projector.

One good reference check would be to play a DVD thru the component video jacks to check the picture quality...if it is bad it's the set, if not it's your cable company. If you don't have component vid off your DVD player S-Video will suffice.

 

[TINKTWINS]

We also have had 2 big screens and liked them very much. However, we now have a flat screen mounted on a wall in our new family room. Ohh now we all LOVE that TV! What a picture on that bad boy!!

 

[damo]

We, too, have Panasonics and the quality is excellent. One thing you can do to help your picture quality is to make sure you have good quality cables. I suggest you get someone who knows what they're doing to come in and do an adjustment. Most good stores have people who will come to your home and set your television up to its optimum performance.

 

[RayJay]

Ditto

To what Towncrier and ToystoryFan posted.

You must use Component cables in order to get the highest resolution out of your set.

Is this TV HD Integrated or HD Upgradable? Integrated means you have the receiver already inside the TV, Upgradeable means you have to buy an exterior receiver to receive HD signals, sounds like that's what you did with your cable company.

It sounds like you have something hooked up wrong, my experience is the cable company or for that matter Directv installers don't have a clue on hooking up HDTV components.

Also try the DVD if you have one, progressive scan is the best.
If your not getting clear picture here, you may have a problem with the set.

You should not have to tweek this set alot, as factory defaults are already set.

Also cable signals (Unless digital) look like crap on the big screens, many of us upgrade to satellite/directv.

The good pictures you saw in the stores were being run off the HDNET Channel or a progressive scan DVD to give the consumer the best possible image.

Please feel free to post any other questions and I'll try and help.

RayJay

 

[ToyStory Fan]

Originally posted by RayJay
Ditto

To what Towncrier and ToystoryFan posted.

You must use Composite cables in order to get the highest resolution out of your set. ...
RayJay

RayJay,
just to clarify Composite is the single RCA-type (usually yellow) connector, (Standard connection), Component is the Triple RCA-type (Red/Blue/Green) connectors.

Component is what I think you wanted to say.

 

[Carl]

As others have said, if your new cable box is not connected to either component or a digital connector, your picture will be extremely poor. If you do indeed have a Hi Def cable box and it is connected correctly, your picture should be great - on the HD channels. Other channels will just look OK. You MUST have a digital decoder of some sort (either cable or satellite) or you will get a poor picture.

 

[RayJay]

Toy Story

Yes, thank you for the correction (Component), I have fixed it.

I hope they can get it all figured out. It really sounds like a hook up problem.

Carl, yes what Carl says is the whole key.

However, there are bad sets out there, in that case they retailer will replace it.

RayJay

 

[luvflorida]

Thanks so much for all the replies. We went back to Circuit City last night, where we bought the tv, and spent about an hour talking to an employee and looking again at all the different sets. We were ready to return our set and buy a different model. I was really disappointed in the set we bought mainly because it was not cheap, (around $4,500), and I saw many tvs that were priced a lot lower but looked like they had better picture quality. This time my husband asked to have various tvs put on regular cable, (analog?), channels so we could see the difference in quality. What a difference in picture quality! None of the sets came in really clear when put on channels that were not HD. I assumed that every channel on the tv would look like the ones we saw in the store. Not true.

Anyway, we are going to check all our cable connections again. All of the channels above 100, which I think are all HD, come in much better than the regular channels, so it might be as good as its going to get. The salesperson did talk to us about direct link satellite which we are considering. We would keep all our other tvs and internet hook-ups on cable, but get satellite for just the big screen tv.

Anyone have experience with direct link? Again, thanks so much for all the detailed replies!

 

[Towncrier]

No "direct" experience with DirectTV, but, as their advertisements point out, all of their channels are broadcast in digital mode. At least with our cable system, all channels under 100 are still analog and, as a result, look a lot noisier than the digital channels that reside above 100.

Are you certain that all of your digital channels are "HD" (or high definition)? Although they are most likely digital, I seriously doubt that they are all HD channels. In any event, the digital channels will look much better than the analog, especially on a set as large as yours.

Sounds like you are making progress. I may be in the market for a replacement set as Best Buy didn't offer to extend my service contract on my 7-year old Pioneer 51" set. I guess I cost them too much in service calls.