I now have a plasma, and some questions about it and DVD upscaling

Mike O said:

I recently purchased a Samsung PN64H5000 to get a Plasma when they were on their way out. I calibrated it in "movie" mode with settings I found online, which surprisingly look very good (Now I have to find settings for other TVs, and Google isn't bringing it up first thing ;)), though I'd rather have had the Panasonic, but I waited too long. Reviews for this set seem to be solid, I'm hoping the purchase was worth the month's pay and I didn't succumb to "bigger is better." I have it connected to my U-Verse Motorola DVR and a region-free modded Sony BDP S3100 Blu-ray player (Which is turning out to be a purchase I am very much regretting-Sony's customer service is turning out to be terrible, apparently they have no plans to update it to include the HBO Go app, the CinemaNow app which was listed on the box was not included, and now the Amazon app doesn't work. But I digress.) which I bought from Bombay Electronics (Who have now twice had to send me updates to restore region-free functionality which they said would be permanent.) via HDMI. Hopefully it was a worthwhile purchase, I'm beginning to grow skeptical, and it was a month's pay. HDTV looks good (I'm running 1080/60i) and Blu-rays look good, and now that my WiFi is boosted up a bit (only 15) I can get decent HD content. However, to put it bluntly, DVDs look like shit. Instead of scaling up to 60p, the new set apparently scales up to 24p, but whereas my others sets (32 and 40 inches) look decent when upscaling, this once simply makes everything looks like there's so much noise dot crawl that frankly, it's difficult to watch. I get that the set itself is bigger, and that if it's more high-tech it will display more flaws, but is there anything in the settings I can change to mitigate this a little bit? I also understand that it's partially down to the mastering of the disc itself, but I have put in some discs with pretty good AV reviews-the Raiders of the Lost Ark disc, for instance which was reference quality back when it came out-and some of it is still pretty difficult to watch. Is there anything I can do in the settings? My bedroom is small, so I can't get very far away from the set-I'm about 18 feet or so at the moment, and since I'm not technically in the center of the room, I just use the SRS in the set, which is a little wonky. Anyhow, are there any settings I can adjust to make this a little bit more palatable to the eyes?

antenna

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retail shops

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I thought it was about blood.

TV's Frink said:

Mike O said:

I recently purchased a Samsung PN64H5000 to get a Plasma when they were on their way out. I calibrated it in "movie" mode with settings I found online, which surprisingly look very good (Now I have to find settings for other TVs, and Google isn't bringing it up first thing ;)), though I'd rather have had the Panasonic, but I waited too long. Reviews for this set seem to be solid, I'm hoping the purchase was worth the month's pay and I didn't succumb to "bigger is better." I have it connected to my U-Verse Motorola DVR and a region-free modded Sony BDP S3100 Blu-ray player (Which is turning out to be a purchase I am very much regretting-Sony's customer service is turning out to be terrible, apparently they have no plans to update it to include the HBO Go app, the CinemaNow app which was listed on the box was not included, and now the Amazon app doesn't work. But I digress.) which I bought from Bombay Electronics (Who have now twice had to send me updates to restore region-free functionality which they said would be permanent.) via HDMI. Hopefully it was a worthwhile purchase, I'm beginning to grow skeptical, and it was a month's pay. HDTV looks good (I'm running 1080/60i) and Blu-rays look good, and now that my WiFi is boosted up a bit (only 15) I can get decent HD content. However, to put it bluntly, DVDs look like shit. Instead of scaling up to 60p, the new set apparently scales up to 24p, but whereas my others sets (32 and 40 inches) look decent when upscaling, this once simply makes everything looks like there's so much noise dot crawl that frankly, it's difficult to watch. I get that the set itself is bigger, and that if it's more high-tech it will display more flaws, but is there anything in the settings I can change to mitigate this a little bit? I also understand that it's partially down to the mastering of the disc itself, but I have put in some discs with pretty good AV reviews-the Raiders of the Lost Ark disc, for instance which was reference quality back when it came out-and some of it is still pretty difficult to watch. Is there anything I can do in the settings? My bedroom is small, so I can't get very far away from the set-I'm about 18 feet or so at the moment, and since I'm not technically in the center of the room, I just use the SRS in the set, which is a little wonky. Anyhow, are there any settings I can adjust to make this a little bit more palatable to the eyes?

antenna

window

window

window

balcony

window

window

window

balcony

window

window

window

retail shops

retail shops

parking

plaza

BUNNY

Mike O said:

There is of late a severe dearth of useful information around here. 

Denied his Ric Olie sock account, Frink has hacked and hijacked many other accounts in revenge. 

Sorry I am not sure what you are talking about so I can't help.  All I know is that with upscaling once the screen size gets above 27 inches or so I start to notice the DvDs looking a little fuzzy and that is why I use Blurays.  All of my TVs of LCD so I can't be of much help, sorry:(

Yeah well I am one of those picture snobs who notices little details and is bugged by dead pixels so I may not be normal.

Presumably the upconversion is lacking in quality, and the size of the screen is making this easy to perceive.

The solution is to get a Bluray player with excellent quality de-interlacing and scaling built in, and watch your DVD's with that.  It won't make them look like HD, and it can't really improve a bad transfer, but well-encoded discs will be quite watchable.

The usual recommendation is to get an Oppo player, since it is the cheapest way to get first-rate upconversion.  Anything of similar quality from other brands will cost much more.

skyjedi2005 said:

Upscaling a a bad quality DVD will look bad.  Upscaling a good quality DVD will only look less bad.

Good quality DVD's are only so so, as long as you don't get closer to your set.

If you do you'll want to throw them in the trash realizing there is no real detail.

Unfortunately for many TV series and movies there are only DVD, and for others the studios screw up the Blu Ray release.

 Oh with Tv shows, it is fine with me when it was an older show that was shot on video tape so DvD is as good as it is going to get but don't get me started on modern network shows where for some reason despite the fact that they are broadcast in HD the show only get released om DvD, CBS and ABC can be really bad about this, then they want you to pay $45 for a DvD boxset where the picture looks washed out and the sound sounds fuzzy compared to what was broadcast.  I refuse to do that, I just record the stuff off of the air, I save money and it looks better.

Some DvDs look fine but if it is a movie that is in the public domain or something, good luck finding a disc that will look good on a larger screen.

Great, they still refuse to bring the highspeed lines out where I live so I can't register devices or stream.  Well if I have to resort to torrenting the studios have no one to blame but themselves.

Downloading a little at a time on my dial up connection is the only thing that works for me and so far there is not an online service that let's me do that.  All the online services require you to either stream or register the device you are downloading to on a highspeed connection and if the download gets interrupted then you have to start all the way over.  Once BluRay goes torrenting will literally be the only thing that will work were I live.  I want to support the content producers but the sad fact is with some shows they are not giving me a way to do that.

Also I like having a nice box on the shelf and something that i can easily use on any player without having to sign into an account or download something.  I guess I am just an old fart, but for $20 I want something I can hold in my hands.

DrCrowTStarwars said:

skyjedi2005 said:

Upscaling a a bad quality DVD will look bad.  Upscaling a good quality DVD will only look less bad.

Good quality DVD's are only so so, as long as you don't get closer to your set.

If you do you'll want to throw them in the trash realizing there is no real detail.

Unfortunately for many TV series and movies there are only DVD, and for others the studios screw up the Blu Ray release.

 Oh with Tv shows, it is fine with me when it was an older show that was shot on video tape so DvD is as good as it is going to get but don't get

False.  Alot of old shows were shot on film.  Have you seen the blu ray versions of the original star trek series?  You can see the make up dripping off ole' Bill's face.  (TNG too for that matter)

I said older ones where it is as good as it is going to look.  Like for instance Doctor Who.  If the show was shot on SD video tape it is not going to look any better on Bluray.

Now yes I do collect filmed TV like Star Trek, Dick Van Dyke, and other shows on Bluray but quite a few older shows were shot on SD video tape.  Most of the BBC's older output was in this format and film copies were only made for over seas sales but even then it was film copies of stuff shot on video tape so it's not going to look any better on Bluray.  That is what i was talking about.

Yeah I hate motion smoothing.  One of my Bluray players does that some times and it can mess up lip synch some times. 

I hate that!

Oh and my DVR program will sometimes record at sixty frames if I forget to tell it not too, talk about stupid.