…I switch to digital cable?
I just purchased a 60" Mitsubishi ™ Digital projection TV (not hi def).
Some stations broadcast on my cable system are fine, but a couple are just bad enough to be really annoying as far as picture quality.
So, would getting digital picture and sound to my digital TV result in getting a better picture and better audio???
The cable companies have FAQs that don’t get very specific.
I don’t know much about cable, but it seems a little mysterious that the signal is coming down a wire, not through the air or via sattelite and you are getting static on the line. According to the digital TV people (and some of my friends who have digital TV) you do get much better picture and sound anyway, but the only reason I can think of for you getting a bad signal is that there is a dodgy wire somwhere down the line
You can pick up noise from any part of the system where metal is showing, i.e., the connectors.
Static can come from your computer (even if it’s “off” in some cases, if it has auto-waken enabled), nearby radio antennae, again even if OFF, if it’s a clock radio, or your fridge or washer.
Or downstairs neighbor with a buzzing ceiling fan.
Call your cable company and report your problem. If only a few stations look bad, it stands to reason that your equipment is not at fault. The cable company may be receiving an inferior signal from the station(s) in question.
I tested my TV using a DVD and saw the sharpest picture I’ve ever seen outside of true hi-definition. I tested a video game with a super video input, and it was razor sharp.
Some stations just look terrible. Of course, it’s magnified by the fact that the TV is 60", but I saw sporting events on cable before hand on this TV (in several stores) and via sattelite, and the picture was great.
The TV is digital, so I was hoping that I could take advantage of this fact and use digital cable.
The cable company doesn’t advertise this fact (picture quality), but answered “yes” when I called. I figured that if picture quality improved, someone would brag about it. Even when I called, the agent rambled his scipt of the features and benefits, but answered only when I prompted him.
So, are we certain that digital cable = better picture, especially with a new digital TV??? Nukeman, thanks for the testimonial, but more would make me confident!
Thanks!
To answer the OP, if the channel in question is broadcast digitally (not necessarily the case just because it is digital cable), then yes you would get a better picture on the channel. If the channel is converted to digital at a later point, such as at the cable company’s location, then there are still possibilities that it could be unclear.
Of course, it could also be a bad cable. Check your connections and replace the cable from the TV to the wall if possible.
This is a misnomer. The TV is analog. The inputs are analog. It has digital controls, but it still takes an analog input and displays it using an analog device (the CRTs).
If you had one of the brand new HDTV sets just being released, that had a Firewire/i.link/IEEE-1394 input, then you’d probably be justified in calling it digital (even though the display itself is still analog); however, since you said it’s not Hi-def, that wouldn’t appear to be the case.
To get back to your original question, in theory you’d get a better signal if you switched to digital cable. However, digital signals are not impervious to noise on the line - it just manifests itself differently. Where with an analog system, noise might show up as white static on the screen, on a digital system you’d probably get massive amounts of pixelization. I agree with everyone else; you should first work with your cable company and figure out why all the incoming signals aren’t clear. If you haven’t already done so, run a good quality wire straight (i.e. without any splitters, switches, amplifiers, etc) from your drop (the wire that comes in off the street) to your new set; if that gives you a clear picture then the problem probably lies with the wires within your house. Otherwise it’s your provider’s problem.
My parents just got digital cable and I was not impressed. (I have boycotted the cable company in my area for 8 or 9 years now.)
Digital cable uses MPEG compression to minimize the bandwidth used by each channel, and that algorithm is notorious for ungraceful failures and for failing completely when presented with too much scene entropy, like panning across a cheering stadium crowd.
You’ll notice artifacts created by noise that look like pixelization blooming in a section of the screen. Losses from the compression are especially noticeable in dark scenes. I was watching X-files on FX and at one point mulder and sculley were exploring a darkened building… and all you could see on the screen was three roughly vertical bands of different shades of black, with crawling, jagged boundaries. All detail had been lost. It sucked. (And if I had been watching it on a $2500 uberTV it would have sucked even more.)
When the codec totally fails, the video just freezes. It seems to happen a lot during sporting events and car chases…
Another thing I didn’t like about digital cable is that the responsiveness of the channel up/down selection was terrible. It made surfing almost unbearable.
Consumer Reports a couple months ago rated 18" Satellite systems as the best picture for a big screen TV. But they do some compression, too. Nothing broadcast is going to look as good as a DVD, and even many DVDs are compressed.
I have DSS (satellite) and, although everything bughunter says about digital cable is mostly true about DSS as well, its not nearly as bad as he makes it out to be. Digital signals don’t suffer from what you would call ‘interference’ (static, ghosting, snow etc.). Instead they get what are called ‘artifacts’ (pixelation, freeze frame etc.) and at first they do seem really annoying.
However, if everything is working right digital doesn’t get any of these so-called artifacts. And its picture is immensely better than cable. Rock solid stable, perfect color, perfect sound etc. Analog cablevision has always, and will always, suffer from interference especially on lower channels.
Hmm. Although this is off topic, let me tell you something. ALL DVDs are compressed. DVD video standard is MPEG-2, which is, of course, compressed.
Just think about it this way. How much space would an uncompressed movie take?
A 640x480 bitmap requires 307200 bytes (assuming one byte per pixel of space to store, which would give plenty of colors to choose from). Multiply this by 30 frames/sec (I am assuming NTSC here) and 2 hours = 7200 sec for a standard movie, and that movie now takes up 66355200000 bytes, or approx. 61.8 GB. A standard DVD holds (I think) about 5GB, which means that a DVD is already compressed 12x.
Digital is not necessarly better (and a hijack to reinforce my point). I constantly hear all the hype about digital cell phones being ‘clearer’. I have had many cellphones that can switch from digital to analog and the analog signal was always clearer then a digital. The analog sometimes had static but the voice reproduction was much superior to the digital voice. I could always tell from hte sound if I was getting an analog or digital signal even if there was no static.