Help me with my $3K new DLP tv.

Factual Questions
1

Hi. Long time no post.

I recently purchased a 46" Samsung DLP HDTV. I had fawned over this TV everytime I went into any electronics store because the picture was just so much superior to the other TV’s in the store.

I ended up getting a great deal on the TV (goes for 3800, I got it for 2975) so I bought it. At home though, it doesn’t look near as good. Regular cable looks atrocious. DVD’s look decent, but when I put my TV into “wide mode” it stretches out the picture, even if it is coming out of the DVD player in letterbox mode. The faces all look fat because of this. This is very annoying. So I still have bars on the screen even though I have a 16:9 TV.

My Xbox looks alright, but it to gets stretched out by wide mode.

Color gradients aren’t as smooth as a regular tube tv.

I don’t know what to do. This TV gets astounding reviews, but I dont want to keep the thing just because it gets good reviews. I Want to be able to watch tv and have a nice picture and have movies that take up the whole screen but don’t get stretched out.

Any advice?

2

I think you have to tell your DVD player that your Tv is widescreen.
You might need a piece of equipment called a scan converter.
The folks at http://www.avsforum.com/ could answer questions better than I.

Brian

3

HDTV cable ($5.10 / mo from Comcast) will make this set look wonderful - but only a handful of channels are HDTV right now - depends on your location.

Likewise, a progressive DVD player should be used.

Normal cable TV signals will be problematic - your DLP has a 4x the resolution of normal TV, so it will look fuzzy.

You have a fine TV, but it requires a better signal than a normal TV.

4

oh, yeah - if at all possible - use the Component (red/blue/green RCA jacks) or DVI inputs on this set. The yellow RCA and S-video inputs are much less capable.