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Samsung 52 inch LCD
- Thread starter NetViper
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Now I am all about expensive things, but that is just retarded to pay that much for a cable.
Yes, nice set. Use the movie mode or cinema mode or whatever Don't use the dynamic or any of the bright modes, they are way off.
You do know that they have audio cables that sell for as much as $40,000, right? There are a lot of people that believe in a lot of that stuff and swear by it. They even sell little things to lift your speaker wire off the floor for "better sound". I am not joking. That $2200 HDMI cable is far from the most expensive.
Yes, you do need gear which isn't cheap to do it all. Hey what do you want for $25? :biggrin: I am sure that some of the adjustments you made will be very worthwhile. The sharpness control on many TV's does nothing. Its a placebo button. In most cases, it needs to be turned all the way down anyway. The "sharpness" it creates is not real. Its adding artifacts. Its OK for low def TV to use... but on agood source, just turn it all the way off. I also find almost all the "enhancement" circuits a TV has, to be of no value and a detriment. If it has certain filters, certain engines, certain circuits that they explain will do a great job with the picture, just turn that stuff off. I have yet to see one that actually did more good than bad.
I still recommend pro calibration, and if you cannot I recommend the Video essentials DVD for $25. You learn a lot and it helps you tune a few very important parameters.
I don't want to get into a big long debate, but that's way too generalized a statement, particularly coming from an industry professional such as yourself. Clearly, good video processors are absolutely essential to get the best quality output. Good deinterlacing, good chroma interpolators, good scalers, are all critical and video would look crap without them. More advanced circuitry for temporal enhancement, dejudder, deblur, pulldown detection etc can all make the video look significantly better.
Having said all that, there is no question there is a lot of marketing hype associated with the various features and it can be difficult to separate the ones that are useful from those that are just checkmarks with no significant impact.
Let's face it, if there was no post-processing, you'd be out of a job because there'd be no knobs to turn.
What do you experts think of these?
http://www.amazon.com/Monster-HTS-2...3?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1196298349&sr=8-3
http://www.amazon.com/Monster-HTS-2...3?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1196298349&sr=8-3
Of course, I am not making a blanket statement. I am just sharing my experience that almost all the time, the extra circuits add more garbage than they help in doing something else. You would be shocked at how many and what reputable manufacturers. Since I can't be there to calibrate people's sets, I would say that they are more likely to have a better picture turning those things off than leaving them on. Video Noise Reduction... is almost notorious for doing bad things. LG's "XD" engine... Toshiba has something I forget the name, we almost always turn it off. Sony has a few. I am sure there are some out there that are good, I just don't run into them that often.
Its always good to have a good surge supressor. A clean cable signal with no ground loops is obviously important. You can definitely get noise through the AC and cable lines. Always make sure the cable system is well grounded, and if you can, run all AV gear off of one circuit. Same things you do in car stereo.
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:biggrin:
I've got the HTS 5100. To be honest, I ordered it because it looked good (I liked the blue LED's) and because I needed a surge protector.
It ended up getting rid of a hum caused by my cable, as well as lowering the noise floor on my entire system. :biggrin:
I've got the HTS 5100. To be honest, I ordered it because it looked good (I liked the blue LED's) and because I needed a surge protector.
It ended up getting rid of a hum caused by my cable, as well as lowering the noise floor on my entire system. :biggrin:
Samsung LCD 120Hz LNT4665FX 46" 1080p LCD HDTV with ATSC Tuner
$1620!!!!
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$1620!!!!
Until 12/2 at SportsAuthority.com
Free Economy Shipping
Merchandise Subtotal: $ 2099.99
25% OFF Any Single Item
(See Promotion Details) -$525.00
Estimated Shipping and Handling:
Based on ground shipping within continental U.S. $45.21
Sales Tax:
Remember, no sales tax except in CA, GA, IL, KY, MA and PA $0.00
Estimated Total: $1620.20
Coupon Here:
SportsAuthority Friends and Family Sale 25% Off Any Item!
More Televisions:
http://www.sportsauthority.com/family/index.jsp?categoryId=2815556
Coupon is applicable to digital cameras as well!
http://www.sportsauthority.com/family/index.jsp?categoryId=699222
Well, I have the TV all setup and the PS3 hooked up. It looks freaking amazing. Truly one of the best pictures I have ever seen. I am very very happy with the TV... I only wish it was bigger! :biggrin:
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haha dude i have the same setup... you should try setting up TVersity with your PS3. You run this app on your pc and it allows you to play movies over the network from your pc onto your PS3/Xbox 360/iPhone. The trick is that it transcodes the videos on the fly so that it supports more formats. Something that Sony should have done on its own. But its a nice way to watch the huge collection of movies I have on my PC (over 2TB worth of media) on my brand spankin new TV :biggrin:
http://tversity.com/home/
There are a few gripes though I have. I have a ton of HD content on my PC that I'd love to watch on my Samsung but with TVersity it compresses the hell out of it. The PS3 doesn't natively support many formats other than mp4 and AAC/WMA/MP3's...
Also it helps to have a newer PC to run this app on... theres lots of CPU and disk usage with this application since it has to transcode everything you play over the network on the fly.....
I love monoprice.com. I just got my latest order of cables from them and they continue to impress me. I ordered 2 HDMI, 2 Toslink and 1 component, all 1.5 feet. Total with shipping was $33ish. The toslink cable is gorgeous, the cable is covered in braided aluminum and has solid billet aluminum connectors. This particular cable was around $3.50. WTF!!!
crappy camera phone picture:
crappy camera phone picture:
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Indeed...I'm doing the A/V prewiring at the new place once it passes electrical code, and I bought ALL my wiring from them. Cat 5, 1500FT of speaker cable, banana plugs, HDMI cables, toslinks, tv wall mounts, blah blah....I've got boxes and boxes of monoprice stuff sitting in my garage just waiting to be installed. They upgraded my membership so now anything I buy, I get the third tier pricing. :biggrin:
I'm quite familiar with that picture above.
I'm quite familiar with that picture above.
Let me know if you need any help with anything on that. People always forget certain wiring.
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Nevermind I got it - Optical Audio...... pretty amazing stuff. I see they have a 35' one for $10! Amazing prices..
And how is the quality of the HDMI cables you got? Sounds very interesting... I got an 8' HDMI at CC for about $69 :redface: which seems like its a bit high for a lower end cable like mine...
I tried to find a DVI/SPDIF to HDMI but it doesnt seem like they carry it.. this is so I can plug my PC into my Samsung LCD without using the crappy VGA inputs.
My other option would be to get a new sound card (about $50) that has optical audio outputs and then grab this DVI to HDMI cable and this toslink cable and be done
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Well, I found a downside -- SD TV looks like CRAP on this TV. Do these new receivers like Denon 3808 or Onkyo 975 that do 1080p upscaling help out the picture of standard TV?
The Denon 3808 appears to be a phenomenal receiver, almost bought one (it's available for $1050 from an authorized Denon reseller if you're considering it). All the Onkyos from the 705 up have reports of video/audio sync issues that cannot be fixed due to latencies introduced by the implementation of the Audessey (and even worse in the higher end models with Reon) processors. If you are considering the Denon, there's a thread at avr-forum dedicated to the bugs in the most recent firmware (it can update firmware over the internet - there are a still a number of bugs with many relating to playing music off your PC over the network and an annoying 'vanishing OSD' bug).
I am selling my Lexicon DC-1 and Parasound amps on eBay and just replaced them with............ an Onkyo 605 which I picked up as a refurb for $320 from shoponkyo.com. The 805 is sometimes available as well there as a refurb for around $550 IIRC.
But to answer your question, I don't know how the upscaling would be on either of those. The Denon upscaling has been reported to be mediocre, the Onkyo is supposedly better, but I don't know that it's good enough.
I am selling my Lexicon DC-1 and Parasound amps on eBay and just replaced them with............ an Onkyo 605 which I picked up as a refurb for $320 from shoponkyo.com. The 805 is sometimes available as well there as a refurb for around $550 IIRC.
But to answer your question, I don't know how the upscaling would be on either of those. The Denon upscaling has been reported to be mediocre, the Onkyo is supposedly better, but I don't know that it's good enough.
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Nevermind I got it - Optical Audio...... pretty amazing stuff. I see they have a 35' one for $10! Amazing prices..
And how is the quality of the HDMI cables you got? Sounds very interesting... I got an 8' HDMI at CC for about $69 :redface: which seems like its a bit high for a lower end cable like mine...
I tried to find a DVI/SPDIF to HDMI but it doesnt seem like they carry it.. this is so I can plug my PC into my Samsung LCD without using the crappy VGA inputs.
My other option would be to get a new sound card (about $50) that has optical audio outputs and then grab this DVI to HDMI cable and this toslink cable and be done
Monoprices HDMI cables are very nice. You can get as thick as 22 Gauge for your longer runs. CL2 rated cables are available. Or you can get your standard 3 foot 28 Gauge HDMI cable for $3.96. All 1.3a capable. (not that any of us need that yet) If you want pictures, I can provide them. I'm very picky, and I'm very impressed with the construction of these cables.
$69 for an 8 Ft. HDMI cable is out of line to me. Its a digital cable, it either works or it doesn't. If it doesn't, they can't put the HDMI certification on it. Sure, you can get some signal loss in rare occasions, but thats only on runs over 25 feet. Don't let Best Buy confuse you with the bandwidth transfer rate.
They don't make a DVI to S/PDIF connection. DVI is used for digital video, and S/PDIF is used for digital audio. They do make a DVI to HDMI, I've got one and its great.
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SD looks like crap on all 1080p tv's imo.
No complaints here. Looks pretty good on my 42" Panasonic connected via HDMI directly from my DirecTV HR-21.
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Yea quality perception is all relative. Allow me rephrase.
After seeing BD/HD DVD/HD Broadcoasts on the TV, then viewing SD Broadcasts, SD looks like hell. Especially after being thrown onto a 58inch screen. DVD's are pretty good, however, my dvd players are upscaling.
I'm comparing SD broadcasts on the new screen to the quality of the SD broadcasts on my old 53" non-HD RPTV. I think it's asking a bit much to hope to be able to compare SD to HD content. If it looked as good, we wouldn't need HD!
When people buy an HDTV they are typically moving to a larger screen. The smaller the screen, the more dense the pixels, and the better the picture will look. The larger the screen/shorter viewing distance, the higher resolution your source should be. Heck, even a 1080p feed looks like crap on a 102" Samsung unless you're across the room.
Secondly, you don't have the same level of persistance or analog blurriness that you do with the older CRT's. Every pixel is much crisper and well defined, which means that all of the macroblock and other compression artifacts present on low bitrate SD signals become glaringly obvious. On CRT's, some of these problems just become blurred away and are not as noticeable.
A high quality processor can remove some of the artifacting with algorithms for deblocking and such, but in general SD feeds will look like crap on an HDTV -- worse than they did on your old analog TV.
Secondly, you don't have the same level of persistance or analog blurriness that you do with the older CRT's. Every pixel is much crisper and well defined, which means that all of the macroblock and other compression artifacts present on low bitrate SD signals become glaringly obvious. On CRT's, some of these problems just become blurred away and are not as noticeable.
A high quality processor can remove some of the artifacting with algorithms for deblocking and such, but in general SD feeds will look like crap on an HDTV -- worse than they did on your old analog TV.
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Thanks for the input... Yea what Im trying to find is a DVI (for digital video) and SPDIF (for digital audio) on one end and HDMI on the other end. This is so I can plug the DVI into my video card on my pc and the SPDIF into the audio outputs on my sound card and then plug the other end straight into the TV or receiver via HDMI... does that make sense? Not sure if this cable exists or not..... :redface:
So in other words, I pretty much just have to live with it. It wouldn't be that big of deal to me but our damn local ABC station is still not in HD!!!
The reason is that you are running DirecTV, and Netviper is probably running cable. Satellite has much better standard definition that most cable companies.
Upscaling won't help much here. Its a garbage signal to start with and you can't do much with it. Upscaling is creating things that didn't exist in the signal, and all the problems associated with doing that come into play. Upscaling is not magic. "Upscaled to 1080" is not the same as 1080 broadcast.
There is no such thing. The audio signal on an HDMI cable and the audio signal on your coaxial digital output are transmitted in different ways. If your TV doesn't have a digital coaxial input you will have to run the analog audio out. If you use a receiver/speakers this is not an issue obviously.
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