I just got a Digital TV (QAM tuner), 117 "new" (DIGITAL) channels

[space-time]

so I have limited service and high speed internet from new NBC Owner

with the old analog CRT I was getting about 20 channels

I plug in the new Panasonic Plasma and run the auto setup

found:

23 ANALOG Channels
117 DIGITAL Channels

Of course, 1/2 of the 117 digital channels are either Comcast ads for pay per view, or Home Shopping Network/QVC/Religious/PublicAccess channels. And the rest, 1/4 are duplicate of the analog channels (but in High Definition) and 1/4 some new channels that look interesting.

However, the HD channels look like crap, maybe just a little better than analog channels. A few seemed pretty good, but most were not much better than SD. That's because COMCAST compressed the crap out of them I suppose, right?

anyway, I just turned the thing ON about 1 hour ago and since then had dinner and didn't have time to play with it yet.

42" seems huge when you got used to a 24" CRT

[GGD]

space-time wrote:
However, the HD channels look like crap, maybe just a little better than analog channels. A few seemed pretty good, but most were not much better than SD. That's because COMCAST compressed the crap out of them I suppose, right?

Are you sure they're HD, your TV probably has some sort of "info" button that should give the SD/HD status. Also, look for the wider picture content on the left/right. Even with them compressing the crap out of it, it should look better because there are more pixels per frame than SD.

In my Comcast system there are 3 copies of the local channels in different places, one Analog, one digital SD, and one digital HD, and the HD does look better than SD, and has more image on the left/right.

EDIT: One other thing to keep in mind is that often on HD channels, the content being broadcast wasn't originally shot in HD (like re-runs of old sitcoms), so it's not going to look that good, you need to catch some current prime time content, also I've found that PBS stations are good sources of high quality HD content.

[Article Accelerator]

space-time wrote:
However, the HD channels look like crap, maybe just a little better than analog channels. A few seemed pretty good, but most were not much better than SD. That's because COMCAST compressed the crap out of them...

Yes, they do.

You'll probably get more worthwhile results with rabbit ears.

[olnacl]

Often too, the 4x3 pictures are "stretched" by default so you may not see letterboxing on those channels, just slightly fatter people, esp. those near the edges of the screen (depending on how your particular TV manufacturer handles stretched 4x3 broadcasts - whether they are digital or not).

[space-time]

I already set it to show 4:3 (with grey bars on each side). I hate stretched images. People are obese in real life. No need to enhance that by stretching a 4:3 image to 16:9 aspect ratio

[Winston]

I second AA's suggestion to hook up an antenna and see what you get. We don't have cable, but get 25-30 over the air stations. When there is a true high-definition broadcast, like a sports game, the results are astounding. (It's also noticeable when they switch from a high-def to a standard-def camera.)


Good luck.

- Winston