Solved! 32'' hd tv image quality problem

[Spike17]

i got a 32'' lcd for my liveing room recently and the image is very poor i had a old tube tv in this location before so i just screwed the cable in the back i dont know if that is the source of my problem becouse i did not get a hd package persay fom comcast so any ideas on how i can improve this is welcomed thanks

 

[amdchuck]

when you say the image is poor, can you be more specific? Is it grainy? Distorted? Washed out colors?

 

[Spike17]

its like it has really big pixels so theres no detail and ive looked at the options on the tv and there is no 1080p or 720p setting so idk

 

[amdchuck]

your monitor is probably stretching the image to fit the screen. You don't say if you have a 16:9 or 4:3 display but I will assume it is 16:9

standard definition DTV is only broadcast at what can be called 480p for the sake of simplicity, also, it is a 4:3 ratio.

In other words, if you are only viewing a standard definition DTV feed on a 16:9 1080p capable display, the source image would be much smaller then the screen itself, it would fill most but not all of the vertical portion but would fill much less of the horizontal portion....you would have approx 1/6 or so of the screen on each side unused.

If this is not the case then your monitor is upscaling the source image which more than likely is the cause of the poor quality.

basically, the source image is a square and it's being squashed to fit into a rectangle....hopefully that explains what I am trying to say in a simple manner.

 

[americanaudiophile]

If your TV has a Quam tuner you will need to run a channel scan to see if you can get any clear HD channels that may be there. On SD channels your TV is upconverting the picture to either 720p or 1080p depending on the TV. How well it does this may be the problem as this is an area that lower priced sets do a bad job. If the TV looks good with the HDMI or component output of your DVD or Bluray than this may be the problem.