I recently bought a Sanyo 42" plasma HDTV (DP42746)on sale at Walmart for $600 on an impulse buy, without doing any research first. This is my first HDTV. I have Dish Network with a non HD DVR receiver, which worked great with my old standard CRT TV. Most channels don't look very good when viewed on the new TV. The people especially kinda look like cartoon characters or something. When I use the digital antenna input on the new TV with an old circular UHF antenna, and view over the air digital or HD channels, the picture is great. Is this just how non HD shows look on all HD tv's, is it something to do with dish network, or is something wrong with my tv?
Nothing wrong with the set. If you dont have an HD package (or an HD stb)you will be watching crappy displays from it. Then again, OTA cant catch other channels like ESPN, Discovery, etc. Get an HD stb and enjoy.
The thing that confuses me is that my sisters 6 year old Sony rear projection HD 50" TV has a much better picture when viewing non HD shows from her cable company than my new 42" TV
Not all tvs are made alike. Some better than others. My sony LCD displays SD shows no better than my 32in crt trinitron that I had.
What cables are you using? Make sure they are Component. I have dish network to and they do a lot of compression for their SD channels.
Yes standard broadcast cable channels don't look very good on HD TVs. That's one reason you always see an HD presentation in the store. Don't even ask what a cable channel picture looks like. They aren't even connected. OTA signals are good when they are HD, but standard signals are as bad as cable. Cox only offers bare minimum of HD programming. Unfortunately HD TV sets are much ahead of the HD providers for HD content quality. JM2C
Does your DVR have S - video. It might help but it wont make a huge difference. Also you can increase your viewing distance.
