Samsung problems

[loopylou]

Hi everyone

this is my first ever forum post so if i've got anything wrong please bear with me.

i have just purchased a Samsung 37in tv LE37B551 which after set up the picture quality is not how i imagined. it slightly blurs at times and when people are at a distance in a shot its very unclear. the tv is connected to a samsung HT-Z3320 DVD home cinema system and a sky plus box.

This is the set up

tv to dvd home cinema
hdmi lead and digital audio lead

tv to sky plus box
scart lead

dvd to sky plus
scart lead

the sound is fab and i have no problems viewing dvds or anything else, just purely the problem with the quality of the picture. no problems with picture quality before and tv upstairs runs of sky box and thats fine as well.

was going to try a component cable as have this option from TV but neither dvd or sky box support this.

Please please can anyone help??

[Graham M]

There is a very good reason behind this, to get any sort of quality from a Sky+ box on a 37" HD TV, you will need to connect the box via HDMI to the TV, then you should get better all round pictures, and even moreso on the HD channels, at the moment the connection is SD

Oh and welcome to the forum, enjoy your stay


Sorry I should probably expand:

TV to Surround Sound - HDMI for watching movies and Digital Audio Optical lead for sound back to the Surround Sound from the TV

Sky+ to TV - HDMI - to enjoy the full surround sound on channels/programs that support it and to get a full HD picture

DVD to TV - Scart

that should do it

[loopylou]

thanks for getting back to me so quickly Graham, everything you've said makes sense bar the fact i have no HDMI connection on the sky+ box. There is a DVI connection so would a HDMI to DVI cable work?
thanks again

[Graham M]

Sorry I've just re-read and realised what you and I actually said. I assumed for some reason that you meant Sky+HD. Your TV is a step into the "large" end of TVs, and therefore, unfortunately, any Standard Definition image is going to look a bit poor inevitably. As you are stretching a Standard Definition image over a larger area, any blemishes, pixelisation and compression coming down the line are going be magnified, I even notice this occasionally with Sky SD on my 32" LG to be perfectly honest, you MAY benefit from a slightly higher Scart lead but there's no guarantee.

[loopylou]

thats not good news as i am already using a high rate scart lead. The blurring isn't there all the time, for example when it's just one person showing on screen it's completely clear apart from a small spot on the left hand side which blurs and then goes back to being clear. however when there's a group shot which has people in the background the picture is not very sharp. is this normal with standard definition? sorry to keep asking questions it's just the 32in tv i have replaced had the clearest picture so this problem is very noticeable. would the DVI cable that has a HDMI connection one end not help at all? do you think there could be anything wrong with the TV itself? i just think it's strange that the blurring only happens in one place but the sharpness is the whole picture. thanks again for your help.

[SnoopZ]

Seeing you have just bought the TV i'm guessing you haven't calibrated the picture and left it on default settings? This is something you shouldn't do on an LCD.

My advice is to:-

1. Turn the back light down to something in the range of 4/10
2. Reduce the sharpness of the picture to something like 3/10
3. Reduce the Colour or increase it depending what you think looks right
4. Don't sit too close to the screen, a distance of approximately 10ft is good for that size screen.

As Graham says you are viewing in SD so you really need an HDMI source as this will upscale SD broadcasts and allow you to view HD content although this isn't free on SKY like it is on Virgin.