Hi i just need someone to tell me if its normal for the hd channels to look uhm.. kinda grainy? Im not sure how to explain this exactly but its almost like a snowy like effect i see, i went to multichoice in n1 city to have a look at their displays and i noticed the same thing, one of the guys there said its supposed to be like that.. Can someone please tell me if theres any way to improve the picture? Its not that bad but its kind of irritating because i know what hd picture is supposed to look like i have district 9 on blu ray, am i asking for too much by comparing dstv to a blu ray? My tv is a 720p samsung lcd so isnt the blu ray and dstv supposed to have similar picture quality? What can i do to improve the picture i already sent my brother on the roof to see if turning the lnb thingy would help, we even tried to reposition the dish itself and managed to improve the signal strength to 100% but no improvement in picture quality.. Any suggestions? Settings i need to change on the decoder itself? Im new to all this hd stuff so advice would be greatly appreciated!
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Dstv hd grainy picture?
- Thread starter KopiteZA
- Start date
Romito
Expert Member
its pretty much hd for you. get some hd rips off the net and it will be the same, but i noticed the big bang theory rips have no grain. some blu rays have it and some don't.
Thanks romito. We managed to reduce the grain by going into the picure settings and changing digital noise from off to auto, still not what i was hoping for but an improvement nonetheless.. And ill check to see if big bang theory on mnet hd has better picture than what im getting on supersport, if so then atleast i know the problem isnt on my side!
Yep, ive spent hours and hours in the picture settings trying to reduce it but you wont get rid of it.. In some episodes (i downloaded a lot of HD) its more evident than others but yea its not going away. Just play with your picture settings to get the best picture.
Romito
Expert Member
It's because the HD content is much sharper than your SD, much like if you increase the contrast and sharpnes on an SD or Analog channel the picture becomes grainy.
Ono'rach
Executive Member
Check in your decoder's menu that the resolution is set to 720p at least. On your tv's picture settings, disable any kind of noise reduction or other picture "enhancing" features, because they generally just make things worse. 
Also turn "sharpness" down, as this will only enhance the problem
I definitely don't have a grainy picture at all, so I think it may be a TV setting of some kind.
Good luck!
Also turn "sharpness" down, as this will only enhance the problem
I definitely don't have a grainy picture at all, so I think it may be a TV setting of some kind.
Good luck!
Bona Botse
A little insight goes a long way
what tv do you have and how close to it do you sit?
Check in your decoder's menu that the resolution is set to 720p at least. On your tv's picture settings, disable any kind of noise reduction or other picture "enhancing" features, because they generally just make things worse.
Also turn "sharpness" down, as this will only enhance the problem
I disagree with disabling the noise reduction. I found this helped a lot with grainy shows on my LG. Agree with disabling other enhancing features though.
Some shows are just more grainy than others. It bugged me at first, now I'm over it.
Samsung 32", 720p hd ready lcd.. On the back there a sticker with the numbers la32a330j series 3. Viewing distance is 3 meters away from tv..
In reply to ono'rach, my initial settings was with noise reduction off which seemed to make the problem worse, i now have it on auto.. But now im getting almost like a 'smooth' effect, not nice at all.. Talk about being stuck between a rock and a hard place!
In reply to ono'rach, my initial settings was with noise reduction off which seemed to make the problem worse, i now have it on auto.. But now im getting almost like a 'smooth' effect, not nice at all.. Talk about being stuck between a rock and a hard place!
Ono'rach
Executive Member
That's the problem with noise reduction, it gets rid of the graininess by smoothing the whole picture out, which means that the picture is much less detailed, which kind of ruins the point of HD 
But like I said, having the "sharpness" setting too high can exaggerate the problem
But like I said, having the "sharpness" setting too high can exaggerate the problem
Okay then that settles it for me then, back to noise reduction 'off'! Lol i think i prefer it this way actually, having just spent the past few hours watching tv with all that smoothing going on just didnt feel right to me.. And like the other posters has indicated grain is part and parcel of not only dstv hd but hd in general so ill just have to get used to it. Thanks guys!
genetic
Honorary Master
With HD you can generally see the "grain" of he film because of it's definition and clarity. It depends what's showing at the time. If it's anything that's been shot on video, the image should be quite clean.