HD CRT TV screwup

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Ivork

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My 10 year old 32" digital CRT widescreen died end of last year.

OK, so I'm stupid and think LCD and Plasma suck and imported a 32" widescreen CRT from UK for a fortune. The colours are perfect and have light speed as opposed to 2 - 5 milli secs with fuzzy trees blowing in background and blurry legs during the rugby. Anything action sucks on LCD in the under 10 grand market IMHO. (me likes to sit closeup in-your-face TV)

Thing is, unlike my old widescreen CRT, the stupid bastard is permanently in HD. Under normal circumstances, (VCR, analog TV, cheapy DSTV 910 etc) it's all a bit "grainy" - although the speed is fine been CRT. I was under the misguided impression that it would have 2 modes - one for HD and one for normal PAL - stupid me!

How the hell do you guys with HD sets handle this? It looks so cr@p! Do you all have those HDMI decoders and Blue ray DvD players, Sony PS3's or something? The Pic is better on my spare R800 54cm square 4:3 piece of cheap rubbish! - even though it's too small for me to see what's going on :-)

It is only a month old so maybe I should flog it. But it is digital at least with pcmcia and cam slots so maybe I should wait till signal improves and they start broadcasting DvB digital. How long will that be? Will it even be 16:9 ?thoughts and opinions?

(Anyone with a digital CRT that's non HD that wants to swop for a HD job, 3 SCART's pic in pic, HDMI, DvB digital, Dolby digital surround, the whole trip, WS32Z419D brand new less a month shipping it out here, looks sh*t unless useing HDMI input -pm me).

Unless you have HD, a HD tv is pathetic by looks of things to me! Who is buying this useless junk? And Why unless you have all these hdmi devices anyway?

Thanks.
 
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Don't really know on CRT, but on LCD HD, it looks fine, the HD channel just looks a lot better.

Would it not be cheaper to just get an HD dstv decoder? that comes with an hdmi connector. You will only make a loss with selling such an expensive TV
 
But there is only one HD channel. Don't all the rest look crappy and grainy, HD decoder or not ?
 
I *think* it upscales the rest of the channels and - although not true HD - I've heard they're not to bad. Certainly better than what you have.
 
Watching a non-HD signal on a HD TV is the same as if you watched it on a "standard tv".Only difference is when the tv is plugged into a HD source its able to display it.

Also who buys a CRT tv over a LCD or plasma???
Why did you not save and get a good model LCD/Plasma.
 
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Cant you just adjust (lessen) the sharpness?
The other option is to not sit "up close and personal" to the TV.
 
Ivork said:
But there is only one HD channel. Don't all the rest look crappy and grainy, HD decoder or not ?
Click to expand...

The other channels look great through hdmi, not HD, but alot better than SD
 
SuPaStA said:
Also who buys a CRT tv over a LCD or plasma???
Why did you not save and get a good model LCD/Plasma.
Click to expand...

Something tells me he paid ther same price for his CRT and a plasma/LCD
 
Imagine the import costs for an old heavy CRT.He may have even paid more than a lcd/plasma.
 
Dolby said:
Something tells me he paid ther same price for his CRT and a plasma/LCD
Click to expand...

I reckon I did. I'm going to try one of those "up-scaler" jobs and see if that makes a difference. Maybe this thing has a cr@ppy upscaler built in.

I see a lot of DvD players are coming out with the upscale feature as well - so I can only assume it is a general problem with a lot of TV's, otherwise why would they bother - all HD sets have the ability to upscale, it's just that a lot suck at it ...like mine. :confused:
 
Most LCDs (and I assume plasmas) can change their res... so for e.g. when I'm watching standard DSTV on the composite inputs, the TV changes res to accomodate and it looks pretty good. If I let my amp upscale the sh1tty TV image on the HDMI port, then DSTV looks like crap.
 
SuPaStA said:
Watching a non-HD signal on a HD TV is the same as if you watched it on a "standard tv".
Click to expand...
Absolutely NOT TRUE dude.

Also who buys a CRT tv over a LCD or plasma???
Why did you not save and get a good model LCD/Plasma.
Click to expand...

Because If you put a 32" HD tv and a CRT tv next to each other both with a SD analog signal, even someone half blind can see the difference. (A good CRT - not the 50hz square cr@p we get here, a good widescreen 100hz digital CRT of comparable price). It's native resolution for the CRT - needs upscaling for the HD set.

(which is where my shortsightedness came in buying state of art HD CRT so sit with similair problem).

Which is not to say you can't get a good LCD where Black is not dark grey, and is well under a 1 milli second with some silly zillion:1 contrast ratio that is equal or beats CRT, but you talking 30 Grand plus in this place and out my price range.

@ SupaStA
You should know all this, you in UK.
oops, all DvB digital anyway over there, and Sky vs compressed to hell DSTV.... no wonder you can't tell difference.....

Upscaler comes tomorrow. will let you know if it makes any difference or is a waste of money.
 
I’m getting the Samsung DvD recorder – not that I need the recorder, but it upscales everything, not just the DvD – tuners (both analog and digital, plus AV inputs and integrates with my TV which is also Samsung)

http://www.cdiscount.co.uk/SoundVis...ung DVD-SR275 HD 1080p Upscaling DVD Recorder

Also a local yokel selling similar product for same price – but only one input, no name brand so not sure how good it is:
http://www.bidorbuy.co.za/item/11239408/Composite_S_Video_to_HDMI_UPSCALER.html

Frikkin hell – just bought HDMI cable for R1000 bucks!! WTF!! A few cents less than my dvd recorder/upscaler for 70 quid (R1050). They screw us left right and sideways in this place! :mad:
 
What model HD CRT TV do you have? R1000 HDMI cable? From your comments the term fool and money parted come to mind.
 
Fudzy said:
What model HD CRT TV do you have? R1000 HDMI cable? From your comments the term fool and money parted come to mind.
Click to expand...

Samsung WS32Z419D. Frikkin Hi-Fi Corp R999.99 for HDMI cable - N1 City - scumbags ripoff. Bastards!
 
Update:

Tube needed a bit of tweaking and got rid of most of the horrid digital effects - took most advice from this thread :
http://www.avforums.com/forums/crt-televisions/353081-samsung-wsz32419d-slimfit-crt-settings.html

Nice thing about having a tube. Can adjust as you like and all menu driven now, no more have to take back off to adjust pots with screwdriver – personal choice I guess. At least looks better than LCD….Actually STUNNING PIC!

OK, Upscaler:
OMW what a difference! I can not recommend this enough if you playing standard low quality SD DvD’s! The difference is awesome (unless you blind or have much better TV than me). Buy upscaler DvD. A good one – is not HD of course, but way way better than normal DvD through AV input (or SCART or RGB – tried all). Saying that, if you must, my best results were with RGB. But still the best is HDMI with upscaler.

I half assumed mine would upscale everything but not so, only DvD's even with all the AV inputs, so DSTV et al still looks 100% crap!

Will have to do something about that later cause for now me out of bucks.

[edit] I think it's crap - (wife doen't know what i'm talking about - she thinks the dstv has a perfect pic on a widescreen tv so go figure) but it is really really bad actually - esp if you watch the guys legs while he is running with the ball !!

I’ll resurrect this thread whenever they ever actually start broadcasting digital around here – (prob 5 years from now and in HD prob 10!) and let you know how it looks.
 
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