Grainy TV pic.

[wodom1]

I've got a 27" Sony Wega and am wondering about a few things. First of all, if there is text on the screen in either bottom corners, it's blurry, but only from about 3" and closer to the edge of the screen. Could this be from my speakers next to the TV? There is about 8" of space between the TV and the speakers. Also, the picture get's pretty grainy when I'm watching a DVD and the scene is dark. My digital cable pic. is really grainy, but I've just attributed that to old cable lines and poor quality of the signal itself. For the DVD (Sony), I use Acoustic Research component cables. I'll have to see what model # my DVD player is. Maybe it's a POS. Most of the time, the picture is beautiful with a DVD. Any ideas? Maybe I picked up a defective set...

-Josh

[howie777]

I also have 27 inch sony and see the grainy picture on my digital cable too. I have had the signal stregth checked mulitiply times and it is very good at my place. But we do have some pretty old coax in the house so that could be it. I would be interested in a solution too, even if it is rewire the coax in the house. I don't think I have any issues with DVD picture quality, I'll have to look later.

Howie

[scottvamp]

Them Sony's are wayy over priced too. When I bought my computer 4 years ago I got a 17" Sony Trinitron. Only an extra $700 bucks - ya it fried itself a little over two years later. Money well spent and the PQ was no better than the 17" $99 moniters made today.

[Airplay355]

check all the coax connections coming into your house....make sure that the copper pin in the connection and any connectors are clean and free of tarnish. the farther away from the origional line ( meaning how many splitters the signal passes through before it gets to the tv) will effect the quality of the signal. the quality of the cable wire and the quailty of the splitters also effects the signal.

i had a problem with my cable modem. the signal in my room wasnt strong enough for the digital signal. i cleaned all the tarnished connections and the copper pins, which were black and 40 years old. and now my TV reception is much better and my internet works fine.

give it a try before u go callin up the cable guys.

[wodom1]

Well, my apartment is in a building that's about 80 years old, so I can't really check the lines. I'm not too concerned about the cable picture, since I don't watch much TV other than the History Channel and HBO. I'm more concerned about my DVD pic and the grain I see when watching movies on DVD. I paid $355 for this TV used. I picked it up from a guy in Chicago and it looked fine when I checked it out before giving him the money. Perhaps I just have a cheap DVD player. I'm not sure how much this one costs, as my parents gave it to me when they got a new one. I'll have to remember to get the model number tonight. It's got DTS and I want to guess that it was about $150-200 about a year and a half ago. Thanks,

Josh

[goingganzo]

i know when you strech a cabble pic from standard to a ws format it gets to look alot worse. also if you have a lot of tv in the house get a powered spliter we have a 8 way that the cable guy gave us but that was when they had a 30 db notch in the hbo area of the channel sigonal.

[wodom1]

Well, I do use the 16:9 enhanced mode when I'm watching DVD's--could that be the cause? I'll have to watch a DVD tonight with the enhanced mode turned off and see if there's a noticable difference.

[sachinsood]

I don't think the enhanced mode would make a difference. If the grainy picture is present while watching DVDs, then try the following (if possible):

- Remove your connections, clean them up, and reconnect.
- See if you can take your DVD player to a friend's house (with any type of TV, better or not better than what you have) and see if the grainy images still appear. If not, and you cleaned your connections, then its most likely the TV.
- See if you can connect a friend's DVD player to your TV and again check.

Check with the same DVDs and same scenes. It'll help you narrow down the cause.

BTW, what DVD player are you using? Sony Wega's are quite good and very few from a batch end up having issues (as with all other brands). PQ depends a lot on the DVD player.

[walk]

Grainy on dark scenes could be entirely normal. Remember we are talking about film transfers here, and film is just grainy. You also might have the Brightness (black level) control set too high. Have you calibrated the set with a good test disc?

How is the text distorted exactly? Geometry? Convergence? Both are issues with these flatscreen tubes I'm afraid, especially distorted text or scrolls near the edges like stock market tickers, you'll just have to live with it.

I have a 27" WEGA also, perhaps if you list some of the DVDs and scenes you have issues with, I could compare.

[wodom1]

Thanks for the suggestions, I'll have to try some of them out. Band of Brothers is one that was pretty grainy. When there were scenes at night, it got pretty grainy, other than that the pic was really nice.
The text is blurry like if the sharpness is turned down really really low, but only on the bottom corners, and it seems to get pulled down into the corner, although that's very slight. I keep forgetting to look at the model number of the DVD player, although it is a Sony. I'll post that on Friday when I come back to work.
The only calibration I've done was with the THX optimizer on the Finding Nemo and that was a beautiful film. I'll check it out again tonight. Thanks again!

-Josh

[danger boy]

how old is the 27" Sony Wega? Can't be that old.. but when picture tubes begin to go.. they first become blurry in the corners of the screen. Is the Sony flat screen or curved tube?

Having your speakers to close to the Tv would usually result in blue or green look to the TV where the speaker is next to it. If you are using a sheilded speaker... this shouldn't be a problem then.

Your movies running to componenet video should look really good.. very little grain at all. I'm very curious why it's so grainy?

And you are using component cabels, not composite right? Component cables are three video only cables.. composite cables are three cables too.. two for audio and one for video.. composite video is usually pretty grainy no matter what the source is.. ie: cable, DVD, satellite, etc.

good luck man...