[janlafata]

I hope someone can explain this to me. I just bought a new Samsung 40 inch 120hz flat screen TV.It looks great! I have been using a standard cheapo DVD player from Walmart, a Magnavox with no upconverting or HDMI cable capable or anything, to play back my DVD's on my old TV and they continued to look good even on the new flat screen.

Many of the DVD's that I play are non-HD AVI videos that have been burned using good software (TMPGEnc) onto TDK +R discs. I am content with the Magnavox, but being the tweaker that I am I knew I would a least want to try a more modern DVD player with upconvert capability and an HDMI cable option and I found a reasonable Samsung that I thought would do the trick.

Well to my surprise, the DVD's did not look near as good in the Samsung compared to the Magnavox and that was even with the HDMI cable hooked up. I did try real quick to adjust the HD settings in the Samsung but that did not appear to change anything,(although I may not have done it right) nor did just using the phono plugs instead of the HDMI cable help.

I should mention that I did not try any pre-recorded DVD's during my little "test" and not all of the burned discs looked bad, but a lot of them did.

So I'm stumped as to why this is happening. My first thought was that maybe just certain player brands play back burned DVD's better than others, so I took the Samsung back and will look into this issue more before trying a different brand.

Could it also be that the Magnavox scans at 480p and that when a burned disc is played back in the newer machine it's too much for the video to handle? By the way when I say the video looks bad, it's clear but the colors seem to move around and everything looks a little too expanded or sometimes out of focus.

I'm assuming that this might be a case where these burned discs that I have may only ever be able to be played back on an older machine, and I guess I'm fine with that, but I just trying to get some answers.

[telecom69]

It might well be that you need to alter the tv settings to get the best results,its just a thought,you should have at least two settings to view at ...

[janlafata]

Yes actually the Samsung does have 4 different settings for things like that. One of them is even called "Movie". I did not try that when I was testing things out, yet it still seems like an easy way out to this problem...like there's still something wrong somewhere else.

I had a guy at another tech say say to me..."Your trying to upconvert a standard definition signal to HD? No wonder it looks crappy!" If that's the case then, I guess I do not fullyunderstand how the whole upconvert thing is supposed to work. I though that it basically took any signal and made it look better.

I'm still trying to get to the bottom of this. But I've got time. Luckily, like I mentioned in my post, my 5 year old Magnavox does a very decent job of playing back all my videos. However if that is going to be the answer, that is, that I will always have to play these on an older machine, then I'll keep doing that, but will shop around for a better, older player.

[telecom69]

Over here some tv sets do upscale the picture,but not all, certainly my Toshiba Regza does, most people have HD reciever boxes either from Virgin (cable) or Sky (sattelite) these are then connected to the tv via a HDMI cable, these boxes upscale the pictures from SD to near HD quality, in pure HD channels the picture is just stunning ...

The settings I was talking about are the resolution settings on the tv,usually 720 or 1080 and people are advised to use whichever setting seems best for their particular tv ...and these are the settings I would be trying out if I were in your situation ......so yes you can upscale a SD picture to near HD provided you use the right equipment......

[wtxcowboy]

u need 2 upgrade ur dvd player 2 match ur tv, so that it can upconvert ur dvd's 2 at the very least, 1080i. i use a samsung home theater just 4 that with my bigscreen philips tv. works out fine, just have 2 spend some $$ is all :P

[janlafata]

I did upgrade my DVD player. As I explained in my first post, I bought a nice new Samsung player (non Blu-ray) to go along with the TV, but when I played back the DVD's, which are videos that I downloaded and then burned to blank DVD's, they did not look very good at at all. They do look fine on an older DVD player that I have though, a Magnavox.

I first tried viewing them using the HDMI cable but when I saw how crummy they looked, I then tried viewing them through the traditional RCA phono plugs. The video still did not look great, though maybe I needed to clear the memory or something when I switched outputs because the picture should look better. That's why I am also thinking that maybe a different brand than Samsung might do the trick.

I'm starting to understand all of this more, but still I have not come up with any plan of action, short of staying with an older player for these types of discs.

[wtxcowboy]

oh sorry, i get it now. sounds like it might be the format u created ur dvds with, if they were avi mpg converted to dvd files etc. have u tried component cables (red blue green) 2 see how they look? better than s-video but not as good as hdmi they say.

[janlafata]

If you mean RCA phono plugs then yes. I used the red and white audio's and the yellow video, but it still did not look so great. However, when I was going through all of my "testing" I did not always stop to really check things out,..rebooting the TV etc plus after awhile it was getting frustrating trying out many different discs that I have burned and seeing them not display well.

Luckily, I'm thankfull I always keep a good head on my shoulders, and the bottom line for me is...don't panic...As much as I would like to have a new DVD machine to play back and possibly one to playback and record, I've got a decent one now (the Magnavox) that plays back these discs just great. So until I can get to the bottom of this, I'll just keep on doing what I'm doing.

I have had one friend tell me that, because of the nature of a video file that's been downloaded and burned, and that being that it's lost a lot of quality and all, it may not be possible to get any kind of decent picture running the signal through a more modern DVD player. He also says that home burned DVD's will never benefit from upscaling to a digital output.

Therefore, to view these discs that I have, I may have to always play them back on an older player, and I'm fine with that. But I just want to make absolutely sure that there isn't some kind of player out there that really could do magic with that standard def video.

[telecom69]

I dont think there are any magic players out there,admitted there are so many now that are absolutely bursting with features that you might not ever use,and boy do they charge for those things, at the end of the day they are just DVD players,and your Magnavox seems to be doing the job as you want it too,so why change ? newer is not always better ....

[wtxcowboy]

these aren't rca cables, they're called component cables & have a blue red & green end to each end & if ur player has a hdmi port it most likely has this kind of connection as well, have a look see for those colors. i hooked up my dvr that way til i bought a new one that uses hdmi. picture was fine. format & burning engine does matter, u can testify 2 that. good luck.