Hi,

I got the sony 46E2000 a few weeks ago and have been trying to get a decent SD picture on this tv with no luck at all aside from the Nintendo Wii at 480p which looks acceptable.

My other SD sources look very bad though. Digital cable looks barely watchable, its fuzzy , has ghosting and what looks like interlacing issues which fast movement. Granted that the signal is coming from a cable box with a composite output, this is the only output on the box and our cable co. are waiting for new stock of the HD PVR's. DVD's also do not look very good, I was using a 480p signal over component cables which I managed to get looking sort of ok, but I could still see a kind of ghost image when certain colors are on screen next to each other with hard edges.

I now have an upscaling DVD and was also using this with component cables at 480p and this looks terrible too with the same issues as outlines above. I am going to get an HDMI cable today which I am expecting to look 100 times better.

I have this TV plugged into an xbox 360 with the HD DVD add-on and this looks fantastic.

My questions are:

1. Is there something I can do to improve the picture quality for SD images?

2. Is the upscaller in this TV just not very good?

3. Could I possibly have a faulty TV that does not upscale SD sources properly?

Thanks,
Jamie

I have got the 46 e2000 also and find SD to be pretty good. Better that I was expecting. I have my HD PVR (SA) set to pass through,so any 480i signal would be upscaled and deinterlaced by the TV. The only SD channel that looks poor is SPIKE. I don't understand why that might be though.

I am starting to wonder if I have a faulty TV then. When there is a white screen with black text on it there is a ghost/halo all around the text. This happens all the time with SD sources. For instance the Matrix dvd menu text has the same kind of ghost/halo around it.

I have the sony 3 year on-site warranty, maybe I will give them a call to see if someone can take a look at it.

Could the cables be the reason for the poor picture quality? The DVD component cables are not the greatest cables but I don't want to buy any as I will be getting the HDMI for the upscalling DVD and an HD cable box soon and will not need high quality component cables. My major concern is that when the HD cable box arrives the SD channels will look as bad as they do now.

I also have the 46E2000 and find that the SD PQ is very good. Also my old dvds played throught my Panasonic S52S upconverting dvd player are excellent. I've used both HDMI and Component cables as connections from the Panny to the tv and find very little difference between the two. I have both hooked up to different video inputs on the tv so I can switch between the two. Both look excellent. I am on Dish HD.

You mention that you are on cable with a cable box that only has a composite out. I know that some cable companies such as Comcast in my area, don't have a full digital lineup. For instance, with Comcast channels 1 thru 69 are analog signals...with the digital signals starting with channel 70. I watched Comcast analog signals on this set at CC before buying and the PQ was watchable but fuzzy and not enjoyable. Could it be that your cable company does something similar?

The other thing that I can think of is bad connectors/spliters and proper cable grounding. All of these can produce PQ problems. When I switched from Comcast to Dish , I had some PQ issues and the Dish service tech found corrosion in one connector and one spliter. After correcting these problems the PQ was excellent.

You might try hooking up an antenna and see what your PQ is via OTA. I would think that if the E2000 displays good SD PQ via OTA, then the SD PQ problem is with the source (cable) and not the E2000.

Another thing you can try (your set has a QAM tuner) is to bypass your cable company's STB and go directly to the cable input of your E2000 and see what the SD PQ is.

I hope you find a resolution :D to your PQ situation as the E2000 is a terrific set.

I have read that sometimes it the quality of the signal coming in on the SD channels that makes for poor PQ on the newer HDTVs. Make sure that you have the best receivers from your cable/sat provider.

I just tried plugging the cable directly into the back of the tv. The picture is much improved over the picture i get from the cable box. I am still getting these ghost images though, if there is a white background with a dark colored bar I get about 2 or 3 ghost images to the left and right of the bar.

This is so noticeable it would have shown up on our old tube TV but I never noticed this problem at all.

I don't have access to an arial, I'm not even sure if there is any broadcasts in our area Vancouver, Canada.

Should I be calling the cable co. or sony first?

Glad to hear that the PQ is a lot better for you after you bypassed you cable STB. I would think that the improvement you now have by connecting directly to your tv would indicate a faulty STB. The remaining ghosting could be in the connections and spliters and cable grounding located between where the cable enters your home and where it enters your tv. I would think a call to your cable provider is in order. I don't know whether or not they will charge you for a service call or not.

I would call your cable company. I don't think it's the set. Sounds like bad wiring or something like that causing a weak signal. I have the 46e2000 and my SD ranges from acceptable to good but nothing like you are describing.

I'm not actually sure now if the PQ is better with a direct cable connection. Some channels appear to be better, while others aren't. A kids animation looked totally unwatch-able there was about 4 ghost images. The cabling itself isn't the issue here as its a direct connection with no splitters (we have 3 separate cable lines into the house TV, internet and VOIP phone).

I'm going to call the cable Co. and get someone to come out.

Thanks AKA BUD

I have the same tv set and i have the same problems for the quality of the image. I have component wire for my coolsat satellite recever and for my cable receiver i have the S-video and also plus the analog cable to compare both way.

I tried everything but picture still look poor. I'm new in the HD world ... is there a way that i can set my tv to 720i becouse right the only entry with 720i is the one with my playstation 3 ... The PS3 looks very nice by the way

I have the same tv set and i have the same problems for the quality of the image. I have component wire for my coolsat satellite recever and for my cable receiver i have the S-video and also plus the analog cable to compare both way.

I tried everything but picture still look poor. I'm new in the HD world ... is there a way that i can set my tv to 720i becouse right the only entry with 720i is the one with my playstation 3 ... The PS3 looks very nice by the way

No. These sets are progressive displays. The cannot display interlaced signals.

I just got this set, have 480i DVD through component (XBOX) and 720p through component (HD DTV; will try DVI-HDMI next week).

Went through DVE set-up disk. Picture is very good. Not QUITE as good as my 34" Wega CRT, but it's also another horizontal foot of screen, almost double the area. The only issue is the black level is pretty average. You only really notice it when you have black bars. I've gone through all the settings and have it as best I can (w/o going into the service menu).

I'm not sure what your problem is. I would try calibrating it. Seems like you might be just burning it up, but that shouldn't give you crazy ghosts, and doesn't explain your DVD issue either.

I'm starting to think this set defiantly has a problem. Today I went and bought an HDMI cable and plugged in the upscalling DVD player. I am still getting multiple ghost images on both the component and HDMI connections. I have set the DVD player to output 720p through HDMI so this is native resolution of the TV.

I've tried setting the sharpness to minimum which has made the image slightly better but I can still see these ghost images. I can't see any other reason why i would be getting this problem from multiple sources using many different connection types.

No, it's F'd up. Return it.

d5tar, did you get this figured out? I just bought a 50e2000 and am having similar issues with SD digital cable (cox). My OTA HD channels look great, but SD is driving me crazy since that's what we watch most the time.

DStar, how close do you sit to the set? I have a Sony upconverting player with HDMI and DirecTV HD. My picture quality is great and I sit about 6-7 ft away from my 50E2000. However, SD does show a little ghosting from that distance and the PQ is much worse than the DVD player and HD channels. The PQ of SD improves greatly when I sit about 10 ft. away. When I sit about 10 ft away, I don't see the imperfections and ghosting on SD. Now I have DirecTV which is 100% digital, so SD PQ should be better than cable's analog SD.

I don't think there is anything wrong with your set. How does your HD look?

1. Is there something I can do to improve the picture quality for SD images?

2. Is the upscaller in this TV just not very good?

3. Could I possibly have a faulty TV that does not upscale SD sources properly?


I have the older brother of this set, the A10, but I think it should apply to the E2000.

1. Disable DRC: DRC introduces a great amount of noise into sharpness patterns, so I can imagine what it does to a real image. Turn down sharpness: it depends on the source, but I find that a setting of around 10 is accurate (based on image quality and test patterns/sweeps). DRC and/or high sharpness really puts the beat down on SD image quality.

2. I find the upscaler to be rather good. The image from my Sony non-progressive 480i DVD player looks great via component input. I could barely notice a difference from an upscaling player via HDMI. Playstation 2 games also look better to me than they do on my Sony CRT set, mainly due to the elimination of flickering, but I don't see any scaling artifacts.

3. It's always possible, but more likely caused by your source or settings. However, if you have turned sharpness to minimum, disabled DRC, and tested using a direct source (DVD, game console, native test pattern, etc), then it is probably the set.

I'm not at home so don't have my TV in front of me, but if I recall correctly, there isn't an option to disable DRC on my 50" E2000 - there were only two options like "Dynamic" (not sure if that's the right name) or "Progressive" and I believe it describes them as Dynamic being better for motion and Progressive being better for still images & text. I tried switching between these two options and it didn't seem to improve the SD picture. Is there a hidden option somewhere to disable DRC completely?