It's been 2 weeks since I bought my first HDTV, and first few days since cable has been hooked up. If it matters, it's Cox and I'm using their HD-DVR, and I read in their information booklets that no matter whether an HDTV broadcast is 720p or 1080i, their HDDVR will convert it to 1080i. Also, it's 42" Hitachi plasma, 1024x1024 native resolution. I'm currently connected through component cables b/c the upconverting DVD player is using the HDMI.

1.) The colors change when I change between HD channels, SD channels, or the upconverting DVD player. I will change the bright/contrast/tint/color temperature (cool, warm, natural) etc but then when I change from the SD channel to HD, it's different. Then again with the DVD player it's different. On SD channels things are paler, with the blues more of a teal, colors not as saturated, but at the same time I'll switch to an HD channel and it is almost oversaturated. Scenes tend to be darker with reddish tones, faces almost orange, etc.

2.) Whenever I switch between the HD and SD channels, the TV goes to a black screen and must search for a signal. The screen goes black, says "Y/Pb/Pr Searching" for a few seconds when changing from HD to SD, and at least 7-10 seconds when going from SD to HD. Is this normal? It's quite annoying. It's a dual tuner DVR so I like to use "swap" to switch back and forth and it kinda sucks.

3.) Some HD looks good, some doesn't. Some SD looks okay/good, some doesn't. I watched House, M.D. tonight on FoxHD. The picture looked no better than it did on my 27" flat screen CRT. It looked OK, but certainly not as good as ESPN's HD baseball I saw Sunday and Monday night. There were lots of brownish walls in the show, and the whole thing was quite blocky. Other areas in scenes and people were blocky at times. Not very impressive. Also, I had the TV set on 16x9 standard. That's the standard aspect ratio, yet the FOX logo was cut off. The very bottom was cut off and the right side of the X was cut off to the side. The only other zooms, 16x9 zoom and 4:3 zooms only zoomed in closer.

I'd venture to say some SD channels looked comparable in PQ. But some SD channels are crappy. I suppose I expected this, but not for them to look THIS bad. For example, TBS's My Boys is bad. FX's Damages isn't that good either.


I am not doing something correctly? Is there anything I can do to correct these issues? What's going on?

I still like plenty of SD content so I'm disappointed SD doesn't look better. But I liked baseball and a few other shows I've seen in HD. I love college football, I would love to see my team and others in HD, but these issues bother me.

I'm beginning to consider two options. First to return this and look into buying a 1080p LCD at Sam's whenever they have one on sale. Best Buy and Costco have been having some at $1000 which was my original budget recently. I've heard 1080p might be slightly better SD picture and it should be better resolution. Or, simply returning this TV. I've never been displeased with SD picture on my JVC 27" flat screen... I just wanted a bigger picture, especially now that we've moved into our first house and sitting 10-12 feet away and because widescreen movies the pictures gets smaller because of the black bars. Possibly keep the 27" in the living room or buy a 32" SD CRT. I don't know if they make CRTs any bigger than that which are not HD/widescreen and still look good.

I must admit I know very little about CRTs anymore because all research I've done was LCD/Plasma/DLP. I watch probably 60-70% of my programming is SD- FX, TBS, TNT, HGTV, ABC Family, in addition to the 1 or 2 shows a night I watch in HD. Like I said, I wasn't displeased with my 27" TV, I was just excited for a bigger and clearer picture. Also- we have a ton of DVDs, and we wouldn't upgrade to HDDVD or Bluray anytime soon because of the costs. Would your suggestion be to just go back to the 27" JVC CRT? I would be OK with that, except maybe prefer a bigger picture. We got a fantastic deal on the plasma, 700bucks, so that makes the decision more difficult. Thanks for reading and offering any opinions!

I can't address everything, but I have a couple of comments.

The FOX logo is supposed to get cut off. I don't know why they do it, or whose idea that was, but the person that decided this was a good idea is an idiot, IMHO. I played around with the overscan on my TV and can assure you that the bottom 1/3rd or so (and the far right side) of that logo does not exist.

As for CRT recommendations, check your local CC or BB and see if they have any 34" Sony XBR970's still in stock. They go for around $700, have been discontinued, and are a steal, IMHO. SD shows will display as 27", but HD widescreen looks great.

Sounds like you got a great deal on the plasma, although at that price I would expect it to be either defective or of very poor quality.

I'm pretty leery of $1000 LCD's. The $1500 and up ones look good, but if you go LCD don't skimp on quality, you'll definitely regret it.

Thanks for the response. The Hitachi we got because we were comparing LCD to plasma at Walmart and an asistant manager was talking to another customer about a few plasmas they had in the back that were left over from a promotion a few months ago and only had 4 left and they didn't want the hasle of have the display space to put one up on display. The model is a 42HDF39, which seems no one has ever bought through searching. One person AVS had bought one, with decent review, and paid $1300 in April.

Anyway, we originally had a $1000 budget, and thought this was a steal. I don't know if after having this TV if I would want to spend the same $$ on a much smaller 34" TV. In that case I might just rather bring the 27" back in. Maybe 300-400 for a larger 32" or 34" TV.

However if I see this TV and like it, how will its SD picture compare to that of a plasma? Basically, will I end up with jaggies, fuzziness, etc that I get now?

SD programs in 480i will look pretty much the same as a regular SD 27" CRT, except the picture will be slightly better definition because the XBR970's picture tube is a finer pitch. You won't see those thick horizontal scanning lines that most SD CRT TV's have.

SD programs in 1080i will look excellent. To me, many of them look as good as HDTV only they are not in widescreen format.

However, SD picture quality really varies a lot depending on how good the source material looks, so SD quality is really all over the map.

If you watch a lot of SD programs, and you can get a good deal, a 32" SDTV CRT might be the way to go. I would just have a hard time getting used to the coarser picture when sitting close to the screen. But if you sit fairly far back, like 8 feet or more, you won't notice too much difference, hopefully.