Moved on from my 27" last week. Went to Sam's Club and picked up the 47" Vizio LCD, 1080p. Also picked up the Magnavox upconverting DVD player, 1080p as well. Have Dish Network non-HD receiver hooked up to the TV with coax (haven't moved up to HDTV yet). Have the DVD player hooked up to TV with HDMI. I'm new to all this stuff, but it was my understanding that the DVD's should look almost-HD...definitely better than the non-HD digital TV signal I have from Dish. Well, the TV programming looks pretty darn good for a non-HD signal. Thing is, it looks better than my DVD's, and I have them upscaled to 1080p. Thought it might be the cheap DVD player, so I exchanged it for the Philips, still cheap, but with good reviews. Looks marginally better, but still not what I expected. The Dish programming still looks better...almost good enough that I'm in no rush to subscribe to HD programming. Any ideas?

Just because a DVD player will output video at an HD resolution, does not mean that the image will look like HD. Even the best video scaling and deinterlacing solutions can't achieve that, and I don't know what your Magnavox or Philips players are using to provide scaling and deinterlacing. There are a few things you can experiment with, though. Try setting your DVD player's output to a lower resolution (either 480i or 480p) and see what happens. The signal will still be converted to 1080p at some point, since it has to be for the Vizio to display it. If you prevent the player from doing it, then the TV's internal scaler will do it - and based on the fact that the picture from your non-HD satellite receiver is turning out better than DVD's, I suspect that the scaler in your TV is better than the scaler in your DVD player.

At the end of the day, there is no solution that will produce an HD-caliber picture from a 480-line video source like DVD. The really good scalers (in some TV's, some DVD players, and many standalone video processors) can achieve a great deal with what they have available, but even then you have to rely at least somewhat on the DVD transfer.

but it was my understanding that the DVD's should look almost-HD...definitely better than the non-HD digital TV signal I have from Dish. That was your first mistake. :) There's many factors involved and not limited to 1) Calibrating display to match source device. 2) Source native resolution (SD vs HD), 3) Source quality, 4) Source hardware quality (DVD player, cable stb, 5) Display quality, 6) Proper setup/configuration of settings on player and display

I'd learn how to calibrate (there's a whole forum here on display calibration and the basics you can do yourself without special equipment and solve 90% of potential problems). Make sure you use a DVD that is known to have been mastered well. I'm guessing calibration is your biggest issue, then maybe DVD player and/or player and display configuration settings. DVDs should look better most of the time than SD cable or sat TV.

larry

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................DVDs should look better most of the time than SD cable or sat TV.

larry

Especially since the Dish receiver is hooked up with coax.