Bad picture on my new SAMSUNG LE40A559P 40" HD Ready 1080p digital LCD TV?

Question

ive got a video recorder and a dvd player and a sky box to connect with the new tv. the picture quality is bad on the tv and when watching a video. i went back to currys and they told me a component video cable would inprove the picture. ive got one ive tryed it (not sure if ive plugged it all in right) but the picture was the same. i wasnt sure if i should plug in in to the dvd, video or sky box with the tv. i need all of them plugged in because we use them all. Any advice would be great because i was looking forward to getting this tv and its a bit dissapoining when the picture is rubbish.

thanks

Answer 1

What kind of DVD player do you have? If it's a standard DVD player, then that is your problem, you are receiving SD DVD picture which is only 720×480, to  experience 1080p quality , you will need a Blue-ray Disc player, or a Play Station 3 console to view HD DVDs and Blue-ray disc movies.

You will need a HDMI cable to hook them up.

There are also some SD DVD players that up convert to HD.

Answer 2

Samsung has really bad default settings even on HD. You'll need to scout around to find the ideal caliberation for watching standard defination etc

A good place to start would be avforums Sorry would have checked for you but kinda busy ;)

Answer 3

need more information as to exactly what you mean by "picture is bad".

you have a 1080p capable TV, this basically means that anything you watch on it that ISN'T HD (Sky HD or Blu-ray disc) has to be "stretched" to fill the screen. particularly on freeview if you sit close to the TV you will see jagged edges and blocky pixels because of this. there's nothing you can do about that until all TV is HD other than sit further away.

we just got an almost identical samsung 40" series 5 LCD model to you and have been really impressed with the picture quality on none HD sources. we watch DVDs via a PS2 connected via SCART, and the built-in freeview tuner through the normal outdoor aerial lead.

do a google search for you model number and samsung click on googled answer that has www.samsung.com/uk as the address

eg: search "samsung LE40A558" got the link below which is for my model... hope this helps!

getting sky hd will only help with hd channels, most programmes aren't hd yet. hd channels and blu-ray dvds should look a lot better.

if you really feel there's a problem try getting currys' to take it back and swap it as faulty?

ps. you should be able to have normal tv, sky, dvd all plugged in at the same time, just switch source on remote to flick between.

forgot to say, on the samsung website it mentions blurry picture and says you need a firmware update to fix it, maybe that's your problem? good luck!