Bad quality "HD ready" TVs?

Question

I have a 300 euro "HD ready" TV, but the picture quality for my PS2 is terrible on it. I've heard 2 reasons for this:

"HD Ready" only means it can read HD signals but it doesn't mean that it has good video quality.

Normal signals just look terrible on all HD TVs and only HD signals look good.

Could someone please tell me if these are true or tell me your opinion?

Answer 1

"HD ready" refers to a TV that has no tuner built into it.  Early on, there was some confusion about what would be used for HD broadcasts, so tuners weren't included in some HDTVs.  This also made them cheaper.  A "HD Ready" TV is just as capable of displaying a HD signal as any other HDTV, so don't worry about that.

The reason your PS2 doesn't look good on your TV has nothing to do with the TV being "HD ready", but EVERYTHING to do with the fact that the PS2 is NOT a HD device.

The PS2 puts out a standard TV signal.  Even going to 720p - the minimum resolution considered HD - you're increasing the resolution over standard TV by over a factor of 4.  If you go all the way to 1080p, your watching a picture that has 6 times the resolution of a standard TV signal.

In addition, the PS2 does not use anti-aliasing.  This is a technique to help smooth out lines as they're drawn on the screen so they don't look quite so much like "stair steps".

HDTVs always run at a single resolution, even if they say they can support multiple resolutions.  The way this works is that the TV includes something called an upscaler, which is a specialized computer chip that tries to stretch an incoming image to the TV's native resolution (say, 720p.)  Older HDTVs' upscalers were not very good.  This is why many people prefer to use an upscaling DVD player for their DVDs because the DVD player's upscaling processor is much better than the one included in their TV.

Of course an upscaler can only do so much.  Given the low resolution of a standard TV signal, such as the one from the PS2, combined with the "jagged" graphics, the result is less than impressive.

There's really not much you can do about this.  One thing I did was leave the PS2 connected to my old standard definition TV.  At least the graphics look good for that TV.  And now the wife can watch her programs in HD while I can play my games in the other room.