
He said the best cable was called an active cable, which has an amplifier in it. But with longer cables, like those over 10 feet, quality becomes important, said Mr. In lengths of three feet or less, all you need is a cable that fits snugly in the HDMI slot. As it happens, the cheap cables that come with TVs are often really bad. It’s a scandal.”īETTER CABLES Sometimes changing a cable can make a big improvement, but only if the cable you have is really bad. “Thirty percent of the homes we see are watching standard definition. “The dirtiest little secret is the people who are paying for HD and are getting 480P,” Mr. You have to check the settings on your cable or satellite box and DVD player as well.

“You could be losing 30 percent or more of your resolution.” “If you do not do this, you are not getting high definition,” said Joel Silver, founder of the Imaging Science Foundation, which trains professionals to calibrate TVs. When you overscan, you reduce the number of lines of resolution and degrade your picture. The overscan feature is meant to hide errors that sometimes show up in broadcasts as a flickering white line on the edge of a full-screen picture. Televisions commonly get shipped set to “overscan” or “zoom,” which enlarges the picture and can cut off the edges. You can improve your TV’s picture even more if you are willing to spend a few dollars for test discs, or make it nearly perfect by hiring a professional to calibrate your set.ĬHECKING FOR HIGH DEFINITION Don’t overlook the Aspect setting. But the bright screen and many other TV ills can be fixed for nothing by changing a few settings. In your darkened living room, though, that bright screen is painful to watch.

Miller said, do not know “if their set is going to be on a wall with 45 other TVs in a Best Buy or a consumer’s home.” Kevin Miller, a consultant to several TV manufacturers, calls it the “Best Buy Torch Mode.” That means TVs come out of the box with the picture set to be bright, with overly saturated colors and digital sharpening. Virtually every mass-produced TV is set by default to stand out in a store display.
You can almost certainly make your TV’s picture look better than it did when the set was brand-new, and doing so is relatively easy. IF you are close to spending thousands of dollars on a TV because you want a better picture, you may want to save your money.
