Problem with Picture Quality on Chorus Digital

dwalsh1632

I recently moved house and against better advice decided to go with Chorus Digital. However when I connected up a new 40" Sony HD LCD TV the picture quality was not as clear and sharp as I would have expected, and the images seem blurred and "blocky?"

I am not too sure that this problem lies with the TV as any DVD's I play on my old DVD player seem to be ok.

Is there any settings on the TV or the Chorus Set-top box that I should be checking or changing to try and fix this or is this quality of picture the best that I can hope for? I have tried changing the Contrast/Backlight/Brightness etc.. settings on the TV and while they help a bit the picture is still not as sharp as I would expect from Digital.

Any help or ideas are much appreciated.

steveon

Chorus Digital unfortunately is blocky looking on LCD and Plasma t
Tvs, which I agree is a shame and a disgrace, the only thing you can do is set the aspect ratio to 4:3 or 16:9 or to change the RGB brightness levels.

You can do this by
Press Menu
Enter Installation Menu
Enter Set Top Box Installation
Enter TV AND VCR installation
Change TV Screen size
Press OK TO SAVE SETTING

Kensington

Chorus compress the bijaesus out of all of their channels so that they only have quite a small bitrate, which causes the picture to become blocky and blurry. The bitrates they use are not as high as the ones sky use - this is due presumably to limited bandwidth capacity on their system. Also bear in mind that some channels may be sourced from their satellite stream, on sky digital, and so will be re-encoded by chorus, further decreasing PQ.

Unfortunately, there's nothing you can do - it's not a fault with the TV as such, it's moreso that the sheer size of your screen makes the MPEG compression far more apparent! Possibly if chorus up the bitrates on their channels once they shutdown analogue services (effectively doubling their digital capacity) then the MPEG compression may not appear quite as bad.

dwalsh1632

Thanks for the response, at least this clears things up for me

Looks like I will just have to live with things as they are or change to SKY.

philstar

so basically what you guys are saying is,,,,,chorus digital is crap for LCDs over a certain size ,,,,or crap for LCDs period???

personally i can't fault the picture quality it makes my ten yr old telly look new

watty

Most LCDs aren't very good. Emperors and clothes come to mind.

Some digital sources may look worse.

philstar

watty wrote:

Most LCDs aren't very good. Emperors and clothes come to mind.

Some digital sources may look worse.

but aren't most HD tvs LCD??.......

whats the best type of TV to get then?

watty

Probably one next year. Or a 1080 line or better projector.

I've seen real HDTV sets and the ones currently in shops are really only good enough for ordinary TV. No wonder many people don't see a huge improvement compared with a top of the range 32" CRT.

Annuv

dwalsh1632, I hope you don't mind me adding an additional question to your thread.

I have recently purchased a Samsung LE40R7BD and I was disappointed by the picture quality when viewing Chorus Digital. (XBox is stunning with this TV)

After reading this thread I now know why - thanks to all.

I am using a supposedly high quality scart to connect the chorus digital box, so I guess since the poor picture is caused the bitrate of the channels, there is nothing to be gained by using a different input method such as a RGB to S-video converter?

I am sorry if that is a stupid question, I am new to all this

watty

No, SCART is a good as it gets.

Annuv

OK, thanks watty