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recently purchased pioneer 5040HD & iam surprissed to see that the quality of image is grainy on comcast cable & DVD aswell. is there any thing i can do to improve the image qualtiy other than getting HD connection from comcast?
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You watch everything in full screen? Doesn't the tv have screen size viewing adjustment? Just thinking out loud.
I picked up a 4340 and had the same problem you describe. I asked the people at best buy to fix it and they couldn't. The only thing that looked good on it was a HD signal. I took mine back.
I too am looking at the new PDP-4350HD about to be released next week and thought I had made up my mind to go with this set. The change with this set is that it has a new color filter, and according the Pioneer customer service it will "make the contrast brigher and the colors more vibrant". Resolution remains unchanged. So if the 4340 isn't good, then I have to assume the 4350 will be the same poor performance. What started out as an exciting task of picking out a a new plasma TV with all of the latest bells and whistles on it has turned into a "why the heck do I want to spend $4K on this thing when all the reviews mention predominantly problems?? So what IS the best plasma HDTV going today??
The key to good image quality is matching the signal resolution to the display resolution. If you are viewing HD signals (1080i, 720p, etc), the Pioneer 4340HD, or 5040HD will look great. That's because they are 1024 x 768 and 1280 x 768, respectively. If you watch regular Comcast cable or satellite, you are only sending the display about 300-400 lines of resolution. If this is the case, maybe you should look at a less expensive 852 x 480 res. 42" display.
Cougars, you were almost right and that is part of the problem...BUT, here is the REAL problem. If what you are telling me is correct, this what I am inffering...One, that your digital/hi-def channels look great (your analog signals look like crap, anything below about 50 or 100 i'm guessing) and two you are using some sort of digital connection from your cable box to tv (i.e. component video, dvi, or hdmi). The problem is you are still receiving two different signals into your cable box...digital and analog. Unfortunately most cable companies are still using analog signals on their low end channels and only digital on their premium channels, movies, hd, whatever. Now you're probably using a digital connection for your analog source. Most cable boxes do not handle this conversion well and for that reason your analog channels are gonna look like crap. The only real way to fix this, besides getting sattelite (all channels are digital) is to simply swap an s-video connection when watching analog channels and swap to digital (component, dvi, hdmi) when watching digital channels. This is a pain in the butt and why i recommend satelite. Unfortunately this is not pioneers fault and any tv will do this, but i guess you either need to expect more out of your cable company or get satelite. Problem solved...by the way sorry the people at your best buy didn't know what's up...we do get most things right though, atleast my store does!
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