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General discussion

Poor picture quality in night scenes

by lfriedla Jun 3, 2009 5:05AM PDT

I have a new Samsung LN40A650. Whenever I am watching television (not Blue Ray or DVD) any night scenes are terrible. They break up into pixels or color blotches. Is this an inherent defect of LCD technology? Of the Samsung? Any analog television I have ever had greatly outperforms my Samsung.

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3 Posts
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Sounds like the TV signal
by clicq Jun 3, 2009 1:19PM PDT

Sounds like it's your signal / cable provider, especially if you don't see it on DVD or Blu-ray. Compression is used in the transmission of video, and it often causes poor image quality in dark scenes.

Compression wasn't really used for analog TV, so you didn't see those sorts of artifacts in the past, plus old TVs have a much lower resolution than HDTVs today... the consequence is that a good source looks great, but any flaws in the source are much more visible.

That being said, some sets do a better job of handling poor quality sources than others, but I think you'll see the problem you're describing with pretty much any HD set.

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Thanks. Anything to do?
by lfriedla Jun 3, 2009 10:12PM PDT

Thanks much. That makes sense. Is there anything at all to do? I assume pay my already poor cable company (Charter) more for HD subscription?
What models are better than others at handling compression?

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Thanks. Anything to do?
by Samsung_HD_Tech Samsung staff Jun 5, 2009 5:58PM PDT

friedla,

The pixelation (breaking up, and block symptoms in the picture) can be pretty heavy with Standard Definition broadcasts. If you want the quality of HD programming (close or equivalent to Blu-Ray), you might try upgrading to HD programming.

What you're seeing isn't necessarily compression if it's standard definition - it's convertng 480 lines to 1080 lines, and some processing has to be done to fill in the lines. This is inherent with any SD source to HD panel picture.

Depending on where you live, there are also free HD channels if you purchase a HD-approved antenna.

--HDTech

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