New digital telly, but the picture quality is no better

UpsidedownA

Hi, you can probably tell that I'm not a techie person from this query, but I'm wondering why the picture quality of Nick Junior, CBeebies, and the other channels that are mostly watched in my house has not improved since we upgraded the telly to a digital telly (Philips 32" 32PFL5522D/05). We used to connect to the UPC box with a scart lead and now use an HDMI cable, but really I can't see any improvement.

Is it that the programme is broadcast at a low resolution so that the fact that the screen might be capable of sharper images is irrelevant?

Is there some setting I can toggle to get a sharper image?

What's the point of these new tellies if there's no improvement over the old analogue ones?

Paulw

UpsidedownA wrote: »

Is it that the programme is broadcast at a low resolution so that the fact that the screen might be capable of sharper images is irrelevant?

Is there some setting I can toggle to get a sharper image?

What's the point of these new tellies if there's no improvement over the old analogue ones?

Yes
No
None

UpsidedownA

Cheers for the excellent reply! Shame you couldn't bring me more joy, but I love the pithy honesty.

the_syco

UpsidedownA wrote: »

I'm wondering why the picture quality of Nick Junior, CBeebies, and the other channels that are mostly watched in my house has not improved since we upgraded the telly to a digital telly (Philips 32" 32PFL5522D/05).

Do they watch Disney at all? Seems that comes in HD, if you spend all your money

New customers that sign up to Horizon Max will receive the above plus Disney Channel HD

Paulw

UpsidedownA wrote: »

Cheers for the excellent reply! Shame you couldn't bring me more joy, but I love the pithy honesty.

Something I also learned the hard way. But, I will say that HD channels do look much better on a better quality TV, especially now that there are a lot more HD channels on UPC Horizon TV service.

pippip

UpsidedownA wrote: »

What's the point of these new tellies if there's no improvement over the old analogue ones?

I would say this is a bit more to do with UPC and their picture quality rather than the improvement in TV's.

From other peoples houses I have seen much better picture quality on Skys Standard quality channels over UPC's. So in this instance they may have seen a much better picture when they got their new digital TV's.

But as above the new HD channels are well worth it in my opinion, especially the sound quality, which I never expected.

who_me

On a previous (non Horizon) UPC box I found it was set to the wrong aspect ratio (some sort of zoomed format instead of Widescreen), and once switched the improvement in picture quality was very noticeable. In your case it may just be the quality of the channels - several channels on UPC are heavily compressed - but it's worth checking the aspect ratio on the cable box and any other such settings.

icdg

Remember that if you have a HD box, you do receive RTÉ One, RTÉ Two, TG4, BBC One, BBC Two, and UTV in HD regardless of whether or not you actually take the HD package.

Of course, Horizon viewers get the HD package included in their package price.

SpaceTime

I wonder if UPC actually are running different bit rates over different cable infrastructure too ?
It would make sense if they've bandwidth issues on older wiring that they might drop the bit rate from the nearest node.