Video Asylum

Posted by Estes (A) on November 17, 2002 at 07:42:13

In Reply to: Help - NTSC / Cable on Plasma? posted by ddc009@hotmail.com on November 16, 2002 at 19:35:57:

The flaws of the NTSC system show up more on a bigger TV. There are some rear projection tvs that have electronics that attempt to compensate for the problems. Toshiba has one.

Picture quality is a function of signal quality. Progressive scan DVD is likely the best, followed by off air (i.e, good antenna & downlead), satellite, then cable. HD satellite is up there with DVD. So cable generally sucks. If you are lucky and you get a good feed it can be acceptable on a regular TV.

What you see in the store is poor quality for a number of reasons, no calibration of the sets, poor wiring, mulitple splitters, etc. Plus whatever wide screen you get will display 4:3 NTSC signal with black bars on each side. Again, the wide screens do attempt to compensate for this, but not without introducing other compremises.