I'm confused!! I just connected up my dvd player (sony rdr-gx120) via component (reasonably good quality cables) and the image quality is rubbish!! I've checked the tv (hyundai a321) and the dvd player settings, played about with them, and no improvement. The picture appears to "fuzzy-ish" or "grainy", especially when people move about. Not impressed. Has anyone else tried hooking up via component, and what was the result.

P.s. the dvd was human traffic - the original so perhaps the picture ain't that good in the first place...although it was pretty good on my old CRT. Moulin Rouge was reasonable.

Anything I can do to improve the image!! Please help! If it doesn't improve, I might send it back, and either forget about LCDs altogether or get something different that an A321. The dvd player is a sony and has always had excellent image quality. I didn't have the grainy problem with the full scart, and I'd be very surprised if it was the cables!!

P.P.s I've now checked with other more recent releases aka serenity and mulholland drive and the picture is quite good.

[LV426]

I suspect you've sort of answered your own question. The standard of DVD mastering is highly variable. You don't say what the sizes of the two screens you've compared are, but I'm guessing the 32 inch LCD is larger than the CRT was, which, in itself, will make anything wrong with the picture more apparent. Added to this, it's generally felt that LCDs are more revealing of inadequacies in the source than CRTs. Put these two together and you begin to see that, for the most part, you are seeing what's really there on the disc.

It's also often the case that, when trying something new, we tend to inspect and evaluate it in unrealistic ways; for example by getting far too close to the screen and looking for imperfections. The key to this is to evaluate your picture from a realistic viewing distance only.

Thanks for your response. My comments about the image are based on me sitting back approx. 4 metres. If I go close up to the screen, the image is completely bad! It just concerns when people talk about how amazing quality sharp image they are getting through component or hdmi. I'm not really that impressed!! Am I doing something wrong? Is the dvd player? Is it the cables that are rubbish - Belkin. Is it the TV? BTW, I know my TV can produce really excellent quality images as I've tried the HD demos from the microsoft website through VGA.

I'm really confused! Is their anything else I can do to improve the picture. As I said, its very grainy.

P.s. CRT was a 28", the hyundai is 32"

[LV426]

From what you've described, then:
a) it's a good sensible distance
b) I doubt there's much wrong with the Sony DVD player
c) Belkin are a respected cable manufacturer so I doubt that there lies the problem
d) Not that I've any reason to doubt what you say or your own knowledge; just covering everything I can think of, just in case. Some people get "Component" confused with "Composite", the one being just about the best analogue signal protocol, and the other, the worst. If you are indeed using Component (which is, three cables for picture only, with sockets coloured red, green and blue usually; sound is separate) then that's the right thing to do.

Your new TV's visible screen will be almost 25% larger in each direction than the 28 inch CRT it replaced (a 28 inch CRT has a usable screen of about 26 inches diagonal; a 32 inch LCD has 32 inches).

It's an unrealistic expectation that the picture quality from any standard defintion source (which includes regular DVD, upscaled or not) will match that from a true High Definition source. It can't; the level of detail is simply not present and therefore cannot be extracted.

It is true, though, that many DVDs contain a grainy image. If you have or can beg, steal* or borrow, a copy of Star Wars ep 2 or 3 (not 1) and look at this, you'll be seeing probably one of the best examples of DVD mastering I know of. If you are still having problems then you do, indeed, have something amiss.

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

* I do not condone theft.