advice on poor picture through dvd

holdinfoldin · 11-01-2008, 8:20 PM

hi any help greatly appreciated, i have a 'onn' asda own brand dvd. i recently bought a samsung lcd tv and find that when i watch or try to record via dvd my picture isn't clear (double vision). this wasn't a problem with my old toshiba tv not lcd, picture was fine, i have purchased 2 new thor scart leads but this hasn't made any difference. any advice please and sorry if this is in the wrong place (new to this today) thanks.

TeamGers · 11-01-2008, 8:24 PM

Hi mate, have you tried using HDMI cables rather than Scart?

holdinfoldin · 11-01-2008, 8:28 PM

hi i have sky + box which i dont think has HDMI also not sure if dvd does.

TeamGers · 11-01-2008, 8:49 PM

Check that first, cause if your DVD player has an HDMI connection, and your new Samsung has one as well ( which i'm sure it will have) then what you need to do is connect them up using an HDMI cable.

davepuma · 11-01-2008, 8:55 PM

Welcome to the forum

Please can you provide some more information i.e. the make/model nos of the equipment and how everything is connected at present? Are you getting a poor picture from all sources i.e. sky, DVD and the TV's built-in freeview tuner? Is the Sky box connected up via the DVD recorder or direct? There are two SCART sockets on the rear of the sky+ unit, AV1 should be connected to the TV and the 2nd one connected to the DVD recorder. If your DVD recorder allows RGB passthrough (check the manual to see if it supports RGB in and out) you could connect the sky+ TV SCART to the DVD recorder in and then run a second SCART to the TV. However, to isolate each bit of kit, connect them directly to the TV to see if the problem only occurs at a particular point.

Presumably this problem has only arisen since you installed the new TV?
Can you confirm that your sky+ is set to output RGB. Go to Services>4System Setup>1Picture Settings and ensure it is set to
Picture Format-16:9
Scart Control - On
Video Output - RGB

Check your TV's manual and ensure that the TV's SCART connections can accept a RGB signal. Most can. I would also look at the TV's picture settings, most TV's out of the box are poorly setup although you shouldn't get ghosting.

holdinfoldin · 11-01-2008, 9:43 PM

first off thanks for the help. ok please bear with me 1, i have checked sky settings and they are as you advised. 2, i have a samsung LE37R8 and a ONN dvd recorder model DS-8643. 3 the leads are connected as follows rgb scart on tv is connected to scart output on dvd and scart input on dvd is connected to tv scart on sky + 4,the only time the picture is bad is when i view through the dvd player for example if i watch a film on sky + hard drive it is perfect however if i watch the same thing through scart on tv the picture is poor so i also get a poor recording. hope this covers everything.

holdinfoldin · 11-01-2008, 9:45 PM

oops sorry, yes this has only started since i replaced the old tv.

gblades · 11-01-2008, 9:57 PM

So normally you have the DVD recorder switched off and in that mode it effectivly connects the SCART in to the SCART out and in that mode it works fine. Its only when you turn on the DVD recorder you notice a problem?

I have a Liteon recorder I have the same sort of issue with. Its due to the video compression that is used. Even when not recording it is compressing and then decompressing the video. Switching to a higher recording quality mode helps but the LCD TV is just too good at showing the imperfections.
Exactly the same with my Tivo box.

I am getting Sky HD installed on Sunday which should overcome this problem since it records the digital feed directly so watching a recording is the same as watching it live.

davepuma · 11-01-2008, 10:09 PM

Did you try and connect the sky direct to the TV i.e. not via the DVD recorder?

holdinfoldin · 11-01-2008, 10:53 PM

thanks for your patience, i connected sky direct to tv and it's fine. the set up at the moment is as follows. rgb scart on tv is going to tv scart on sky + box and picture is perfect. vcr scart on sky + box is going to scart output on dvd box (rgb output ) and i can watch dvd all working fine, however when i press source button on dvd remote it goes as usual to input scart on tv but it now says no signal so i have no picture ie sky.

davepuma · 12-01-2008, 1:26 PM

Your DVD recorder should have 2 SCART connections, 1 for in, 1 for out. I'm not familiar with your DVD recorder but have you assigned the inputs? I had to set up my DVD recorder to recognise an external source etc. Have a read of the DVD recorder manual. Also if it doesn't support RGB passthrough and you want to maximise the picture quality of your recordings, you could get a RGB SCART buffer from JS-Technology which will split the RGB output from the sky box i.e. 1 to the TV, 2 to the DVD recorder. The VCR SCART socket on the Sky box only outputs composite video which is the poorest quality video signal. The other option would be to simply get a new DVD recorder that does support RGB passthrough. I'm not au fait with the current DVD recorders but Sony, Pioneer and Panasonic are usually the best models to look at.