I am tech challennged so I'm hoping someone here can help. My mother bought the 37" Sylvania HDTV at Sam's (model LD370SC8). It came w/ the 3 part cable (yellow, red, blue) but no HDMI calbe (not sure what that does!). When I hooked it up to the rabbit ears just to test it out, the picture was great. However, when I hooked it up to the Direct TV box, the picture is terrible. It lloks like I took my glasses off to watch TV! Live programs, especially moving things like NASCAR and football games, are worse than pre-recorded shows. The moving things (cars, players etc) are boxy/pixelated looking, and faces are not very sharp (you cna't even make out their eyes well). Is the problem w/ the TV or the Direct TV do you think? Do I need the HDMI cables? Any suggestions would be great!
You need a HD DirecTV box. Call them up and they'll hook you up. It's 9.99 more a month for basic HD programming, so be prepared for that.
Did you go into your Directv setup and let it know you now were hooking up an HDTV instead of the old SD model? Needs to be done. I've got mine hooked up to Dish using component cables and an HDMI hookup. I get a better picture using the component hookups. It's different for each TV and each viewer so experiment. Good luck. Sorry about that. I assumed you already had HD enabled on Directv. Has to be done first.
sounds like you were getting a true HD picture while you were using the rabbit ears while you got the fuzzy picture when hooked up to the box. I got the regular satellite box on mine and i get the same symptoms. i switched to the rabbit ears when watching football on the regular channels
I thought you didn't have to pay the extra if you don't want the HD channels, that you could still get the regular channels? She doesn't want the extra HD channels, just the ones she was getting on the old TV. The only reason she got the TV in the first place is because hers broke and no one has regular TVs in Robeson County anymore, so she has no other option. lgb0250, do you pay the extra per month? Man, why couldn't they just leave TVs alone???? They worked just fine before all this HDTV, DTV mess - LOL!
Yes I do, but that's because I do want the extra channels. I'm not sure about Directv, been a few years since I had them, but with Dish I have an OTA tuner in my 622 receiver where I can scan the local digital channels into my system and have access to them also. I have a regular antenna hooked up to my Dish receiver for this. The true digital picture is much better than anything either Dish or Directv offers. They tend to compress their signals so much it effects the picture quality greatly. Jan 2009 everything goes digital. Should be an improvement IMHO.
you should still be able to get good picture without paying HD it just won't be hd but a better quality picture. There are several adjustments that can be made on the TV itself also. Maybe the manual shows the hook up and options.
If you do keep the regular receiver your picture will continue to be bad. You'll have to at least change out to an HD receiver even if you don't get the HD channels to get the regular channels to be clear.
Oh, OK! So I guess I will need to call them when I go home for Christmas and see about that. I'm sure that will put her on a 2 yr contract again!
