NTSC needs to die, already.

August 27, 2008 2:47 PM

My LCD TV, capable of displaying up to 720p content, doesn't (properly) deinterlace 480i cable content. What do I do?

I have an Insignia NS-LCD19 television hooked up directly to cable (not through a box). I receive a mix of content from Comcast, including 720p and 480p content that looks fine and 480i content that looks awful and is full of jaggies. I have basic cable for free because the installer decided to split the cable (from my original work order for cable to be laid and cable internet set up) in order to compensate me for his godawful mechanical skills and the fact that I had to spend most of a day spackling and painting to fix the damage he did to the wall.

So getting a cable box isn't an option, because a) I don't/won't pay for cable and b) the TV should do the deinterlacing anyway, as far as I'm aware. I've looked through all the menus as well as the TVs manual and it doesn't seem like I can change any deinterlacing settings. What can I do for free or for very cheap that will result in the display of properly deinterlaced content on my TV? Am I missing something fundamental either in setting up the TV or otherwise?

posted by Inspector.Gadget to technology (5 comments total)

Analog cable/OTA broadcasts look awful, no matter what. Some televisions have better video processors for handling the deinterlacing and sharpening of the picture. Also, Insignia is Best Buy's in-house electronics brand and is not exactly top-notch in the quality department.

You could try using a TV tuner card to your computer and have it do the deinterlacing for you (that is, if you have a computer in the same room). Otherwise, you could see if there is a difference using the splitting the coax and running it to a VCR and connecting that to the LCD TV through S-Video or composite video.
posted by cgomez at 3:11 PM on August 27, 2008

How are you connecting to your TV? Try another method if available (HDMI, Component, VGA, etc...) Some TVs don't handle deinterlacing over certain inputs. That'd be the cheapest way to troubleshoot.
posted by wongcorgi at 3:24 PM on August 27, 2008

Um, welcome to the world of LCD TVs. LCDs display best at their native resolution; anything lower and it's faking it, since the resolution is a physical limitation based on the number of pixels. Compared to a CRT, which can choose what size and how many pixels to actually draw.

That's why my CRT/rear-projection 54" HD TV renders old, crap 480 content just like it always did, and everything old looks like death on my friend's 42" LCD. It tries to upscale, but it's exactly like you'd think zooming an image looks. Spreading out pixel data over a number of other pixels causes it to look bad. Not NTSC's fault, either way. :-)
posted by disillusioned at 4:20 PM on August 27, 2008

is it comcast?
posted by patnok at 4:58 PM on August 27, 2008

Also, Insignia is Best Buy's in-house electronics brand and is not exactly top-notch in the quality department.
*punches self for being a noob and not doing my research*

You could try using a TV tuner card to your computer and have it do the deinterlacing for you.
I think I may end up doing this, especially if I can figure out a way to stream it to my Xbox 360 for playback.

How are you connecting to your TV?

Coax line, directly.

is it comcast?

They do compress the shit out of all their content, but so far that's only shown up as intermittent blocking. The interlacing issue is on my end.
posted by Inspector.Gadget at 5:51 PM on August 27, 2008