About a year ago I bought a new LG 4KUHD TV for the living room and I always though it didn't look quite as good as it did at Best Buy I adjusted the settings on the TV, but it still didn't seem much better than the older 720P TV that broke that it was replacing. Fast forward to now the TV in the bedroom went tits up a few weeks ago and the wife has been pestering me to replace it because she doesn't always care for the "man" shit I like to watch. I bought a cheaper HD 1080P and while setting it up I noticed it said that the incoming signal from the cable box was 720P(AT&T U-Verse) I didn't realize that it could be adjusted and assumed it automatically sent the highest HD signal it could to the TV..........Sorry this has gotten long.....So this was AT&T U-verse I figured out how to adjust the HD output and switched it to 1080P and damn definitely looks better so I went to the TV in the living room and sure enough it was also set at 720P.........so this whole time we have had AT&T U-verse and paid extra money for a better HD picture we have only been getting 720P.....lol This past Friday we switched to xfinity (because AT&T U-verse internet sucks) and the first thing I did was check to see what the HD setting was on the cables boxes and sure enough 720P and they don't make it known they just set you up and say "Have a nice day enjoy your new cable service" The point of my post is I bet there are a lot of people out there thinking (or not} that they are getting the best HD pic possible and don't even realize they are only getting 720P because the cable company's I am sure want people pulling as little bandwidth as possible so its probably a "don't ask don't tell" type of policy. Anyway just wanted to share my PSA on something some of you may or may not have known or even thought about!
Cable Boxes Default at 720P Did You Know That? (Long Read)
- Thread starter Steel+Killer
- Start date
Mine show the input and show what resolution I'm getting. Some games will only pull 720p, used to be cable tv would only pull 480i but the TV would upscale that to 1080i. Some channels I think will still only pull 720p for certain reasons.
But yeah, you can always go into the settings and change that. I want to say before I cut cable off last week I had 1080p.
With Netflix and Amazon, some shows or movies will only come in at certain resolutions too kinda like some of the games and there's nothing you can really do about it.
Press "input" on your remote, it should show the input and resolution you are getting, and if the picture is modified (dot by dot, stretch, etc.).
But yeah, you can always go into the settings and change that. I want to say before I cut cable off last week I had 1080p.
With Netflix and Amazon, some shows or movies will only come in at certain resolutions too kinda like some of the games and there's nothing you can really do about it.
Press "input" on your remote, it should show the input and resolution you are getting, and if the picture is modified (dot by dot, stretch, etc.).
Just know that if the input itself is lower then the best you may be able to do is upscale it to 1080i, but IMO 720P looks better than 1080i. 1080P is a different story. I see this on games and on streaming video more often than anything else though.
But if you set your settings to go for the highest available resolution and set it up for "dot by dot" then you'll get the best picture.
I've been told that for cable, a component cable is better than HDMI. I don't know the truth to that but it may be worth asking about. I used it because I couldn't get enough HDMI ran that far and ran out of inputs on an older TV (all my shit is ran through the wall and into a closet so it's clean looking). I think component does better for longer runs too. Comcast told me this a while back, may be different now, may be he had his shit mixed up.
HDMI is far superior to component which is no different than any other analogue interconnect. Component cable is just packaged as a set of 3 with color coded connectors so you don't screw it up.
HDMI is designed for digital signal transmission. Carries both video and audio unlike component which is video only.
HDMI has evolved a lot since its introduction in 2003.
Yeah, this advice about the component cable was a long time ago. I always though HDMI was best too but figured it worth mentioning. I think it was because back then you couldn't get 1080P on cable, most of it was 480i actually and had to be upscaled, so perhaps component did work better on the earlier lower resolution setups.
There may be something to using component over HDMI if the run is too long --like 30ft. or longer. The cables get costly and I understand the quality goes down the longer it is. At some point I suppose a component may work better. This may have been addressed though as well. It's been a long time since I had to buy TV related stuff.
My best setup is actually an older LED with a short, quality HDMI cable and optical audio. I use a PS4 for watching movies on, playing games, Netflix, etc.
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