Picture quality on 26" panasonic

[Ciaran]

Hi gents

I bought a 26" Panasonic TX26LXD80 for the kitchen about 6 months ago and I'm not overly impressed with the picture quality. I've a sky + box attached through a scart lead.

Sometimes the picture is a bit blury or the colours seem distorted - pardon my crap explanation. Put it this way, my old crt panasonic was better.

Should I invest in a more expensive scart lead or is there something in the set up I should change.

Thanks
Ciaran

[mackie1]

Have you definitely set the scart output from the Sky box to be RGB instead of Composite/CVBS?

[Ciaran]

mackie1 said:

Have you definitely set the scart output from the Sky box to be RGB instead of Composite/CVBS?

Apologies, but how do I know if I haven't?

[cjs]

Ciaran said:

mackie1 said:

Have you definitely set the scart output from the Sky box to be RGB instead of Composite/CVBS?

Apologies, but how do I know if I haven't?

It's in the services menu, go to picture and make sure the video output is set to RGB rather than PAL. Also make sure the format is 16/9 for your widescreen TV. Make sure you save the changes at the bottom of the menu.

[Ciaran]

Thanks, I'll give that a go and report back.

[JustinP1]

Scart is crap.

It is the Sky installers weapon of choice as they come in the box for free.

However, if you can use S-Video, £5 for the cable will get you a better picture straight away. It doesn't carry audio though, but with a bit of luck your TV will have input for this.

[mackie1]

Component > RGB > S-Video > Composite

S-Video only splits chroma and luma into separate signals, RGB is superior.

[JustinP1]

mackie1 said:

Component > RGB > S-Video > Composite

S-Video only splits chroma and luma into separate signals, RGB is superior.

Maybe thats my experience from my own testing - I don't think both source and TV had RGB.

Advice to the OP would be to try RGB first, failing that in AB testing S-Video came up tops on both a plasma and big CRT out of my Sky box.

[mackie1]

I believe scart can carry S-Video too but normally it's either RGB or composite and composite is way worse than S-Video so that's probably what you were seeing.