how many of us care about PQ etc

[charlesr]

noobish did mention resolution as well by which I presume means SD vs HD Vs ED etc.

[noobish hat]

yay! I've built the most boring thread of the year.

[Matt]

Fair enough, I overlooked that bit. Hope this doesn't become the usual "I love the Wii, HD is killing gaming" nonsense

[prinnysquad]

Well, speaking personally, I don't really mind the picture quality on games/dvds, as long as it's decent enough. If somebody can show me in layman's terms, and at a cheap price, how to improve a picture, then I'd give it a whirl. Conversely, if someone said I have to have an £xxx tv to 'watch the picture at it was intended' (or something similarly pompous), then I'd say, piss off, that's £xxx I could spend on other stuff.

I have to ask myself the question - does a slightly better picture increase my enjoyment of a media so much that I'd be willing to fork out significantly for it? Answer: Not really. The effort/cost payoff isn't enough.

[Spatial]

Are you supposed to be browsing a gaming forum from work?

Nope, which is why it's best not to have anything like that which draws attention to it.

[Matt]

Well, speaking personally, I don't really mind the picture quality on games/dvds, as long as it's decent enough. If somebody can show me in layman's terms, and at a cheap price, how to improve a picture, then I'd give it a whirl. Conversely, if someone said I have to have an ?xxx tv to 'watch the picture at it was intended' (or something similarly pompous), then I'd say, piss off, that's ?xxx I could spend on other stuff.

I have to ask myself the question - does a slightly better picture increase my enjoyment of a media so much that I'd be willing to fork out significantly for it? Answer: Not really. The effort/cost payoff isn't enough.

Are we talking a "slightly" better picture though? I get the impression the OP wasn't talking fractions here.

Any semi decent HD set can be set up well if you follow a guide. Andrewfee posted a nice guide in one of the threads on this forum. Somewhere. That's a good place to start. I've only a Samsung 768 set, so I'm not talking state of the art, X thousands of pounds myself. The difference between the picture I have now, the picture out of the box, is stunning. Took a small amount of playing around with it, and HDMI cables

[prinnysquad]

Oh yeah, on the 360 I upgraded from the standard lead through a portable to one of those leads that connects to a widescreen pc monitor. It wasn't expensive per se because I bought it during a house move funded by the unsecured loan. It's a massive increase and worth the money. I needed a bit of help understanding what monitor to buy, but it's been a good choice. However, I can't see me spending any more because the benefit would only be marginal.

[teddymeow]

I care seeing as the consoles I own can output in HD and the screen I own can display HD signals so I would like it if the stuff I put on it looks as good as it can.

I'm not someone who sits there and spends hours adjusting the contrast / brightness etc to get the optimal picture but what I have done looks pretty good to my eyes.

I can tell the difference between upscaled DVD and Blu-ray / HD-DVD on my TV (46" Bravia) so, if possible, I buy everything I can on Blu-ray. The only thing I have bought on DVD recently are TV series that aren't on Blu-ray like Bones or American Dad. Thing is, I'll happily watch a DVD upscaled and totally forget that it isn't HD super-amazing-sharp-o-vision until I then go and play a game or watch something that is in actual HD.

It hurts my eyes a little to use an SD console on an HDTV so I have a CRT in the corner of the living room on which I play G3 and PS2 (my DC is setup through VGA).

[sj33]

There is the reality that so many of us here do actually see the different straight away, because we know what we're looking for. I can look at a picture from viewing distance and tell straight away if I'm looking at Composite or RGB, simply because of the visual anomalities that go with it. I'm sure a lot of people here can too. And when you reach that stage, it's a bit difficult to ignore it.

[Matt]

Oh yeah, on the 360 I upgraded from the standard lead through a portable to one of those leads that connects to a widescreen pc monitor. It wasn't expensive per se because I bought it during a house move funded by the unsecured loan. It's a massive increase and worth the money. I needed a bit of help understanding what monitor to buy, but it's been a good choice. However, I can't see me spending any more because the benefit would only be marginal.

Absolutely. I think that's the same with most things - there gets to a point where the increase in price doesn't warrant the percentile increase in quality. I figure by now, any name brand HD set will look amazing and personally, I'd not spend say ?1500 on a 40" when I could buy a quality one for ?600 - likely you'd only notice a minimal difference if they've viewed side by side.

Saying that, those new LEDs do look tempting. But I'll stop that train of thought right now....

[ETC]

I do to a point. Like most peeps here I have a hd set but I wouldn't pay the earth for the difference between my 500 quid 1080p set with a 20 quid hdmi and a kuro etc with gold megabucks hdmi

[Matt]

My HDMI leads were £1.99 each

[Extra Terrestrial]

I do care to an extent - after all, I didn't pay ?1200 for my HDTV way back in 2006 for nothing - however, I'm not overly fussed either, if that makes sense.

[Ajay1986]

One of my mates still has to play his PS3 on a 32" CRT and I know having seen it i could never go back to not having an HD TV for the PS3/360.

On the flip side all the older consoles look pretty much terrible on LCD TVs as far as I can see. The PS2 looks really bad on my LCD and i've tried every cable type there is available.

I never used to be so fussed its only since I got my LCD that I seem to be constantly trying to tweak it to get the best picture I can.

[Decider-VT]

I had a night and day moment when I connected my PS2 up to my CRT over the weekend and wondered why Ridge Racer 4 looked terrible. Then I realised that I'd plugged the PS2 into the wrong SCART socket, changed it over to RGB SCART and saw and immediate and bold improvement in PQ. Spent the rest of the afternoon gaming in crisp CRT goodness.

It was funny to think that so many of my fond gaming memories were over composite or RF with lots of colour bleeding. I don't think I could ever go back, knowing the difference now. Having a friend demonstrate the superior output of an NTSC SNES was the starting point for me to get into import gaming, so good PQ itself has proven to be an influential factor in how my collection has grown over the last few years.