Wide World of Women

I just bought a new RCA 24 in. LED LCD for my bedroom and am really disappointed in the picture quality of my non-HD channels. My select HD channels are great, but the SD channels are far worse than my 15-year old Magnavox got. Is there anything I can do to improve this besides watching in 4:3? Even 4:3 is worse than my old TV. Any tips to get a better SD picture?

P.S. I'm on DirectTV and they don't cary any of the shopping channels in HD.

Wish I could help you. I have DirecTV also, and adjust my TV almost daily and haven't found any settings that will get a decent quality picture when watching the SD channels. When I signed up for DirecTV in January of 2008, the SD picture quality was decent, but they in 2009 they did sometime that made them almost unwatchable.

That sucks. If I would've known all this I never would have bought a new TV and would have stuck with my ancient one. While I am gaining quailty on a few select HD channels I watch, I am losing quailty on the standard channels. Thanks for help Laker.

DirecTV is suppose to be adding more basic HD channels in a "few weeks", and later this year. Hopefully they add the ones we watch. An option you might consider, is subscribing to the lowest tier of your local cable company. I subscribe to the lowest tier of cable, and watch QVC on its cable QAM channel the PQ is almost as good as the HD channel.

That's at least encouraging to hear Laker. Of course I hope Direct TV ups the shopping channels to HD first. I'd also like to see VH-1 Classic. I will look into the cable thing you mentioned too. Thanks for the help.

The reason your standard definition looks so much worse on your TV is that you are still viewing a very low resolution source on a high resolution device. The quality is the same as it was before it is now just bigger. Check your TV settings and see if it offers a 4:3 mode, it will shrink your viewing area on your TV but video won't be rendered in wide screen and will have a sharper appearance.