I digitized a clients Hi8 family movie. He's playing the DV files in Windows Media Player on his laptop which look fine, but when he runs an HDMI cable to his 50" HDTV, the quality is poor and periodically a blurry wavy distortion runs through it. HDTV is mirroring the laptop screen, acting like an external monitor. The laptop is a new top of the line Toshiba and I'm sure there is nothing wrong with digitized footage.

When he told me over the phone, I thought it was because the image is being enlarged, but after I saw it for myself, something more is going on especially the weird periodic distortion that isn't on the original footage. We looked through the TV menu with no luck.

Can anyone give me a clue to whats going on? I have a feeling the HDTV to blame.

Hard to say without actually seeing the distortion but simple deductive logic would point to the TV or the cable. If the TV and the PC both have VGA connections, try connecting it that way and see if the problem still exists.