Why does SD footage look so bad on an HDTV monitor?

It looks great on mine: a Toshiba 37 HD CRT TV that's several years old now. SD should be line doubled or uprezzed and look better on an HD TV than it does on a regular SD set. Something must be set up wrong.

Thanks for responding, you mentioned CRT, this is an LCD and it looks worse than on a little 13" tv. Source is an XL1S and a DVX100A. Hoping someone else might have an idea why. Not sure what there is to setup I know it will utilize a variety resolutions but I don't see any way to select them.

Try renting "Supersize Me", "Open Water" or any movie that was shot with a mini DV camera and see how it looks when you watch the movie. You should be able to get it to look at least that good!

Why does SD footage look so bad on an HDTV monitor?

After reading numerous messages on several discussion forums about the performance of various HDTV monitors, one thing is apparent: Some makes and models display SD sources very well and some do so poorly. Before I purchased an HDTV last year, I spent some time checking out every model I could. How well they displayed SD was given equal importance to their HD picture quality. After I spent two months annoying all the local sales people, I narrowed it down to CRTs by Sony, Panasonic and JVC. I finally chose a JVC AV-30W585. It did the best job with SD sources. It converts every input to 1080i (although none of the current consumer HD monitors actually can resolve that many lines on their screens). It makes even mediocre SD inputs look better than they would on a good SD monitor. However, I can't use it for DV editing, as it makes the footage look too good and I can't judge it properly. I have to use an SD monitor for that purpose.

This JVC has a cinema-expansion mode, that zooms the 4:3 picture to full 16:9, without distortion, although some of the image is lost at top and bottom. My DV footage still looks very sharp when expanded like this on the 30W585 and can pass as a poor man's HDTV source. I've used a resolution chart with my VX2100 to measure the sharpness of the expanded SD picture on this monitor. Even though only about 75% of the original scanning lines of the 4:3 recording mode contribute to the 16:9 picture, it shows an apparent horizontal resolution of about 450 lines. The vertical resolution seems to actually be higher than the 480 lines of an NTSC display in SD. This is due in part to the excellent computerized line restructuring system of the JVC HD monitor in upshifting to 1080i.

Although the clipping of the top and bottom of the image and then expanding it, primarily reduces the vertical resolution, it seems that the horizontal res is also lowered by the expansion. When the picture is expanded to 16:9, only about 385 scanning lines of the original 480 are used, dropping the vertical res a noticable amount when viewed on an SD widescreen monitor. However, the horizontal res you could see on an SD widescreen is also reduced by this clipping and expansion as the pixel points that existed on the original source are farther apart on each line. But, the upshift restructuring of this JVC HDTV restores a good deal of both measures of apparent resolution, that would otherwise be lost.

This one is a Hewlett Packard HPLC2640N, I liked it for it's DVI input and in
most cases it is great. I think I may be contributing to the problem. In Vegas
it looks good, I have a small Pany for capturing and have the composite out going to the composite in on the tv, this must be what is killing the resolution.
I did some crane testing last night and played it back on this tv and a little 13" crt and I could barely watch the footage on the HP. I never thought about the editing issue with a tv like this but I do like the larger desktop.

I have a 28" JVC HDTV (UK) which naturally rescales everything to 900i (regardless of it being 480p/576p/1080i) in a 3x75hz field. If you input via 1080i tho it overrides a few of its internal processes and makes the image look great to me. I run a ton of media in via my xbox with a media player setup, and I have no complaints.

The JVC sets are superb. Its DIST system is simply amazing. I have a JVC HV-32P37 CRT that can also display HD. Everything is upconverted it seems (like you say to 900i) although I think it can actually display the full 1080 lines via the component inputs. I'd have to check the engineering menu if I ever find a HD source to put into it!

The set makes some SD sources look almost like high def. If you really want to be blown away watch the IMAX Super Speedway film on your JVC. It's absolutely mind blowing, and on first look I'd defy anyone to tell me it wasn't HD!

Standard def has a ot more capability than people realise.

As for the LCD's, I would stay well away from them. LCD's are simply no good. They can't reproduce the full colour spectrum that CRT's can. I haven't been even remotely impressed by any LCD TV I hae seen. If you absolutely must get a thin TV I would wait until the newer SED and LED sets come out that can reproduce more colours than current CRTs.

Yep, LCD is the problem, think I'll take it back, I was after a larger desktop.