[hjoseph7]

After constant haggling with the Tint and Color balance, the picture on my cable TV has improved significantly. I had to use a Color Wheel that I used when I was taking some photography courses a few years ago to get the colors right. I still can't say there is an improvement over the old analog picture though ?

[Colbyt]

I suspect you got a standard definition converter. If you are with Crime Warner (TWC) I'm sure you did. They did not convert to help you. They converted to squeeze more bandwidth out of the existing pipes. It processes the old SD signals fairly well. It does not process a true HD signal very well. The major networks are all in HD now so if you are watching through the little magic box some conversion is taking place somewhere.

The only way to get HD Digital with a cable provider is to rent their expensive boxes or buy a TIVO and use a cablecard.

You can get a better picture off the air for FREE with an antenna in most areas of the country.

[kadajawi]

Hi Hjoseph.
Are you using an analog crt tv and connecting composite or component video by way of RCA jacks?
If so the blurring on the faces might indicate a connection problem as Adam indicated.

We used converters etc for a few years. In retrospect I should have got rid of the crt tvs earlier.
I recently changed to a 40 inch hdtv for a few hundreed dollars and the quality is excellent.

Another reason to get rid of the crt tv sooner rather than later, is that disposal is getting difficult.
I had to pay $200 recycling fee to get the big old crt tv taken away.

I have been off cable for some years now, I have an omidirectional active antenna on the roof.
The weaker channels are affected sometimes by weather and aircraft, but the local channels are excellent with 720 and 1080.

Hm. I love CRTs. They have a much more natural image than LCDs, they have more contrast (when they are good), better colors, ...

What connections does your TV have? Maybe there are ones that you can simply use an adapter for so you can connect it properly.

One big problem with cable is that they try to squeeze in too many channels, there's not enough bandwidth. So each channel gets a very low bitrate, which leads to a terrible image quality. I heard in the US antenna gets higher bitrates...? Those receivers are really cheap too, cheaper than cable boxes.

$900 for TV... that's insane. In Germany there's a compulsory 17 Euro fee that every family/household that has a TV needs to pay, but it pays for good, ad free content. Ad supported channels are usually quite terrible, though there are way fewer ads than in the US. If you want, pay TV is available, but it's not necessary IMHO.

[wombat2go]

Hm. I love CRTs. They have a much more natural image than LCDs, they have more contrast (when they are good), better colors, ...

I liked them too, but they are gone now. This article from 2012:
CRTs are disappearing, even from the places where they used to rule -- GCN

There is only one left here and its quality is far, far inferior to the new hdmi TV and the Flexscan monitors.