My brand new V+ poor compared to SkyHD

[kgollop]

Originally Posted by gary333

Cheers for info. I have tried this different settings but you still don't get the bars as you do on terrestrial. You do on say futurma and simpsons but they are the vertical bars. The box is getting rid of the horizontal bars.

I thought Dot by Dot should be used as this ensures the TV does nothing to the picture? Full stretches the picture even more.

I had a lot of problems with the TV with ghosting with SkyHD at first. This was fixed by turning DNR, Film mode, and Active Contrast off. These are still off now.

I'm not really sure what you mean by horizontal bars? You'll see them on analogue as that is not a widescreen broadcast, you'll see 14:9 letterboxed in a 4:3 frame on say BBC if I remember rightly (been a while since I watched analogue!). On digital the programmes should be widescreen (16:9) so should take up the whole screen and there shouldn't be any borders. There are a few exceptions, with 4:3 programs like Simpsons as you rightly say. There are a few 4:3 channels left too (MTV is one example - you may see letter boxed content here).

Personally I'd recommend not using the "Wide" settings on 720P/1080i as these will stretch the 4:3 images to fill the screen. I prefer to watch the programs in the correct aspect ratio. These are the only stretch/zoom options on the V+, anything else must be on your TV I'd think?

[Stuart]

Originally Posted by gary333

I have seen a lot on these forums that the Samsung seems to be a bit better. Is there a reason why I didn't get one (i only had it installed on the 16th).

The reason is simple. Although they have two v+ boxes in use, Virgin do not offer a choice. While the engineer may have both models in his van and be willing to offer you a choice, more often than not, you get what the engineer happens to have in his van.

[joff81]

Originally Posted by Stuart C

The reason is simple. Although they have two v+ boxes in use, Virgin do not offer a choice. While the engineer may have both models in his van and be willing to offer you a choice, more often than not, you get what the engineer happens to have in his van.

like i mentioned before there is very little difference between the SA and Samsung boxes in terms of image quality. the differences between the 2 ive seen can even be put down to user preference in tv calibaration rather then the boxes themsleves.
the thing is most people who have had both boxes are having a faulty box swapped so the samsung is bound to be better as its a fully working box.
remember they are both using the same compression, bandwidth, signal that is supplied from VM so the limiting factor is VM.

after calibration there will be hardly any difference at all between the image produced by both boxes (other than the SA box has the 1080i menu bug making the menus slightly soft). the box performs better as in remote response is faster and there in less lag with the box in general but image is pretty much the same.
we as human are funny things and can be sure we see an improvement in something just because its new and i think this is what most people are doing with the Samsung box

[Stuart]

I wasn't actually saying one box is better than the other.

[gordyb]

I find the samsung box very poor in terms of sd compared to the SA V+.