picture ok but not great.

[adm]

I must clarify. SD does not look like HD with the Zgemma and apologies for that comment. It just looks better. I have a buddy of mine who also switched from vu to zgemma and he figures the same. Maybe its an optical illusion or maybe tuner technology is developing?

Nothing to do with tuners. With digital you either get all of the information or the picture start breaking up in a spectacular (annoying) way. Unlike analogue TV the picture doesn't degrade gracefully - digital just falls over the edge and often it's all or nothing.

What can make a difference is which box is doing the up scaling or format change. You may find that your TV has a better processing engine than your box, or visa versa. As UK TV is broadcast interlaced and at 50Hz it is sensible to set your AV settings for interlaced (rather than progressive [p]) and 50Hz (rather than maybe 60Hz). Any other settings may result in the box/TV having to drop information, make up intermediate pictures and having to apply filtering as a result. Once picture quality is lost in one stage of conversion or poor up-scaling nothing afterwards in the chain can improve it.

 

[Rob van der Does]

Well, there can be a difference depending on the resolution of the source.
An HD source will be displayed as-is. The box will not interfere with the picture at all.
SD contents on the other hand will be manipulated: rescaling is the lest that needs to be done. And then indeed differences between boxes could show, just as can be the case when you let the TV do the scaling (by using AutoResolution).