Poor quality when using hdmi?

[MikeV#AC]

Recently I went on vacation to Florida and had plenty of pictures to share with my family when I got back so I ordered the hdmi cable. Unfortunately for some reason the video quality came out very poorly as if it was stretched from my screen to the tv. The video looks amazing on the phone btw. I checked all of the settings and it's set to 720p so I can't seem to figure out what is making the videos come out blurry. Any suggestions or should I just return the cable? Anyone else having the same problems?

 

[DaRkL3AD3R]

If the cable is connecting your phone to the TV and you see the image and hear sound, and it doesn't seem totally odd like graphic artifacts of random colors etc, then its DEFINITELY NOT the cable.

Not sure what could be causing it? I mean, you say its outputting at 720p, you say the videos work fine on the phone itself. Have you tried sending the videos to your computer then seeing how they look on a monitor? Maybe you're just used to seeing the videos on a condensed screen and now that you have a measly 720p video up-scaled to who knows how big the TV is, it WILL look worse.

That's like taking a 320x240 resolution image and stretching it up to 1920x1080 resolution. Sure it will be bigger but it will look much worse because now instead of being condensed to a smaller area where it is difficult to see the poor image quality, now its blown up and easier to tell how shoddy it really looks.

I get the feeling this is what the problem is. What size TV are you using?

 

[MikeV#AC]

Thanks for the quick reply I understand what your saying the tv is 42 inches I just don't understand why it has to be so stretched and you can see these big boxes looking as if I am viewing a youtubr video shouldn't it be able to resize itself to come out clear without it being 4.3 inches or is there an option to do so? Also someone said I should change the settings on my tv to 720p and maybe that would fix it?

 

[DaRkL3AD3R]

It might help but I am doubting it will.

What would really help us help you is if you could please take a picture of the TV when you're playing some video and experiencing the problem. Then I will better be able to understand the real problem here.

 

[MikeV#AC]

Okay I get home in a bit im not sure if you can see it through a picture though ill try. If I upload it to facebook it comes out just as crisp as I took it but on the tv it doesn't even look close to how I took it. For example my dad can take a video or picture on his digital camera and puts it into the tv with no change in quality whatsoever and it isn't even hd, on the otherhand my I see a noticeable difference when viewed through hdmi. So it shouldn't resize itself? It only stretches it but if that's how its supposed be then I guess I have no problem but anyway ill upload a picture in about an hour when I get home and maybe you can see

 

[jdbower]

Also check your TV's wide mode (screen format, aspect ratio, whatever your brand calls it). Sometimes mine gets stuck on an inappropriate mode (it will display 16:9 video in a 4:3 window or vice versa).

 

[Mudvayne622]

also try going to Settings...HDMI...HDMI FORMAT, and see what output setting its on. If you have a larger LCD TV its probably 1080p @ 60hz or 120hz i think they even have 240hz now. Anyway since the phone cant output to 1080p nor past 60hz choose 720p @ 60hz. If your using a Plasma TV or an LED i would also suggest this setting. My phone was set to Automatic and I never trust automatic settings. But give 720p @60hz a try and see if it improves. Mine did once i took it off the automatic option. Im using a 42inch Samsung with 1080p @ 60hz and output on the phone set to 720p @ 60hz looks great. Good Luck

 

[dvader]

it's my understanding that the default bit rate is set low and this will result in "sub HD" recording IOW your HD recordings won't look that great.
You can change this if you have ROOT.
I have not personally tried this to see how setting a higher bit rate would turn out, but maybe someone else can chime in with results.

 

[DaRkL3AD3R]

it's my understanding that the default bit rate is set low and this will result in "sub HD" recording IOW your HD recordings won't look that great.
You can change this if you have ROOT.
I have not personally tried this to see how setting a higher bit rate would turn out, but maybe someone else can chime in with results.

If you're talking about the build.prop changes then sadly I don't believe this did anything. The default bit-rate (assuming it even uses that) is 8Mbps, which is fairly high as is. While higher bit-rate does translate to better quality video, I do not feel this is the problem the original poster is having. It sounds more like defect or wrong settings.

 

[itguy09]

My guess is that it's working as designed. At 720p you only have 1280x720 of resolution to display. 1080 isn't much better at 1280x1800. So when you blow that up to 32, 42, 50, etc inches you are going to not get the same quality. Try resizing them on your computer to 1280x720 and see what they look like - my guess would be not that good.

My DSLR has HDMI output and I tried it once. The quality was horrible and I've not done it again. Much easier to transfer the pics to a laptop and show them there.

 

[.46caliber]

TV settings. Your TV is probably set to 16:9 and it should be 4:3. This is the aspect ratio and this is what will cause things to stretch. I have 4 different ratio settings on my TV and each of them makes some noticeable changes.

Have you ever noticed how some HD channels have their logo or name on black bars on either side of the picture? This is to compensate for aspect ratios.

 

[hkklife]

In the limited time I've played with my DX and various HDTVs, I found that the picture looked the best on a smaller 32" 720p set in the bedroom than the larger 1080p, especially for videos. I've also hooked up my Canon digital camera up to those same TVs via miniHDMI and the Canon's 720p was unsurprisingly much better.

As far as still photos are concerned, my biggest gripe is that the pictures don't even take up the fullscreen on a TV, 720p or otherwise! For photos, I was trying to show the in-laws some pictures recently and ended up toggling the "zoom 2" mode on the TV so all of the old folks could see the screen from across the room.

I'm curious to see if these various HDMI issues can be worked around via software or if it's a hardware issue like the Evo's 30fps cap due to HDMI limitations. Fullscreen photo/video/browsing/YouTube/gaming via HDMI would be awesome when in hotel rooms and on vacation!