MovieChat Forums > Home Theater Equipment > What's wrong with the picture?

What's wrong with the picture?

posted 12 years ago by Sylvie17
5 replies | jump to latest

I have a regular TV hooked up to a simple DVD player. Whenever I watch a DVD, the picture is too dark whenever the story takes place in the evening/night or in a dark place-but otherwise the picture is fine. I just got through watching The Woman in Black, and couldn't make much of anything out since most of the action takes place in a spooky haunted house. Is this a problem with the TV or the DVD player? Is there anything I can do to fix it or do I need to replace one of them? I don't have any problem watching shows on the TV alone, btw. Thanks in advance for any input.

[–] Semen_Monster 12 years ago

Most probably, it's the settings in the TVs menu that's need to be adjusted. Usually you must calibrate the picture to suit the kind of equipment you have hooked up. Cant use the exact same settings that you use for TV cable, satellite, HDTV airing. etc. Sometimes the difference in calibration is minor but can have a great affect on picture quality.

I would advise you to play around with the contrast, brightness settings. Start with setting the bars to the middle and adjust from there. Test on both bright and dark pictures until you are happy with the settings for both.

Could you be more specific about what kind of TV, DVD and cables you hocked up between the equipment?

"Don't piss down my back and tell me it's raining"!

[–] Sylvie17 12 years ago

I have a Sharp TV, a JVC DVD player and a mini box from my cable company that we got back when antennas went out of style. I'm not sure, but I think I had this problem even back before that. I don't use the remote control that came with the TV, but the one the cable co provided. So I'm not sure I can adjust the contrast etc anymore.

[–] dangus 12 years ago

DVD players often have some picture settings that can be adjusted.

Keep in mind that "brightness" controls the black level (obviously), and "contrast" sets the maximum brightness (white level). So, maybe you can turn up the brightness on the DVD player output, rather than have to adjust the TV every time. Alternatively, some TVs have a bunch of different picture presets (movie, sports, pro, etc) which can have different contrast and brightness levels, colour temperature, etc; maybe you can optimize one of those for DVD.

The root cause may be a problem with DVD encoding... a lot of DVDs seem to cut off the gray levels too abruptly, so there's a black puddle effect rather than a gradual transition from grays to pure black.

[–] JaBeR79 12 years ago

Search for RGB color and uncheck it

[–] hellhound 12 years ago

I had the same problem. I was watching Mandingo and it was impossible to make out Mede's butt in the sex scene. I have a Pioneer DV 525.First I thought that there was a problem in my TV. Later I decided to try with a different DVD player and I used Trimax DVD player 6600 and picture was incredibly clear.( I connected the player with a scart.)