Very nice little guide on initial set-up!

I personally have a 720p Samsung HL-P5085W "Captain Kirk" pedestal DLP.

Here are my settings:
Mode: Cinema
Color Mode: Warm 2 (nearest to accurate D65 w/o service menu tweaking)
Digital NR: Off
DNIe: Off (Samsung's gimmick mode!)
Film Mode: Off
Aspect Mode: Wide ("Expand" on HDMI, DVI, and VGA to provide 1:1 pixel mapping)

Sharpness at 0 and the rest (Contrast, Brightness, Color) are either judged carefully by eye or Digital Video Essentials NTSC DVD. I also adjusted the Gamma to 0 in the DDP1011 sub-menu in the DLP's service menu. Table 0 is the smoothest gamma curve for Sammy DLPs (mine was on 2), but this adjustment (or any adjustment) involving a display's service menu is advanced and can be very dangerous to the TV's well-being.

I use a DVDO iScan Plus for processing of 480i broadcast NTSC SD channels from my cable box's S-Video output to RGB VGA @ 640x480. I find it's a dramatic improvement over my DLP's ill-calibrated analog processing (that's done by the otherwise very solid Faroudja FLI-2310 chip) and post scaling to 720p. Using the DVDO, I don't have the whole host of problems that I see when cable is fed directly into the TV including heavy edge enhancement, general bluriness, noticable overscan, and even dot crawl. Of course, this might be a little more advanced for your article, but since many HDTVs perform poorly with SD--it's a way to escape the unwatchable SD cable many modern displays produce.

Lyris, perhaps you could touch upon more advanced tidbits (and maybe an explaination of 1:1 pixel mapping) in a future article :-)

Yeah, the way that some TVs bungle the poorest quality sources is insane sometimes. It's almost as if they have a group of 20 technicians trying to configure the processing chipset and they're all trying to make it work, but the end result is just a mess!

I had a Sony KLV-26HG2 LCD (this is going back to 2004) and I was really happy with it overall, but you wouldn't believe what Analogue TV (PAL over here) looked like going into it. It was noise reduced up the wazoo even with the NR function turned off in the Menu so looked more like an anti-drugs commercial than TV.

I actually made sure Faroudja chip's NR was off (surprisingly off as default) in the TV's service menu and it still looks terrible. I mean really, the edge enhancement on the cable box's menus look as bad as that Panasonic 30/30 picture on your article, perhaps even worse.

Craziest thing is I bought the iScan Plus on eBay for $60! Worthy investment.

$60? Lucky! I'm looking into getting a full blown processor later because the TV manufacturers just can't get it right.

I think I'll probably go down the Lumagen route, the promises of ringless scaling sound pretty damn enticing. I can get the newest iScan for less though...

I would test the external processor world more, but the prices are pretty scary! I could purchase an entirely new TV (1080p to boot) for the price of some of them. Plus I always could upgrade my receiver to gain HDMI audio and the new codecs...when units become available. Or become format neutral with the purchase of a Blu-ray player eventually...currently digging HD DVD big time.

The Gefen Home Theater Scaler and Home Theater Scaler Plus look promising given the relatively low price point. Haven't heard anything about the real world performance of them yet though.

As it happens, I pestered Gefen and they're apparently going to send me a review sample of the normal version (not Plus). So keep reading the site! :)

Mr. Burns: Exxxxxcccelent.

...release the hounds... :-P

Very nice guide! Helped us out to set up a new bought TV in short time to a very reasonable quality setting.

PS: We are n00bs concerning TV/Video :p

Thank you, I was a little disappointed with my shiny new 40" w series sony bravia when I played some HD DVDs (through an XBox 360 so I originally thought that was the problem) on it as there was excessive motion blur. This was solved by turning down the NR and I'm very pleased now!
Cheers!

is pixel plus any good...its just that ive ordered a new philips 42 inch lcd (pfl5522) and im hooking it up to an upscaling sony dvd player linked by hdmi..
any thoughts on setting it up would be appreciated

I was also disappointed with my new Bravia KDL-40W3000 and almost felt embarrased at how bad the picture was - especially Sky through an RGB SCART. I followed many of the tips on this site and I'm now smiling again :-) - Thanks for the great tips!!

Waiting in today for the delivery of my new SONY KDL40V3000 LCD TV, and looking around found your page here.
I agree with all of what you say, I've had HD ready LCD TV's before and have learnt the hard way to get the best picture.

HDMI cable is a must for the best picture, got a V+ HD box from virgin media and even watching SD transmission through the V+ via HDMI (@720p or 1080i) is far better than scart (RGB) . BBC HD looks great though, definitely see the difference from SD to HD.

My top tip would be if you have a HD ready or 1080p TV get yourself a PS3, bluray has now won.
And you'll pay that same for a stand alone bluray player, you might as well have that and a games console to boot!

Great page, thanks so much!