How to upscale week cable system to HD TV?

I have just bought the new Sharp 32GA6E HD LCD television. I've learned that my cable operator here in France, NOOS CABLE, doesn't as yet send out high def signals, so my reception is rather poor. I've connected the SCART peritel from the cable box directly to the TV. Is there anything that i can to do get better reception and enjoy what this TV is capable of doing. Movie images now almost appear as videotape. I'm told by the seller of the TV that its the quality of the signal. Any suggestions.
Thanks

SD signals look really bad on HD screens, especially HD LCD screens. I don't think there will be anything you can do to improve that to be honest.

First make sure your cable box is configured to output via RGB over the SCART and not composite.

This stand alone video upscaler/processor probably costs way more than what your panel did
http://www.onevideo.co.uk/visionpro-...ler-p-398.html

A cheaper option is to run a card like this in a PC
http://www.pluggedin.tv/sweetspot/

Plenty for you to read over here :)
http://www.avforums.com/

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Funkstar

SD signals look really bad on HD screens, especially HD LCD screens. I don't think there will be anything you can do to improve that to be honest.

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thats not really true, as mags and real life shows, push a decent sd source into an lcd and it'll shine - they are more prone to looking bad on low quality stuff though

Which is the problem the OP has.

Personally, from the screens i see in retail stores, LCDs - both SD and HD panels - generally look terrible when fed with an SD signal, even coming from DVD.

wanna know the trick to a large LCD TV?

sit back. a normal distance. like, on a sofa

up close, SD looks painful on an HD LCD. from a sofa, it's fine

SD can easily look good on a HD screen, the only reason it wouldn't is where the upscaling process undertaken by your screen is so poor that rather than use the pixels to enhance detail present in the image, it actually softens and adds artefacts.

The Lumagen linked to earlier is the best dedicated processing I've seen for less than 2k. There is an £800 "budget" (!) version available, but yeah we're still talking big money solutions rather than simpler tricks you can try.

First I would check for RGB, make sure the STB you use sends RGB out, that you are using a good quality, fully wired scart lead, and that the scart sockets on both the TV and STB are RGB capable ones.

Secondly look at settings. The Sharp TVs want their backlights turned down to see a decent amount of black level and detail. Sharpness set waaaay down (digital sharpness enhancement really only adds noise in the form of ringing, not the same as simply doing better processing to retain more picture detail). Tone colour down too.

At least now you will be seeing more like what the TV is capable of. Although I am said to say that no matter what the hype, even the most expensive LCD TV in my opinion cannot give the picture satisfaction of just a basic SD plasma like a Panasonic 42PWD8 for example. I've learned that the hard way.

Could you prehaps try to explain exactly what of the picture is annoying you the most? I know it isn't easy but is it colour? Blacks? Sharpness? Motion noise? Image lag/blur? Ringing around edges of objects? Weird compression edges around stuff? Wavey lines in the image? Flickering? Image looks like it's made up of a load of moving dots (e..g mosquito noise)?