Have your say & ask the experts

A forum has been started elsewhere about what the sharpness should be set to on your TV.

An argument is that it should be set to zero on Blu-ray, as it is an 'enhancement' that is not needed, or desired.

Is there a technical  viewpoint that corroberates this view?

While watching Blu-ray or DVDs, adjusting the sharpness does make a big difference.

As you adjust up from zero you can see artefacts forming.

On CRTs (that I have owned) there was no option to change the sharpness.

Why is this needed now?

buffalo bill:

While watching Blu-ray or DVDs, adjusting the sharpness does make a big difference.

As you adjust up from zero you can see artefacts forming.

On CRTs (that I have owned) there was no option to change the sharpness.

Why is this needed now?

 

Because some people are bought into the (wrong) fact that higher sharpness = a better picture. Same reason most tvs now come with an unbelievable amount of 'processing modes' (contrast enhance etc). Nearly all of them are at detriment to TRUE picture quality

I guess it depends on what you mean by "sharpness". In more recent products the old sharpness control has been replaced or augmented by "detail" and/or "edge/contour" enhancement setting functions. Depending on the product these operate in a different way to the old 2D luma sharpness process that typically results in halo type artefacts when used. With native HD material the new enhancement processing work at a pixel level around zone plate boundires.  This processing can result in the illusion of "sharper" focus or an increase in detail and dimmensinoality. It's really just a processing trick but some people like the result and with DVD it can still lead to noticeable halo artefacts particulary as  the image size increases.

Dasp

I was hoping someone would come up with something technical.

Thanks.

This magazine gave the Panasonic V10 ( or was it G10?) a poor review on Blu-ray performance.

Could this be because it was on the default sharp setting.  Would it have faired better with zero sharpness?

Difficult to say without first hand observation. 

Some people prefer the more processed image look and thus it may be a case of "preference" v "reference".  I've seen similar reviews in this mag on other displays that have poor colour accuracy relative to  the reference standards yet the reviewer claimed the colour performance was better on the inaccurate product.

Dasp

buffalo bill:

While watching Blu-ray or DVDs, adjusting the sharpness does make a big difference.

As you adjust up from zero you can see artefacts forming.

On CRTs (that I have owned) there was no option to change the sharpness.

Why is this needed now?

 

It was normally preset in the design, but now we have so many different video sources it's desirable to make it adjustable.

When I got my samsung LE32A456 I imediatly went serching for profetionaly calibrated settings for it alas there isnt any posted, but what I got from reading setings posted on various sites on on lots of different tvs is that those in the know generaly have sharpnes set between 0 to 20 (max) out of 100.

In my own experience this works quite well for SD sources and does no harm to HD, and that the edge enhancement feature on my set helped my poor old V box no end (the pictures that bad processing actually benefits it!) but it makes no difference on SKY HD. you could use a movie with a THX calibration feature (like star wars) to set the sharpness and see how that goes

aliEnRIK:

I agree with heros ~ if the tvs sharpness DOES make a difference then set using a THX disc so that you dont get 'convergence errors'

I don't think you know what convergence errors are. If you did, you'd also know they can't occur on a plasma or LCD screen.