Guess Watch Quality

Guess Watch Quality

The playback of my MiniDV camcorder looks better in the LCD than it does on the TV. It's worse on the TV why?

I was just wondering why the playback on the TV through the MiniDV camcorder has worse quality than when I'm watching it on the LCD? For example my cat is grey with black stripes and when I play the recording back on the TV he's almost solid black, but at the same time I open the LCD and watch the recording and it's showing all his stripes and it looks great. The color and resolution seem to get worse during playback on the TV, why?

Also, which quality will be transfered to my computer for editing? I figured the audio video cables degraded the quality from the recording to the TV, but that was just my guess.
It's not the TV, trust me.

All TVs (or any kind of display) display pictures differently. Go into an electronics store next time and look at the TVs. Some will look greener, bluer, yellower, darker, etc. One solution is to adjust your TV's settings until you saw your cat's stripes, but that only solves it for your TV. Once you transfer the footage to your computer, it'll look slightly different again, and when you burn to DVD, you'll be able to see your cat's stripes on some TVs, and they'll disappear on others. As for the "quality loss," there is none (well, very minimal). It's caused by the fact that the LCD can't display the full number of pixels in the video. The video gets shrunk down, and subsequently shrinks the video noise, making it seem very clear. This is the same reason why average-looking HD video looks crystal clear when converted to SD. When you play it back on your TV, it's being magnified, so it seems less clear, and the color, of course will also change due to your TV's settings. When you transfer to your computer, you shouldn't lose any quality at all, or at most, you won't see any noticeable quality loss. Of course, now you know that what you see on your LCD=/=your computer screen=/=your TV=/=any other screen in the world. So if it looks a little weird, don't freak. If it's looking really dull, add a little (repeat: a little) bit of contrast to liven things up a bit, but usually that's as much as I do. If you add too much, your TV will screw up your picture. But most of the time, unless you're doing a production and you need color correction and all that jazz, you won't need to change a thing about your picture, except edit it of course. Hope this helps!

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