Best picture quality in Vista with Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H (1 Viewer)

[iancalderban]

Here´s a thing that helped me:
My picture was "flickering" a little bit, with that I mean that it was jumping up & down maybe one pixel. Most noticeable on sharp still standing objects, as for example a results board in a sports show.
I enabled "LCD overdrive" (in ATI CCC, settings for Digital Panel DVI), and the flickering disappeared. I don't know why this is working since it should not work at all in Vista according to ATI help page. Anybody knows about this?

I'm not so familiar with the terms yet, is maybe "tearing" the correct term for what I call "flickering"?

that sounds very much like a "Bob de-interlacing" artifact. I see it in exactly the same place as you (horizontal thin lines or edges on sports scoreboards) To check, go to CCC->Avivo->all settings, find the interlace setting, play with it. Likely you will get this behaviour only when Bob is set.

i've never looked at lcd overdrive, it looks like its for trying to help with watching fast-motion content on slower-response computer monitors to me. What screen are you using?

ta
Ian

 

[frankwaan]

Here´s a thing that helped me:
My picture was "flickering" a little bit, with that I mean that it was jumping up & down maybe one pixel. Most noticeable on sharp still standing objects, as for example a results board in a sports show.
I enabled "LCD overdrive" (in ATI CCC, settings for Digital Panel DVI), and the flickering disappeared. I don't know why this is working since it should not work at all in Vista according to ATI help page. Anybody knows about this?

I'm not so familiar with the terms yet, is maybe "tearing" the correct term for what I call "flickering"?

that sounds very much like a "Bob de-interlacing" artifact. I see it in exactly the same place as you (horizontal thin lines or edges on sports scoreboards) To check, go to CCC->Avivo->all settings, find the interlace setting, play with it. Likely you will get this behaviour only when Bob is set.

i've never looked at lcd overdrive, it looks like its for trying to help with watching fast-motion content on slower-response computer monitors to me. What screen are you using?

ta
Ian

Looks like the BOB vibrate problem indeed Especially on text-based channels (like a channel information channel here), you could see the text "shaking". It was fixed until i put VA interlacing on (or on my 9400GT nowadays). On a 4850e it won't work. If you try the registry tweaks, you will get dropped frames all the time. So to get rid of BOB deinterlacing, get a Phenom or another GPU

Greets, Frank

 

[DaMenaCe]

I have tried it all with To check, go to CCC->Avivo->all settings, find the interlace setting, play with it. Likely you will get this behaviour only when Bob is set.
But all the ones gives me horizontal lines. I build this mediacenter because on internet i found that this mobo 1 of the best htpc mobo's. But probarly not..

I will install Windows XP sp3 tomorrow, and i hope that the lines are gone then..

 

[frankwaan]

I have tried it all with To check, go to CCC->Avivo->all settings, find the interlace setting, play with it. Likely you will get this behaviour only when Bob is set.
But all the ones gives me horizontal lines. I build this mediacenter because on internet i found that this mobo 1 of the best htpc mobo's. But probarly not..

I will install Windows XP sp3 tomorrow, and i hope that the lines are gone then..

Hi DaMenaCe,

I don't know how XP will behave with deinterlace options, but I sticked with Vista due to EVR, which has ( I think) more future potential.

Next to the fact that there are no good interlace options for the ati 3200 with the 4850e and due to a lot of other problems (flickering GUI, 1080i content, ..) I switched to a 9400GT (passive) anyway. It rocks!!!
So I know have a 4850e which has low power and a 9400gt which is also low powered instead of a Phenom processor which consumes a lot more.

The problem that you see lines, could be another settings and/or codec issue. I did not encouter this problem even with the onboard IGP (ati 3200) with the 4850e.

Do whatever suits best for you, maybe XP will behave better on deinterlacing with your setup, I couldn't tell.

Frank

 

[DaMenaCe]

U are right. I want to use EVR too with the movies. So i will stick with Vista then. I only have this with Arcsoft with 1 blu ray movie (i have 2). So maybe it's a problem with Arcsoft. When i set the resolution to 1920x1080p then the problem is gone. But i do not want this resoluition.
IS there another thing that i can do instead of buying a new videocard or phenom processor?
And thank you for your reply.

 

[frankwaan]

Why don't you want 1080p as resolution?

 

[DaMenaCe]

Then the movies does not run smooth anymore. But i think i have to reinstall vista i think because a lot of things are not good.
Can i run 1080p with this mobo and cpu, and should all the mkv (x264 1080p) wmvhd and blu ray should run fine ?

 

[frankwaan]

Should run fine indeed. I used CoreAvc with that combo. PowerDVD8 codec should work fine too (with DXVA).

 

[iancalderban]

well I've now had time to test the deinterlacing/tearing combinations under vista 32, cyberlink pdvd8 sd/hd codecs, integrated 780g gfx, 4850e processor.

• aero+evr = bob or weave available. with CCC "vertical sync" option - No tearing. The config that I run with and I am most happy with for now .
  
• aero off (vista classic) + evr = bob, weave or adaptive available. Think I am noticing some picture quality benefit with adaptive selected (seems to cope even on 1080i contents),although CCC seems to go back to Bob by itself. But now I have tearing (movement shots, top 5 or 10% of screen gets a tear too often for comfort) so I didn't watch a lot or pursue why CCC is changing back..(tearing gives me bad headache)
  
• vista classic + VMR selected in MP directshow = no picture on HD! black screen...didn't test further.

FWIW, I didn't find that I needed any of the mentioned registry hacks to make adaptive available. just turning aero off did it.

so I don't have any totally satisfactory solution with current h/w + s/w. So what are the other options?

• add a discrete gfx board. Needs to be low-profile (due to my case) and obviously passive. Whats the min spec that will handle 1080i deinterlace nicely? Did anyone try the hybrid graphics (integrated + discrete gfx in crossfire) that780g supposedly can do in a htpc 1080i configuration? all reviews I can read of this mode are 3d-benchmark and/or gaming oriented. Or do we have to go high end for GPU to do that, in which case cpu upgrade becomes an option also..
• Phenom ... I can't find any trace in any actual retailer of the -e (65w efficient) versions of the x3 that are mentioned on many press release sites. Anybody seen one?
• Other s/w approach. suggestions?

many thanks
Ian

 

[HakanThn]

Thanks for your hints on deinterlacing!
about the "LCD overdrive" solution:
I use a 40inch LCD-TV: Hyundai Q400 on VGA together with (cloned) an LG W1952TQ monitor on DVI. Resolution is set to 1360x768, which is pixelmapped on the LCD-TV. Somehow "LCD overdrive" helps the problem for me, though I don't believe the screens are too slow. Beats me why this is working...

Regarding deinterlacing: I will probably not watch any 1080i content. Only SD DVB-T (576i?), ripped films at 720p and original BD (at 1080p I believe). So therefore I only need to deinterlace SD TV. This should be possible to do in software? Five years ago I used an old machine as HTPC, and I used dScaler in Showshifter to deinterlace 576i. Don't remember the name of the deinterlacer filter I used, but it was some sort of adaptive filter, which also doubled the output frame rate. It gave very good picture quality, even for sport show. Had no problems with CPU capacity. So, software deinterlacing 576i should be no problems using 4850e!?
Have any suggestions on what to use? ffdshow? What filter settings? Should I disable hardware deinterlacing, and if so how do I do that?

Like damenace, I bought these components because I read they were about the best you can get for a HTPC. But I have a better picture quality from my Sony RDR-HDR870 DVD player. A little tweaking left to do I guess...