Black is gray *ONLY* in MediaPortal? (1 Viewer)

[stounedi]

Hello!

I have serious problem with Media Portal black levels.

I tried it with Windows Media Player, and with WMP black levels are just perfect - There are no such problems as I am having with Media Portal.

I am using ffdshow codec on both MediaPortal and WMP. But for some reason MediaPortal turns all black into gray, if I want to tune it back down I need to set my TV brightness/contrast so low I can barely see anything. On WMP I can use 50% brightness and 90% contrast setting on my tv, but in MediaPortal I need to drop them down to 30%... Which is really bad.

The strangest thing is, that I am using the same codec on both programs (ffdshow).

Anyone got any clue why MediaPortal is giving such bad output when WMP is just fine? I didnt find any answers to this problem with search, and clearly the problem has something to do with MediaPortal - Since WMP has none of such issues for me.


MediaPortal Version: RC4
MediaPortal Skin: Default
Windows Version: XP PRO SP3
CPU Type: 4400+ AMD X2
HDD: 160GB Seagate
Memory: 2GB
Motherboard: Asus A8N-E
Video Card: Ati HD2600 Pro
Video Card Driver: 8.11 Catalyst
Sound Card: Integrated AC'97
Sound Card AC3:
Sound Card Driver:
MPEG2 Video Codec: ffdshow
MPEG2 Audio Codec: ffdshow
h.264 Video Codec: ffdshow
HTPC Case: Zalman HD160
TV: Samsung PS50A556
TV - HTPC Connection: HDMI/DVI

 

[stounedi]

I reply to my own thread. This issue was caused by my ATI HD2600 card.

Fix was actually posted on the forums, here: https://forum.team-mediaportal.com/...-55/brightness-problem-least-me-solved-48423/

 

[ronzelver]

I experience bad black levels when using EVR (Vista) with my NVidia 8500 GT card. I didn't experience this when using VMR9?!
Is there a fix for this as well?

 

[jsketto]

hey...i had a similar problem so i hope this mayhelp you....go into your video card control panel....and find where you can adjust the digital color format and change it from RGB to YBrPr (or whatever its called)...hopefully that helps

 

[doornjoostje]

The fix is for ATI cards only.
The fix is for SD TV only (MPEG-2) not MP specific.

 

[frankenmatze]

I have a similiar problem, but only when watching movies. I have to turn my tv down 9 points of 50 ( ==> 41 ) on a scala from 0 to 100. In MP welcome screen, the color is ok. So it seems like a codec problem (PowerDVD).

I´m using an ATI HD 3200. Can this be a similiar problem?

 

[rnoorda]

serious brightness problems with mediaportal/Vista

Hello,

Since I have installed Vista 64Bit and mediaportal v 1.0.1 i have got similar problems as above. I am using an MSI 790GX-G65 mainboard with ATI Radeon HD3300 onboard and a AMD Phenom x3 720 processor at 3x 3,08Ghz. I have it connected with HDMI to my Samsung 46" Full-HD 100Hz. LCD TV. When using mediaportal all black is grey. It looks like brightness is far to high. When i am using WMP or WMP classic black is black! Does anyone have a solution for this major problem?!!

Hope someone can help me!

 

[frankenmatze]

Hello,

Since I have installed Vista 64Bit and mediaportal v 1.0.1 i have got similar problems as above. I am using an MSI 790GX-G65 mainboard with ATI Radeon HD3300 onboard and a AMD Phenom x3 720 processor at 3x 3,08Ghz. I have it connected with HDMI to my Samsung 46" Full-HD 100Hz. LCD TV. When using mediaportal all black is grey. It looks like brightness is far to high. When i am using WMP or WMP classic black is black! Does anyone have a solution for this major problem?!!

Hope someone can help me!

Yes, please try this ATI HD Registry Tweaks and tell me if it was helpful for your problem.

 

[oldyellow]

I posted the following in another thread yesterday. I was having the same issue but installing the lastest version of the NVidea drivers fixed it. I seriuosly believe that the problem is the some video drivers do not integrated well with VMR9 * EVR renderers, but since those are the only renderers that MP uses, it makes it a problem for MP users.

I used to thing the problem was with MediaPortal, but now I think it is that certain graphics drivers are not allowing VMR9/EVR renderers to use the proper white/black RGB color range (i.e. 0-255 vs 16-235). I would urge anyone experiencing this problem to perform the following test and report the results back to this thread.

1. Download and install GraphStudio (it is not very large)
2. Drag a .ts file recorded with MediaPortal onto the GraphStudio icon to have it render the .ts file.
3. Check which video renderer is being used (i.e. VMR - Video Renderer or VMR9 Video Renderer 9)
4. Play the file from GraphStudio by clicking the play control button. Note the picture quality (normal vs. washed-out)
5. Stop the playback by clicking X on the playback window or clicking the stop play control button.
6. Highlight the render box by clicking on it, then delete the box (the delete button or right-click -> delete)
7. Add the video renderer that was not used in step 3. You can use the Graph->Add Filter menu option. Make sure that the filter is either Video Render 9 (VMR9) or Video Render (VMR), which ever was NOT used before.
8. Connect the filter by clicking on the output pin of which ever decoder is being used and dragging the line to the input pin of the Video Render. Once you release the mouse the software should take over and make the connection.
9. Play the file again, noting the quality (normal vs. washed-out).

When I did this, the VMR renderer give a perfect picture, and both the VMR9 and the EVR render gave a washed out picture. I tried all of the suggestions but none of them worked (this makes sense for most of the suggestions because the renderer is the last filter in the line). I tried the NVidea registry hack that can be found on the web, and it also did not work. However, when I installed the newest version of NVidea drivers yesterday, it worked.

I don't think the problem is directly with MP (and I used to think that). However, since MP forces use of VMR9/EVR it affects MP users. I would be willing to bet money that when you are looking at those crystal-clear videos from your external player, that VMR9/EVR is NOT being used, hence the quality picture.