Improving Picture Quality in MP (1 Viewer)

[KevL]

My TV is similar.

It has a few HDMI ports and lots of analogue inputs and a VGA input.

When set to take PC signals via VGA it does not employ any of its filtering modes. It just locks to the anlouge video and displays it.

For HDMI inputs I get a whole array of picture processing options. Most of the setup work on Pioneer sets is to turn all the processing off.

My picture problems when feeding 720p (vs 576p) signals are not simple colour/ contrast issues.

The problem is that when set to HDMI 720p I get none fluid motion - particularly evident on the scrolling ticker tapes on the News channels (eg. Bloomberg)

Video without moving text is very watchable on 720p but it is still not as good as when the HTPC is not asked to do any scaling and output 576 lines.

I guess I am being very picky. I used to work for an AV company and actually worked on designing high end DVD players so I do recognise good video when I see it.

If you guys are saying that you can get your HTPC to do good scaling and your picture when scaling SD video up from 576 lines to 720 lines is actually better than feeding a set top box into your TV sets then I need to do some serious head scratching re my HTPC setup.

Maybe I have just got a key secret setting set incorrectly. I just need to find and uncheck the SET_VIDEO_CRAP setting.

Do you ever watch Bloomberg?


Kev

 

[Jeditrav]

Hi,

Have you tried pressing 'Shift + 1' (!) while in fullscreen tv - this brings up a display with frames per second info. I've always had trouble in WinXP with 720p channels only playing at 37.5fps rather than 50fps (1080i and 576i channels all play flawlessly); this leads to less-than-smooth scrolling, tickers, credits, etc - detailed in this thread Only 37.5fps on Progressive channels. Perhaps you're having a similar issue - unfortunately, I've never found a fix for it.

 

[KevL]

Hi

I dont think my problem is the same as yours (maybe) as I'm only really talking about Standard definition PAL. I'm only trying to display 576 line video onto a 768 line 50" plasma.

Anyway my Shift 1 results when desktop res = 720x576p 50Hz are

last fps 0.00
(720x576)
100backbuf X8RG8G8B8
adapter X8RG8G8B8
(D16) False
VMR9 50 varies between 49.7 and 50.2
avg fps 49.98
sync 0
drawn 31738
dropped 2
jitter 1


When set to have a desktop re of 1280x720 all of the numbers are very similar

last fps 0.00
(1280x720)
100backbuf X8RG8G8B8
adapter X8RG8G8B8
(D16) False
VMR9 50 varies between 49.7 and 50.2
avg fps 49.98
sync 0
drawn no. increments
dropped 2
jitter 1

Following the encouragement from the other guys re HTPC scaled picture quality I have just installed the lastest F7 bias for the MB and the very latest Catalyst 9.2 drivers for the on board graphics card.

This now seems to have fixed the scrolling text problem and picture now seems no worse in 1280 x 720p format.

Have not the slightest idea why???? Which update fixed it I cant say. I've had the motherboard 6 months - I'm only now getting decent video playback.

Many thanks.

Kev

 

[kavven]

Hmm, what is this "Bloombergs test" ?


Br,
Daniel

 

[KevL]

You tune to the Bloomberg channel and watch it - paying attention to the rendering of the ticker tape at the bottom of the screen.

K

 

[jameson_uk]

Have you tried the Bloomberg test on your setup? Is text silky smooth, no stutter/ judder???

I have an 8th gen Pioneer plasma. Well respected for PQ - there are better sets but it is well into the diminishing returns re cost versus performance. As you will see from my system config - my ATI graphics card is of recent vintage and though not gaming quality ought to be OK for SD video.

All I can say is try it on your setup - unless your gear is producing better PQ than your set-top boxes already. If so please post setup details.

It is more than likely that the problem you are seeing with the ticker is down to de-interlacing and nothing to do with scaling. The sheer grunt inside a modern GPU makes it a pretty good scaler but not matter how good the scaler you want to try and cut down the amount of times an image is rescaled.

Take standard PAL, if you were outputting at 1280x720 then you are scaling the 720x576 picture on the PC to 1280x720 and then your TV is scaling this yet again once it gets to the screen to make it 1366x768. Add onto this that you set might be doing overscan and the picture can end up a little odd as what started off as one pixel in the source has to be split and re-shaped which is where things can look blocky.

I have my Panny PZ80 connected up via HDMI but the native res is 1920x1080 so feeding it a 1080p signal means the scaling is only done on the PC. Comparing this to the decent upscaler in my amp (Onkyo 876) or upscaling DVD players produces favourable results.

Interlacing is not a problem for me but some cards and codecs are better at it than others.

You might be interested in this
SD Interlacing? - AVForums.com

I see you have a 780G mobo and I understand that the graphics on this are let down by poor de-interlacing.

You might want to consider a new GPU

 

[KevL]

Hi Jameson

To be honest I've given up trying to understand what actually goes on when a pc outputs video.

I think my problems were down to "bad" bios version and/or catalyst drivers.

Now that I have version F7 Motherboard bios and Catalyst 9.2 drivers the picture passes the bloomberg test whether I set screen res to 720x576p @ 50Hz by HDMI or 1280x720 @50Hz by HDMI.

Not sure about de-interlacing versus scaling error on my previous combination of bios/vid card driver. Pic was OK at 576p out but bad at 720p out. Presumably the deinterlacing is done before scaling???? The difference was then only the scaling????

Anyway I'm getting a really nice picture now and have screen res set to 720p. This is having no effect on video quality but the MP menu is a tad sharper (noticable on fonts etc) at 720p c.f. 576p (for obvious reasons).




Kev