Video passthrough? (1 Viewer)

[velis]

I've been selecting a LCD TV for a while now and ever since my selection began narrowing down, I've been having some questions about video from PC to TV.
It all boils down to the selected set (Samsung B650, B750, maybe LED backlight B7000).
I read in reviews of those sets that they have insane video processors. Deinterlacing, scaling, increasing frame rate, you-name-it is done at least as well or better that it could ever be done in a PC. Without any additional processing power required.

So I began wondering, if for nothing else than try, is it at all possible to make a PC send (HDMI or DVI) only decoded video to the TV, without deinterlacing, scaling and such? This would also provide me with teletext which otherwise has to be provided by the PC.

It seems a rather impossible task since the resolution set in windows for TV is "fixed" and even frame rate requires special processing (which MP fortunately has).

So can I get to a point where I'd see what TV can do with only decoded video or am I stuck with directshow filters?

Searching the forums of course revealed nothing...

 

[pnyberg]

mmm...I'm just wondering... I think the advanced TVs out there with 200Hz, Natural Motion etc works even if you send it through HDMI... Consider blu-ray players are connected via HDMI - and I've seen many TV/Video magazines make their review/tests based on a "reference" bluray disc...

just my thoughts...

 

[velis]

I know that. This feature can be tested relatively easily, especially since MP will lower refresh rate to that of the movie (if it can). If it can't then the feature can't be tested on 100Hz TV (can't double 60Hz), but a 200Hz TV would still theoretically deliver x3 framerate.

This is however only one feature. I'm equally interested in deinterlacing and scaling.

 

[kiwijunglist]

A descent PC will always do a better scaling and deinterlacing job than most TVs. It has so much more grunt.

 

[velis]

Heh, hardly true. Considering the pain I had with my new setup, I can tell you that this is a bit harder to achieve than it first looks:
My integrated Radeon HD 3300 was unable to display a smooth picture not to mention it kept reverting to Bob deinterlacing which plainly sucks.
I have found no competent SW based codecs that would support any decent method for deinterlacing (Typically they provide just the basic methods like weave, bob, and skipping deinterlacers.
My Radeon HD 4350 *just* manages to decode a SD signal with Vector adaptive deinterlacing which is IMHO pretty much the only useable method AVIVO supports.
Of all the methods VLC player or ffdshow support, only yadif with frame doubling is acceptable and that one still needs some shapening to fix oversmoothing effect yadif makes. Still I can't use either of them in MP even though I'd very much like to have ffdshow do *all* the decoding, both audio and video.

So, when I have the three options like TV + STB, avivo vector adaptive or yadif x2, I'm not sure I have much choice. Also the TV + STB combo still give the best picture, though not by a wide margin. Both yadif and vector adaptive come pretty close, but they far from exceed it.

I'd love to see a good MPEG2/AVC decoder that can do better than avivo vector adaptive or yadif with frame doubling, but I'm afraid I can't find a codec like that on the web. I sure wish there was a nice little site with a catalog where one could filter out the codec features and come up with a codec that does all required

 

[kiwijunglist]

both the HD3200 and the HD4350 are fairly low spec for doing descent video processing. I think even the HD4550 is a little marginal, which is why i got the HD4670.

 

[velis]

I agree. As it looks right now, even the 4350 tends to move the deinterlacing slider down towards bob. I really hate SW that thinks it's smarter than me

I got rid of jerky playback though.

I still think a good SW codec would be just fine for me. The proc can handle it no prob, but it seems none of the gfx cards I currently have will do any good work.

Know of any?