Prog DVD + Modern LCD TV = Garbage ??

johnmeyer wrote on 7/2/2006, 7:19 PM
I had two experiences in the past 24 hours that have me scratching my head. Can someone help me so I can help my friend?

My friend has a very nice Sharp Aquos LCD 45" flat panel. He has a DVD player (don't know what brand) driving it. I think the DVD is operating in progressive mode. He showed me clips from lots of different movies because he is very proud of his equipment. But, I had to bite my tongue, because the picture looked AWFUL. I am not talking about subtly awful: It was BAD. I admit that I am capable of being hyper-critical about picture quality, this wasn't a minor thing.

The problem?

The video looked like some noise reduction circuit had been turned up to max. Virtually all details on faces, hair, etc. were lost and, as my non-technical wife described it, everyone looked like a 2-D cartoon. I played briefly with the controls on the TV set, when my host wasn't looking, and changed the various settings having to do with noise reduction, but it didn't seem to change anything. I think the problem is with the DVD player.

I then stopped at Frys on the way home and looked at the a Blue-Ray player (the first demo I've seen) on a Sharp DLP projector. It looked absolutely horrible (maybe even worse than my friend's SD setup), and exhibited exactly the same problem. It was a bad weekend for me because I've been trying to get some enthusiasm for replacing my 1989 home theater setup.

would like to help my friend (even though he doesn't really know he has a problem). Is there something obvious I should look for the next time I visit?

Thanks in advance.

Comments

Grazie wrote on 7/2/2006, 10:27 PM
John, I'm with you. I've yet to see any large screen that shows me the "quality" that I have with my analogue CRT setup. I see break-up of pixels; artifacts; audio synch gone!; smearing on the turf of football fields I hate it, hate it, hate it!!

But the real worrying thing for me is that we are getting a whole digi-generation of youngsters who THINK that 'cos it's BIG that the quality is terrific. Well it ain't. It is horrid. And what people are "accepting" is down right scary.

Let's start a campaign, John!

Grazie
Coursedesign wrote on 7/2/2006, 10:37 PM
All film DVDs are progressive.

They look stunning on my LCD HD monitor, and very good on my DLP HD projector.

Setup is very important, as is using good cables. Not sure what could be going on with what you described.

Could your friend be sending an unsupported (upscaled) resolution to the LCD? Sounds unlikely, but conceivable perhaps. Sharp Aquous has gotten fab reviews as one of the very best screens right now, so it wouldn't be model specific.

At a Best Buy store, I saw a row of HD LCD TVs all showing the same in-house channel. The more expensive models looked vastly better, as one might perhaps expect. Then I noticed that the picture wasn't exactly the same. The cheaper models had a different cropping of the picture. Since no staff was near, I went into the setup menus and tried to fix it. Couldn't be done. After grilling a couple of staffers in the department, one young guy told me the cheaper models were hooked up to a different signal, in glorious SD no less...
Grazie wrote on 7/2/2006, 10:43 PM
"After grilling a couple of staffers in the department, one young guy told me the cheaper models were hooked up to a different signal, in glorious SD no less..."

. .excellent . . .

Grazie
Coursedesign wrote on 7/2/2006, 10:50 PM
I've yet to see any large screen that shows me the "quality" that I have with my analogue CRT setup. I see break-up of pixels; artifacts; audio synch gone!; smearing on the turf of football fields I hate it, hate it, hate it!!

Those symptoms are unrelated to CRT vs. LCD.

Cable and satellite HD signals are compressed to death to squeeze in ever more content channels into a limited bandwidth, and the result is macroblocking (break-up of pixels; artifacts; smearing on the turf of football fields...). The audio sync problems are related to this and other problems in the chain, such as when a source transmits say 720p and this is converted down the line to 1080i for a particular channel, and then converted to 720p and interpolated to 768p for display on your LCD, all of which visual conversions take time which makes the sound go out of sync. There are numerous other sync problems too in the chain from source to TV, all unrelated to progressive vs. interlaced displays.

You'll be glad to hear that SMPTE has set up a committee to think about solutions to this problem, although after nearly a year they are still thinking about it. :O(

Serena wrote on 7/2/2006, 11:08 PM
I understand that the friend was playing from a DVD so all the transmission aspects presumably aren't relevant. This is where I start guessing, but ignorance leaps in where angels, etc: the description of the image seems similar to excessive unsharp masking coupled with signal clipping. Is there a possibility that there is a gain mismatch or image controls set way off?
Grazie wrote on 7/2/2006, 11:21 PM
Serena & Course you are correct.

Best regards

Grazie
JJKizak wrote on 7/3/2006, 5:18 AM
According to the threads I have read at other forums the Bluray discs are single layer and they are using MPEG2 instead of Mpeg4 as a compromise until the dual layer discs are available. They are also using standard sound instead of DD+, whatever that is. Maybe the Bluray players are not compatible with those settings. The best I have seen was at Circuit City with a Sony 50" SXRD with a Sony demo from a DVR player.(whatever that might be) I will have to hire a "MINI-ME" engineer on a leash when going shopping for this new stuff.

JJK
Coursedesign wrote on 7/3/2006, 7:19 AM
I understand that the friend was playing from a DVD so all the transmission aspects presumably aren't relevant.

Three problems: Friend's DVD, Blu-Ray at store, MPEG-2 artifacts from excessive compression (far beyond what's on DVDs, so must have come from non-OTA broadcast).

(OTA is "Over The Air" HD broadcast over the air for free, just like SD in the olden days. No extra compression of the signal, no $50-100 monthly bill, and good selection of channels if you live in a metropolis.)
Coursedesign wrote on 7/3/2006, 7:26 AM
the Bluray discs are single layer and they are using MPEG2 instead of Mpeg4 as a compromise until the dual layer discs are available. They are also using standard sound instead of DD+, whatever that is.

MPEG-4 doesn't give higher quality than MPEG-2 per se. If you had the bits to spare, MPEG-1 might be the best (although with very inefficient compression).

MPEG-2 on single sided BD at 25GB, that's less than 3x the capacity of a regular DVD-9 which usually averages around 6 Mbps, so we get around 17 Mbps on these BDs for a typical 2 hr movie. Not too bad, that's nearly over-the-air HD quality.

:O)

(I love a good deal, and free is the best deal of all. Let's celebrate Freedom tomorrow!)

johnmeyer wrote on 7/3/2006, 7:47 AM
The two independent problems I viewed (with the one on my friends TV being the only one I want to fix) I suspect may have something to do with some attempt by the player or the LCD display to "improve" the picture. I know, even without asking, that the DVDs in question were all encoded at 24p (they were the usual "showoff" DVDs, The Matrix, Top Gun, etc.).

I think I may spend a little time at the AVS Forums and see if there is some chatter about this there. Even though I have never been as impressed with MPEG-encoded video as some people, it can look pretty darn good (I've been in a lot of very high-end theater setups, some of them costing well over $250,000 -- I live near Pebble Beach and have accompanied installers into some of the most amazing setups you can imagine).

Something is definitely set wrong ...

Xander wrote on 7/3/2006, 8:00 AM
I find that looking at SD (DVDs) on my Dell 24" 1920X1200 PC monitor (fullscreen), brings out all the unsightly details that are present in the original footage. The playback software does not have the power or filters to scale from 720X480 to 1920X1080 nicely in realtime. This is probably the same with most LCD screens. Cheaper ones have worse internal hardware scalers than more expensive ones. Personally, I use an external video processor (www.dvdo.com) for watching things on my DLP Front projector and have not had any quality issues.
johnmeyer wrote on 7/3/2006, 9:04 AM
The problem I am seeing is not subtle. It is a major, first-order defect. Something very fundamental has been set incorrectly, or wired incorrectly. The fact that I also saw it at Frys makes me think that it is a widespread mistake that many people make.
TheHappyFriar wrote on 7/3/2006, 9:11 AM
i don't recall you saying HOW the DVD was wired to the TV. My parents have an HDTV & HD cable. It was all hooked up via RCA jacks & looked like SD, but more blown up (just like SD via a projector or on a big screen TV would look, or your PC hooked up via RCA out). I went behind the TV/DVR & hooked it up via component & it looked all nice & HD like. :)

They have a DVD+VHS combo player with component too but I didn't hook that up because the component hookups didn't (according to the back of the player) send the VHS signel, so I left it RCA video out.

I didn't need to mess with any TV/DVR settings to get it to look better, jsut change the input to Component 1.
johnmeyer wrote on 7/3/2006, 9:28 AM
just change the input to Component 1.

I'll look at that. The connections can certainly make a difference. The fact that detail disappears during motion and only briefly appears when all motion has stopped -- and even then doesn't even approach what I see on my 1989 CRT system -- still makes me wonder if there isn't some sort of progressive/interlace or up-res setting that is mismatched.