Serentity on HD DVD (1 Viewer)

[Dave>h]

Just to provide an update...

I calibrated the TV with the AVIA disk, cleaned the HD DVD with a clean lint free cloth.

I still noticed what I am calling pixelization, although to a lessor degree. What I am seeing could be grain I suppose but it looks more like digital artifacts to my eye. I read a review of the HD DVD and it does mention that at the beginning of the film the footage does look more grainy that later in the film but I think I know the difference between grain and pixelization (although I could be wrong). Pixelization, I would describe as "blotchy squares where a smooth color or surface should be". I often see it on DVD especially in pictures of sky or hard whites or background walls, place like that. Grain, well I am not sure how to describe that, other than to say the picture looks like poorly developed film, if that makes sense.

I do not think, when using DVI (or HDMI) that I can manually turn off the DNie - whatever that is. I believe in the TV menu, when I do the calibration With the HD A1, going through the DVI connection, the DNie is on and there is no way to turn it off. That is, the menu item DNie is inaccessible, as though it is always on with DVI. If I am calibrating using the "Composite" connection, I can turn the Dnie off so I assume this is something specific to the DVI connection. Anyone familiar with the Sammy's know how to turn this circuitry off when using the DVI connection?

Amybe I will connect the A1 via component and see if get the same pixelization, at least I can start to narrow down where the issue might be as it seems rather obvious that this is a TV issue rather than an HD Dvd issue.

Thanks for all the comments. I will continue to update.

Dave

 

[dkny75]

I had to go into the service menu of my Sammy to turn off the DNile function. I don't recommend it unless you're comfortable playing with the tv's inner settings. Otherwise just get it ISF callibrated and they should be able to do it for you.

 

[Dave>h]

Another update.

Found a way to turn DNie off, so now my settings do not include any noise reduction or picture enhancement.

If i recall correctly, using avia, the setting for the picture were:

Brightness - 75 (I think I still have this set to high but that is the number I get using AVIA)
Contrast 54
Sharpness - 20
Color 51

I watched Sleepy Hollow last night and I again saw what I am calling pixelization (digital artifacts, whatever you want to call it). A lot of the film looked fantastic but certain scenes (smoke or clouds, sometimes even skin) showed visible signs of pixelization. The court room scene in particular, I noticed that Christopher Lee and JD's faces, which are very white in this scene, looked slightly pixely, as though the TV were trying to determine how to generate the picture smoothly. This also occured in scenes where there was a lot of smoke (and there is a lot of smoke in this movie). It was quite distracting to me as I was not expecting to see these types of things.


For some reason, the HD A1 had defaulted to 720P for this film, which I did not notice until I was quite a way into the film, when I switched it to 1080i, there was a definite improvement but it was not "perfect" which is what I am expecting.

I have not yet checked to see if this is a DVI/HDMI problem. If I have a chance this weekend, I will hook up the A1 via component and see what happens. I am also thinking maybe I should pick up a proper HDMI to DVI cord, currently I am using an HDMI to DVI adaptor (plug the HDMI cable into the adapter and then the adapter into the TV). Maybe this would make a difference?

I have not upgraded to the 2.0 firmware yet either so maybe that will fix things. Not sure if Toshiba will ship it to me here in Bermuda. Of course it could just be my TV too, it is 3 years old now and maybe the technology has gotten ahead of the TV. I suppose that is possible too.

If anyone else has some suggestions or comments, i would welcome them.

Regards,

Dave

 

[David Ruiz]

Most, if not all the DLP and LCD (and even Plasma, for that matter) TV screens that I have seen on display at Best Buy have all shown signs of horrible pixelization, not only on DVD, but on HD material as well. That's why I never bought into any of those technologies. I stuck with CRT and never regretted it.

Even now with the 1080p displays (on display at Best Buy), I still see major amounts of pixelization which is most definitely not grain (I know very well what film grain looks like).

It very well could just be the TV. Then again, I don't have Serenity on HD-DVD so it could be the disc as well, but I'm just offering my thoughts as to what the problem could be.