Horrific Banding Issue On King Kong HD DVD? (1 Viewer)

[HDMS Carl Mulder]

Just watched king kong again yesterday, and I thought the picture quality was sensational. I've been watching quite a bit of blu ray lately so it was nice to see HD DVD at it's best.

Get to around half way through the movie, where they go into the fog, and to skull island. The scene's that contain fog are among the worst I've ever seen, with massive banding artifact lines; exploding on my screen. Banding litterally covers the entire screen and in my opinion is absolutely unnaceptable. Unfortunately I watch the same quality over on internet downloads @ 3000 kbps, so to actually see this obsenity on HD DVD; destroys my heart.

Firstly, does everyone see banding in the fog?
Who's the main culprit for banding? TV? HD DVD player?
Why is banding so visable when watching HD?
Is there anything to be done to stop color banding?

HORRIFIED.

 

[dpippel]

I see absolutely zero banding anywhere on "King Kong". What's your equipment chain? I'll venture a guess and predict that your display is either DLP or LCD.

 

[HDMS Carl Mulder]

Correct, DLP. Ok, now that you believe that banding is introduced by DLP, I also have a 360 HD Drive as well as my toshiba a1, so I'm going to try it out on my 20 inch samsung to see if the banding is still visable. If I still see banding what does that mean?

Do you see color banding on any HD DVD's or DVD's for that matter?

 

[Chris Dugger]

I personally have yet to see any banding on any HD-DVD....

I watched KONG on a 15 foot diag screen through an LCD projector...

It looked like the image was going to jump off the screen...


Dugger

 

[JonZ]

Nope, amazing HD pic.

 

[dpippel]

Out of the 37 HD-DVD titles I own I've seen banding on only one. "Superman Returns" has some encoding issues that show up in a few of the underwater scenes. Banding is more of an issue with SD DVD due the production line MPEG-2 encoding that many transfers receive and space limitations on teh media.

 

[Michael TLV]

Greetings

Depends on the TV ...

Called lack of bit depth on the low end.

Sometimes color wheel problems cause this ...

Regards

 

[HDMS Carl Mulder]

Samsung HLP 46 inch DLP 720p dark 2 chip I think.
HD-A1 is set to 1080i.
Firmware version 2.0.
HDMI connection.

Superman returns has terrible color banding, I've seen this on other tv's too. When you switch the HD-A1 to 720p the banding and artifacting is worse, and this was very noticable on superman returns. I now use 1080i, but color banding is still visable.

So, color banding artifacts are being created by the tv, and not the HD DVD player? I'm not understanding the source of banding because disc's like scary movie 4 exibit much cleaner levels of shading and transition. Why do some discs look better than others when you say it's the tv making these problems?

 

[HDMS Carl Mulder]

I also use an xbox 360 HD Drive, just tested the exact same scene using that drive, componant video on a direct view 20 inch samsung tv. No banding was evident, I couldn't believe that my tv was actually creating these problems. I've always thought that the compression was never as good as it should be.

Do all tv's or DLP/Plasma have color banding issues? Has the technology improved since my purchase of my 2 or 3 year old samsung?

What does lack of bit depth on the low end actually mean?

 

[ppltd]

Horrific???? A little overstated, isn't it. There is no visible banding I have seen in King Kong projected with an LCD projector on a 106" screen.

 

[HDMS Carl Mulder]

True, it appears my statement or observation is a little overstated. Trust me I'm a little confused at the moment, but it's good to know that you don't the same imperfection, so it looks as though I'm in desperate need of an upgrade; by the sounds of things.

 

[Michael TLV]

Greetings

Not enough gradations of color on the dark end. Think of it like the TV has 16 million colors ... but on the dark end ... it only does 256 colors ...

Limitation of older DLP units ... also see it on cheap plasmas and LCDs ...

Better DLP technology and plasma tech these days do not have these issues. My Benq projector DLP from 2004 does not have these issues ... but it was a $6000 unit at the time.

Regards

 

[dpippel]

It's all in the way your display handles the video data it's being fed by the player. MichaelTLV summed it up fairly well in simple terms.

As for the 1080i output resolution setting currently configured on your HD-A1, generally speaking it's best to match it to the native scan rate of your display device. In your case that's 720p. The Toshiba players did have some issues with 720p downconversion in the past, but from every account I've read that was corrected in the v2.0 firmware release. It's interesting that you feel that 1080i output being downconverted to 720p by your display looks better. Do me a favor - look at the firmware revision display under the setup menu on the HD-A1 again and post ALL of the numbers you see exactly as they're listed. My hunch is that you're looking at the wrong information and you actually have an older version of the firmware on your player. Let me know, OK?

 

[dkny75]

I have a Samsung HLR5067, which is a 720p DLP and have not noticed any banding on either King Kong or Superman Returns. I'm running a HD-A1 with firmware version 2.0