Black Level on DirecTV vs. DVD (1 Viewer)

[Brent Hutto]

When I got my DVD player a few weeks ago, I ran the Avia
basic televison setup procedure on my Sony 27" TV. It made
a big difference. The two main changes were 1) I switched
to the mode that disable Scan Velocity Modulation (probably
should have done that when I first got the TV) and 2) the
black level is now set higher than it was before.
I now get a really wonderful picture from the DVD player,
connected via S-Video cables and through my Onkyo 575x
receiver. My DirecTV receiver (Hughes) also connects to the
TV through the receiver's S-Video switching. I don't think
this was true before the recalibration, but black never
gets particularly black on the DirecTV picture now. It may
be that getting used to the DVD picture has made me more
picky about black blacks but I don't think so.
For instance, the opening credits to Law & Order start by
panning across a night-time New York skyline. The sky that
is supposed to be black is more of a dirty gray and has a
bit of pixelization swimming in the grayness. Even when a
black screen with white titles is used, it never gets all
that black.
So my question is, does the DVD player put out a lower
"black" signal than the DirecTV receiver on purpose or is
the analog electronics in the Hughes receiver just limited
in its dynamics on the "black" end of the range. I'll bet
that I had pushed the black level way down in my original
eyeball setup of the TV to cover up this characteristic.
Or maybe I have a bad S-Video cable going from the DirecTV
receiver.

 

[Colin A]

I have found that R1 DVD's give a poor black unless you are able to set the IRE level to 0 instead os 7.5.
My Arcam player enabled me to do this , so now I have perfect black on PAL region 2 And NTSC R1 discs as well.

 

[Dhananjaya Garcia]

I use two different settings in my monitor for DVD (customized Movie setting) and DSS (customized Standard setting).
DJ
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