Poor Video Quality of Avia & DVE with Oppo (1 Viewer)

[SeanA]

I just got the Oppo DV971H player, and decided to calibrate with Avia and DVE immediately (before watching any DVDs). I was shocked at the poor quality of much of the video leading up to the actual test patterns. I always suspected that someone simply used a hand-held camera to shoot the "sample" test patterns off of a CRT, and now with the Oppo player, these shots look even worse. At transitions of color and shade, there are all sorts of jagged moving edges. It's like the pixels are confused. I'm not sure what this is called, but I am curious if others have noticed lots of video flaws in Avia or DVE ?

I am hoping this is just a problem with the source material and not my new DVD player. Is it possible the Oppo player would just accentuate any problems with source material ??? And if the source material is bad, it just makes me question the value of calibrating with Avia or DVE. How can we trust the actual test patterns ?

 

[greg_t]

Both look fine on my oppo, particuarly DVE. Avia is not quite as good.

 

[ChrisWiggles]

What video are you looking at? The narrative videos on Avia aren't intended as reference quality or anything.

However, there are some excellent shots on DVE that are encoded very well and at very high bitrates.

 

[SeanA]

I was running both AVIA and DVE with my new Oppo DVD player through DVI/HDMI to my Samsung DLP. For both DVDs, the actual test patterns seemed fine but I was getting a lot of "blocky" video for the test pattern samples/demonstrations. I had the same issue when calibrating my Denon DVD-1600, but it seems even worse with the Oppo.

I am starting to think there may be something wrong with my DLP set. I watched "Stay" tonight using the Oppo, and the "blocky" video was apparent in most scenes. When there are large areas (15% or more) of the picture that are mainly one shade, these areas are blocky (not smooth) with one or more jagged transitions. The transitions are mostly horizontal and represent a slight but distinct change in shade, and the transition itself is in motion even when the video is relatively static. It is most noticable with background images, grayish shades, and when the overall image is somewhat dark. It has gotten to the point that I am having a hard time enjoying movies.

From my description, does anyone have a guess as to what problem I am experiencing ??? Is this what is called "macro-blocking" ? Also, is this problem pretty typical with DLPs ? I don't want to have to set up a service call, but I am not sure what else to do at this point. Would it help if I tried to get a screen shot and posted it here ?

 

[ChrisWiggles]

Well, macro-blocking is generally a compression issue in the source, or a source issue in the source device.

However, DLPs can have some other bit-depth limitations that cause banding and things like that, that may look like macroblocking, or may really exaggerate the effect.

Have you watched the same content on a different display or system?

I haven't looked at any of the video clips on DVE in quite a long time, but I don't recall any of them having any of these issues in the source encode. I am speaking specifically of the Shuttle lift-off, and then the group of demo material later in the disc, not the title animations or things like that.

 

[SeanA]

Thanks Chris !!!

"Banding" is a good description for what I am seeing... jagged horizontal bands to be specific. The shuttle scenes in DVE actually look great. The problem I am seeing is mainly with darker scenes, and I think it was worse with the Avia DVD. The best example of the problem was the samples shots Avia uses for the brightness (black level) setting. They have a split (right/left) screen with one dark side and one bright side. The bright side had a greenish gray blob that sort of expanded and contracted and took up about half of the white area. Again, this was not present on the actual test pattern but only on the sample patterns leading up to the test pattern.

I may try raising the Contrast from the 50 setting I have now, and then backing off on Brightness (which is also set at about 50). Sharpness is at "0". I've also read that reducing the "Index Delay" in the service manual can help with macro-blocking, if that is my problem.