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Quality Issues With Monitor (1 Viewer)

Allen Marshall

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Im not sure where to find this wizard Jeremy, I checked out the Display Properties and went through 15 tabs of settings they have, cant find anything about a wizard.

Is high anti-aliasing good, it was at 4x and I put it to 6x and I think I through everything up as high as it would go yesterday to see if it would fix my problem, which it didnt but I never put the settings back the way they were. The computer heavy thing I do is record myself playing Half Life 2 at 1280x720 100fps and I didnt notice any slow down or lag so I left it all there. Like I put this thing Anisotropic Filtering to 16x and it was at 4x before so im not sure if that means im doing something better or worse, I took everything that was aimed towards performance and slid it over to Quality instead.
 

Paul Padilla

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Yup....that's happened to me...there's a timeout on the login. It helps to type longer posts into Word then copy and paste...or hit "Preview Reply" periodically...that keeps the session alive.

Last question first. Fixed pixel displays (LCD, plasma, etc.) are precisely that. There is a fixed number of pixels on the panel itself. For your screen there are physically 1920 horizontal and 1200 vertical pixels in the glass. Maximum resolution is determined and limited by that. So, yes...your screen can never go above 1920X1200...and beyond that, even if you set the video card lower, you're really still using all 1920X1200 pixels...just not as efficiently. Video cards have their own resolution limits, but particularly with flat panel displays, they're limited by the monitor they're connected to.

(very simplistic example) It's kind of like taking a piece of screen (I.e. screen door) with an image drawn on it and placing it under another blank piece of screen that has a more loose weave. You can still see the image, but the individual cells don't quite line up and there is some distortion. So always run the resolution of your video card to match the native resolution of the screen. Typically with a flat panel, Windows won't allow you to set the display any higher than that anyway...even if you forced manual settings to go higher, you'd just get a blank screen.

To answer your black bars question...different movies are shot at different ratios...different size film, essentially, depending on what the director wants the film to look like. Not all of them are going to fit perfectly in a 16:9 screen. You may not notice it, but when you go to the movies you get the same thing. A quick search will give you information ad nauseum just like screen resolution topics.

Half Life 2: Even though the program is installed from DVD and requires it to be in the drive to play, you're really playing the game from the program files that were installed to your hard drive when you first set up the program. Some info is pulled from the DVD during play, but that much data can't possibly be read from a DVD ROM during live play. Still, the fact that it displays correctly is something. Just don't confuse the DVD speed or quality with image quality. In a PC it's little more than a delivery device as opposed to DVD players for your TV. What really makes the difference is the decoder software. Power DVD should be fine for this.

You mentioned Terminator 2. Just to clarify, was that the WMV demo or the DVD? To view the HD version from the T2 Extreme DVD you have to use Windows Media Player as you did with the WMV files you mentioned..just checking. If you used power DVD then you only got the regular version (which still should look better than you are describing.) And back to the resolution issue...since the T2 HD version essentially matches the resolution of your screen so it should look amazing. But if T2 doesn't look that hot using Windows Media, then it doesn't jive with the above 720p looking good scenario.
 

Will_B

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Have you tried playing a DVD with a different program, just for comparison? I've got three or four players on my computer (one came with Nero, another came with a Sonic Solutions DVD mastering program, another couple of them came with the computer), and each and every one produces a different looking image.
 

Allen Marshall

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Paul does anything out now push higher then 1920x1080, like do Plasma and DLP TVs match up to the pixel count of PC dedicated monitors. Im gonna combine my HT and PC into one, so when HD-DVDs or Blu-Rays (whoever wins my heart) comes out, I want to get something like a 30" widescreen TV to serve as a monitor. But I only want to go up, not down, I dont want to end up getting a plasma monitor that hardly has any connections in the back and a maximum resolution lower then 1920x1080. I'm planning ahead so I dont do something stupid like buy something thinking it's the best and then later find out that they got this really cool new so and so and it kicks what you just gots ass.

The DVD doesnt let me toss it in Windows Media Player, but there's a paragraph on the DVD that says you need WMV not you have to play it on it, then it gives you instructions on installing something and then the DVD is supposed to open up in InterActual Player which I did and it looks like a VHS with good lighting and a steady picture.

Will B. I tried Video Lan Player, PowerDVD and InterActual Player, same result for all. I am watching the DVDs fullscreen, just so you know. The problem is undetectable or nonexsistant when I make the DVD box smaller. I figure thats not a problem because DVDs look good on TVs 60 inches and what not. But I do have a question about pictures. I cant take something like a 720x480 picture and make it take up the whole screen, it starts noticeably pixelating, so why is Video so different?

Like I had to find a special 1920x1080 picture online because the 1600x1200 that windows came with didnt look very clean like we like our desktop backgrounds to be. I dont quite understand why I can fullsize 1280x720 on my monitor with it looking very good but If I take a 1280x720 picture and do that it looks bad.

Would recording my dvds or taking screen captures reveal what im seeing or would it just show what it's supposed to look like. If it does I can take a few shots and a few seconds of video and post the download links.
 

DaveF

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I didn't see anyone comment on this. Do you see smearing when you drag windows, play video games or play DVDs? Perhaps "refresh" rate too slow for fast-moving images? (Though you liked HL2, which is a problem for this theory.)

My first thought is that you're used to the (inherently) blurred or soft images on your TV and the crisp image of the LCD seems noisy in comparison. You're also used to the color balance of your TV, and the different color balance of the LCD is throwing you off.

I also wonder if you're seeing the artifacts of MPEG-encoding when watching DVDs, and having it zoomed to fill the screen.

Finally, perhaps this monitor doesn't work well with analog inputs. That you don't like the Xbox's image on thie monitor suggests something more than just the display of movies.
 

Allen Marshall

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I guess I'll leave it at that then Dave. It's not that bad, but it's not gonna take long before I forget that DVD quality is good quality. Xbox 360 is right around the corner so we'll see how the component on that works with my monitor because like I said this is gonna be my TV from now on, for everything except cable. If Xbox 360 looks whacked hooked up to component (all games are atleast 720p) then that'll be kind of a kick in the nuts. If it does look weird I'll get a VGA for it, if it looks better then im gonna cry.

One serious question, what would be the result of watching a video higher resolution then my screen, like 1920x1440 or something higher. Will it look better, will it be bound to my screens picture, will it look as good as it would on a 1920x1440 screen, whats gonna be the high definition widescreen standard resolution after 1920x1080?
 

Paul Padilla

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My Pio Pro 1110 plasma is 1280X768 native run by a hi def dvr, Denon 3910 dvd and my PC. I believe there are some plasmas with higher rez but very few. You're screen is already higher rez than 90% or more of the material out there anyway so postulating about material with even higher rez still is kind of moot. For all intents and purposes it doesn't really exist. (NOw to answer your question) That being said, your screen is what it is...it can only display what it was constructed to display. Playing material with higher resolution than the screen is limited by the screen. You could connect your computer to an old 14" monochrome monitor, but you're never going to get any more than 14 inches of monochrome picture.

The only media that even makes it up to your screen's rez is the Windows Media HD material like T2 Extreme. I showed my ignorance about the Windows Media Player in my last post. I actually own that DVD but haven't taken the time to try it out. I brought it to work with me and went through the interactual player setup routine. My older 17" Dell LCD is only 1280X1024 using the DVI connection and the movie looks unbelievably clear. (Makes my mouth water to set it up at home now.) If that material doesn't look absolutely flawless on your screen then something is wrong. (I know...tell you something you don't know. ;) )

It can't hurt to make sure you're running the latest drivers for your video card. I was checking out the specs on ATI's website and you have an absolutely top of the line graphics card...endorsed by ISF no less. There is obviously still something we're missing...but mostly it's you who are missing out on some incredible images from that screen. I'll keep digging into it when I have the chance.
 

Jesse Blacklow

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Just thought I'd toss in a couple words:

I don't remember any 1600x1200 (or widescreen) images that came with Windows, but even if they did, the picture would look wierd because you're stretching the aspect ratio or available pixels. And if you're going from 1280x720 to 1920x1200, you're trying to stretch less than a million pixels to more than 2 million.
 

Allen Marshall

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I'd like to thank you guys for your detailed replies. I dont know if Dell will be able to help me out or if I'll be able to understand them but im gonna give them a call over the weekend and see what they have to say. One thing that is starting to bother me is how the screen handles black. For instance, Neos clothes arent black like they are, they're a brighter black or a darker grey. Another thing is I'm gettin weird kinda blocky colors within black alot, like black clothes and such.

I remember I posted before that when I switched from VGA to DVI that I was noticing some ghosting with animate objects on black backgrounds like credits and the text kinda blurred. Seeing as how DVI is supposed to be better then VGA I'm hesitant towards the 20 minutes of unplugging and plugging back in and then if it isnt better I have to do it all over again and you know these Cords stay really tight to the box so unscrewin em woooo it'll throw you through some frustration loops.

I did take a picture of something related to what im talking about and I hope the picture reveals how I see it on your screens to.

http://www.allenmarshall.com/capture2.jpg

It's small so maybe you'll have to save it to your computer and buff it up a tad. Basically what your looking at is a shot from a video game movie in which two tie-fighters are flying around. There's 2 problems and I hope you see them on your screens to, the stars are blurred and I have a funny feeling that's not a video problem. The second thing is the Tie fighters are flying around and leaving a ghost trails behind them, the trails are alittle bit harder to see on the site so you might have to bump the picture up.

I know LCDs are supposed to have problems with black but what im experiencing seems beyond acceptable parameters and something that would never make it off the ground if LCDs really did that. In dark parts in movies the black gets awkwardly colorful and dances around if an object moves through it.

I have camtasia which is a program that'll record your screen, if that reveals what I see in my movies I could use that and upload it to my site for you guys if anybody thinks that'll help. I dont know much about it so I dont know if it'll record what I see or if it'll record what's supposed to be seen. Even if it does record what's supposed to be seen I have no way of telling do I, because I am infact watching it on my screen. Isnt that annoyingly ironic. :frowning:
 

Allen Marshall

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Oh something else that I'd like to know. People say black on LCD is not black. It's true the widescreen bars from the video are not completely black, but the widescreen bars the screen makes are pitch black. To be specific, im talking about on those videos with widescreen inside of widescreen, so you can clearly see the line between the pitch black letter box and the light black letter 2nd letter box within it. So, why is that? Is it because that black is considered no image at all, not even displaying the color black?

I havent really gotten a true eclipse of vivid sharp and smooth picture in anything except half-life 2 at 1920x1080 with all graphic settings on high. When the characters walk towards you and get closer and then perhaps walk by you to the tight left or right there's really a more realistic feel there and it's really cool. I havent gotten that with any of wmv HD 1080p clips and im wondering if it's because all the clips on the site are older ones shot with grainy inferior cameras or something because you see black twitches and specs come up in the video all the time and even though the picture looks sharper you can still look at it and go "yep, that was shot in late 80s or early 90s".

The Madagascar looks pretty good but it's harder to judge 3D movies and you can find some miniture pixelation in the video in some areas so I'm guessing that doesnt say much towards the quality of the video as far as HD goes.
 

Ken Chan

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This is an indication that the levels are off. Have you done a DVD calibration using Avia or THX OptiMode or whatever? There are effectively three sets of adjustments: the monitor, the video card, and the DVD player program. The monitor usually doesn't have much control, especially with DVI. Ideally you make adjustments to the video card so that it affects games in addition to video. Finally, the DVD player may have some settings.
 

DaveF

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That suggests what I asked about earlier: does your monitor have too slow of a pixel refresh rate for your uses? Do you know what the spec is (40 ms, 25 ms, 13 ms, etc.) or what monitor model it is. Though this effect is going to be exacerbated with high-contrast, fast-motion scenes like dog-fighting tie-fighers against starry space.
 

Will_B

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It could also be that you bought a budget brand LCD monitor. Some of the cheapies still use LCD panels that have a response time of greater than 20 ms. 16 ms is common now, and I heard there are some really expensive LCD panels that have a response time of 8 ms.

This is different from refresh rate. It is a measure of the latency of an image, how long an image will linger before vanishing (thus, you may see trails on LCD monitors that are 20 ms or greater, but you don't see trails on LCD monitors that are 16 ms or lower).

Can you tell us what the response time of your monitor is? It might even be part of the model number/name of the monitor (look for a "20MS" or "16MS" or something). Or look in the specs.
 

Allen Marshall

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According to a site it's 16 ms.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1774271,00.asp

I have the Avia DVD, havent used it on the computer though.

I didnt take the picture with a digital camera Ken, I took a screenshot (ctrl+i) in windows media player.

I said before that fading text was blurry and left sustained afterimages for atleast a full second after the text has disappeared. I said before though that this didn't seem to happen until I unplugged my VGA and used DVI.

Since my only good example of that was from a video to small for people to make out, I took a screenshot of me watching constantine. I want someone to tell me if the fuzz in the picture is normal for DVDs or if something is wrong. The movie was fullscreen except for the little option bars on the top and bottom. It's an unaltered 1920x1200 screenshot and it's about 6MB so give it sometime to load lol.

http://www.allenmarshall.com/constantine.bmp

I also want people to notice that some color is shifting off the picture and into the letterbox. That remains pretty much a constant with all movies through the whole film.

If anyone has trained eyes with 1080p then maybe I'll grab my terminator dvd and take a screen shot of the HD because im tellin yah that boy aint right.
 

Allen Marshall

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Just makin sure we're talking abuot the samething here. I'm not talking about boosting my screen resolution to 1920x1440 im talking about watching a 1920x1440 video on my screen. What would happen, would it look better, would it look no better then a fullscreen vidoe that's 1920x1080, if it's limited, how is it limited is what im asking. If you take a 1280x720 video and you bring it into a small window, are you taking away pixels or are you scrunching 1280x720 into a smaller box inwhich case the picture would look better the smaller you put it right?

is 1920x1080 a good enough resolution to make picture quality look decent on a 20ft screen?
 

Will_B

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Allen, a screenshot wouldn't reveal whether your LCD panel is part of the problem since it doesn't actually take a picture of the screen you see... And in any case the screenshot you uploaded is a solid black screen. Are you pulling our legs here?
 

Christian Behrens

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The DVD image is probably an overlay from the graphics card which can rarely be captured by OS functions, i.e. a screen grab.

It does show, however, that you are using the InterActual player that comes on many DVDs. I have never installed that, let alone used it, so a decent DVD player may make a difference as well. Those also come with built-in screengrab functions which actually will capture the DVD video screen.

-Christian
 

Allen Marshall

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My bad, I didnt think it would work either. But for some reason the picture was there, it was there when I opened up the picture on my computer and keanu reeves was standing there was a cigarette in his mouth when I clicked the link to make it work, but now it's a black screen.

Here's a real screenshot:

http://www.allenmarshall.com/constantine.png

Dont judge by it's current size, that's just stupid. Save it to your computer and then size it up so it takes up the whole screen like a DVD is supposed to. Does anybody else see the tremendous amount of fuzz specifically in the background and his jacket or do I only see that on my screen?
 

Ken Chan

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There are a lot of variables besides the pixel count, but that's about the size used by the latest Star Wars in theaters. So yes.
 

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