Weird Jaggy Lines (1 Viewer)

[ChuckyMan]

I was watching Animaniacs because I heard it's one of the titles on the Warner disc rot list (luckily, I seem to be okay so far) and noticed something. During fast moving scenes and quick characters, there were multiple black horizontal lines. I tried setting my blu-ray player to 480p...which SLIGHTLY helped. Not having anything else to do, I put the disc in my PS4 Pro. The show seemed to show up perfectly.

Any ideas as to what's happening or why the problem doesn't show up on my PS4 Pro ? I checked the 2nd disc on my blu-ray player, with it set to normal settings, and the jaggy black lines weren't there. I honestly have no idea what's happening.

 

[Nick*Z]

You seem to be describing digital combing, a flaw in 480i, 720i or 1080i content that some players can better resolve than others. Be glad you're able to switch out from a player to a PS4 and a Blu-ray player that can handle decoding the content.

The real problem is that content is not being mastered to optimal levels, or perhaps, based on the source, is incapable of being successfully uprezzed. Players have a variety of settings that are supposed to address 'less than optimal' quality in content. As I said, some are better than others at doing this.

By the way, as a general rule of thumb...any setting on a player or TV that promises to 'improve' image quality in motion, or 'monitor' image elements as the content is played to 'stabilize' the image, should be turned off to mitigate problematic decoding issues. Give this a try.

 

[ChuckyMan]

You seem to be describing digital combing, a flaw in 480i, 720i or 1080i content that some players can better resolve than others. Be glad you're able to switch out from a player to a PS4 and a Blu-ray player that can handle decoding the content.

The real problem is that content is not being mastered to optimal levels, or perhaps, based on the source, is incapable of being successfully uprezzed. Players have a variety of settings that are supposed to address 'less than optimal' quality in content. As I said, some are better than others at doing this.

By the way, as a general rule of thumb...any setting on a player or TV that promises to 'improve' image quality in motion, or 'monitor' image elements as the content is played to 'stabilize' the image, should be turned off to mitigate problematic decoding issues. Give this a try.

I have the sharpness turned down to 0 as I always do. I don't have any stabilization settings on that I know of, but I'll check again. I wonder why disc 2 doesn't have the problem (that I can see) when disc 1 does. Never noticed this problem before, but that's probably because the last time I watched these dvds is when I had a CRT tv, when I now have a 1080p Samsung.

 

[JohnRice]

I was watching Animaniacs because I heard it's one of the titles on the Warner disc rot list (luckily, I seem to be okay so far) and noticed something. During fast moving scenes and quick characters, there were multiple black horizontal lines. I tried setting my blu-ray player to 480p...which SLIGHTLY helped. Not having anything else to do, I put the disc in my PS4 Pro. The show seemed to show up perfectly.

Any ideas as to what's happening or why the problem doesn't show up on my PS4 Pro ? I checked the 2nd disc on my blu-ray player, with it set to normal settings, and the jaggy black lines weren't there. I honestly have no idea what's happening.

The best setting should (most likely) be having the BR player set to 1080P. The PS4 is just doing a much better job of de-interlacing the source video. I'm presuming you're using hdmi for both players.

 

[Nick*Z]

Regarding disc 2 not showing the same issues as disc 1. I've bought DVD sets in the past where only certain episodes exhibit compression issues, while only some show signs of chroma bleeding, and some show digital combing, etc. and so on. In the early days of TV DVD mastering, there wasn't a whole lot of care exhibited on continuity.

It mattered more about quantity of releases and slapping things to disc that hadn't seen the light of day in some time. There was no talk of 'restoration' and 'preservation' simply meant that whatever condition the elements were currently in was what you eventually received on disc, with little to no afterthought for 'the future' of flat panel TV's - in 1997, then in their infancy.

So, CRT broadcast quality was deemed 'good enough'. We are now living in an age where nothing short of perfection will do and studios are beginning to come around to applying their due diligence - not, for altruistic reasons, but rather, because they suddenly realize they have a massive back catalog of product they could make a quick rental buck on streaming, if only the quality of the transfers was up to snuff.

For the most part - quality was never a consideration. Bean crunching, getting the numbers up and the product out to show a profit, is the be all/end all. That attitude is slowly changing. But Hollywood's outlook on its own history has NEVER been progressive.

If it had been, Fox wouldn't have junked miles and miles of irreplaceable original elements in the harbor, the backlots for Fox and MGM would have been lovingly preserved, the MGM auction of 78 would have never occurred, and Disney would be releasing deluxe editions of its live action catalog to Blu (including Song of the South). Pride of workmanship was a stalwart of the glory days when the moguls ran the industry. To quote a famous movie prologue, "...look for it only in the history books as a dream remembered. A civilization gone with the wind."

 

[ChuckyMan]

I found a menu in my blu ray player. I hit display and was able to click Video. Not sure what it does, but it made the episodes play just fine. I just wish that I didn't have to do it every time I watch those episodes, as I've found that it doesn't keep that setting.

 

[AndyMcKinney]

I found a menu in my blu ray player. I hit display and was able to click Video. Not sure what it does, but it made the episodes play just fine. I just wish that I didn't have to do it every time I watch those episodes, as I've found that it doesn't keep that setting.

I know Oppo players have a setting for interlacing, where you can click "film priority" or "video priority". Basically, setting it to "video priority" (which is what you should choose) preserves the appearance of material meant to be shown interlaced.

Maybe it's to do with interlacing? As to why Disc 1 is different to disc 2, maybe an interlacing flag was set incorrectly on that first one by the distributor?

 

[BobO'Link]

I found a menu in my blu ray player. I hit display and was able to click Video. Not sure what it does, but it made the episodes play just fine. I just wish that I didn't have to do it every time I watch those episodes, as I've found that it doesn't keep that setting.

Check the player's base/main settings menu for that or a similar setting. On most players you can only get to those settings/menus if a disc isn't loaded.