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Reviewed by David Mackenzie
With more subtly problematic material, the player's "Smoothing" feature really does make a visible, albeit subtle, improvement to gradations in the picture. This fact alone gives Sony's machine an actual edge over the competition in the sea of otherwise very similar BD players. Read the full review...
Great review !
One question : can the AV SYNC setting (0-120ms) affect every audio output ?
I'll be using coax or optical for audio out and coud need this audio delay feature.
According to Marvell Sony's ES5000S uses their QDEO tech although I've never seen anything from Sony on this. It would be interesting to know if what Sony call smoothing has its basis in another tech such as QDEO. Was the ES5000S the first product to offer smoothing ?
Does the QDEO process shown on the images below appear to offer a similar (same ?) result as Sony smoothing ?
AVI
Last edited by Avi; 27-11-2009 at 11:21 AM.
Reason: correction - smoothing not SMB
AVI is asking the right question although I want to clarify on a point as it came up before. The S5000 has the very same reality enhancer suite which includes the smoothness option and an SBM option. The SBM option, super bit mapping, attempts to give 14-bit quality images on as low as an 8-bit display. In other words it tries to limit the effects of quantisation. It is NOT to deal with compression artifacts. The Smoothing option found in the reality enhancer section is to eliminate banding.
AVI is asking the right question although I want to clarify on a point as it came up before. The S5000 has the very same reality enhancer suite which includes the smoothness option and an SBM option. The SBM option, super bit mapping, attempts to give 14-bit quality images on as low as an 8-bit display. In other words it tries to limit the effects of quantisation. It is NOT to deal with compression artifacts. The Smoothing option found in the reality enhancer section is to eliminate banding.
Sorry I do probably mean smoothing and not SBM and I've edited.
I would add that for xv.YCC to be used it seems the camcorder material would probably have to be recorded on a DVD since there seems to be no real support over network and I could not get any joy from USB ports.
I also noticed there were very bad chroma artifacts with DVD on every output setting except 4:2:2, 576i. Clearly visible when using for example the chroma delay test patterns (eg on Merighi test disc). I suspect these would be very visible on animation.
Finally, still no mention of the SD 702 versus 720 active pixel width issue. Perhaps it is still refuted?
All of these issues I raised with Sony weeks ago - I still await a reply from anyone in their technical support team.
Edit:
BTW - please explain the difference between SBM being enabled and the smoothing feature. I can't get my head around what SBM could be doing if it is not for when doing smoothing or other processing.
Last edited by TheSwissKnife; 27-11-2009 at 9:34 AM.
I would add that for xv.YCC to be used it seems the camcorder material would probably have to be recorded on a DVD since there seems to be no real support over network and I could not get any joy from USB ports.
I also noticed there were very bad chroma artifacts with DVD on every output setting except 4:2:2, 576i. Clearly visible when using for example the chroma delay test patterns (eg on Merighi test disc). I suspect these would be very visible on animation.
Finally, still no mention of the SD 702 versus 720 active pixel width issue. Perhaps it is still refuted?
All of these issues I raised with Sony weeks ago - I still await a reply from anyone in their technical support team.
Edit:
BTW - please explain the difference between SBM being enabled and the smoothing feature. I can't get my head around what SBM could be doing if it is not for when doing smoothing or other processing.
I half explained this in my post 2 above yours.
All the processing in the Sony is executed at 14-bit. This includes colour upsampling (deep colour), and other enhancements/processing that the Sony provides. Most people still have 8-bit displays. The SBM, uses a form of dithering to eliminate the quantisation effects of downsampling that 14-bit output to 8. If you have deep colour display at 10 or 12-bit, then the effects of SBM are less.
Smoothing is a process specifically looking for banding compression in the source material. It does this by looking for large areas of similar colour with stepped shifts in the hue, saturation or luminance (banding). It also uses dithering to resolve this. As has been reported, there are rare chances where this could actually remove something that was intended, but it is very rare.
The key difference here. SBM is a process applied to the output of all other processing happening in the Sony to reduce quantisation noise and facilitate a psuedo 14-bit output on displays with less "bit" support. SBM does NOT consider the source material itself. Smoothing conversely is expressly analysing the source material.
Thanks. That is what I hoped. It means SBM makes zero difference if no image adjusting processing is performed aside from YCbCr to RGB conversion (on a >8 bit display) if used.
Does anyone know if SMB and Smoothing both apply to DVD as well as BD?
AVI is asking the right question although I want to clarify on a point as it came up before. The S5000 has the very same reality enhancer suite which includes the smoothness option and an SBM option. The SBM option, super bit mapping, attempts to give 14-bit quality images on as low as an 8-bit display. In other words it tries to limit the effects of quantisation. It is NOT to deal with compression artifacts. The Smoothing option found in the reality enhancer section is to eliminate banding.
Indeed, this wasn't too clear before from Sony's own documents (which, from memory, seemed to use the "Smoothing" and "Super Bit Mapping" terms interchangeably). Hopefully that's clearer in the S760 review.
Quote:
Originally Posted by AVI
According to Marvell Sony's ES5000S uses their QDEO tech although I've never seen anything from Sony on this. It would be interesting to know if what Sony call smoothing has its basis in another tech such as QDEO. Was the ES5000S the first product to offer smoothing ?
Does the QDEO process shown on the images below appear to offer a similar (same ?) result as Sony smoothing ?
The S5000ES was the first time I saw the control, and yes, your Marvell illustrations refer to what it's doing.
TheSwissKnife: I'm looking into the 702/720 thing, it's of great concern to me as someone who encodes and authors DVDs sometimes.
Quote:
Originally Posted by TheSwissKnife
BTW - please explain the difference between SBM being enabled and the smoothing feature. I can't get my head around what SBM could be doing if it is not for when doing smoothing or other processing.
JonStatt has it down (in fact, I think he PM'd me after the S5000ES review to help clarify some things). "Smoothing" fixes the banding error, SBM allows the improvement to be seen on TVs that don't accept "Deep Colour" HDMI input.
Quote:
Does anyone know if SMB and Smoothing both apply to DVD as well as BD?
Will test that before the player goes away and report back.
Thanks for the feedback all!
Last edited by David Mackenzie; 27-11-2009 at 3:27 PM.
The same way you would with BD. Super Bit Mapping is the process which allows the enhanced signal to degrade gracefully back to 8-bit for output to TVs which do not support "Deep Colour".
I tested it (with a BD) and it works: I made sure to tell the player that my display device didn't support Deep Colour (although it actually does) and forced 8 bit output via HDMI. I turned the SBM feature OFF. In this case, "Smoothing" made basically no difference, because although the player was cleaning up the banding, the 8-bit, SBM-less output was essentially adding it back in again.
Then I turned on SBM, while keeping the 8-bit output. This worked wonders and sure enough, the benefits of "Smoothing" were seen again.
Then, I turned the Deep Colour output back on, which made gradations a tiny bit smoother yet again.
But would you not get the same effect if the SBM switch was simply enabling the Smoothing function. How can you see that is actually doing anything if Smoothing appears to make no difference with it off? I must confess that I don't really understand how Smoothing can't be seen with it off in 8-bit mode, unless the gradations are only 1 quantisation level different, in which I can't see how SBM could then improve it. In non-8-bit mode I would expect to see Smoothing work well without SBM due to all the extra bits to quanitse into - or is it that SBM does more clever interpolation? TBH, it seems like voodoo to me!
But would you not get the same effect if the SBM switch was simply enabling the Smoothing function. How can you see that is actually doing anything if Smoothing appears to make no difference with it off? I must confess that I don't really understand how Smoothing can't be seen with it off in 8-bit mode, unless the gradations are only 1 quantisation level different, in which I can't see how SBM could then improve it. In non-8-bit mode I would expect to see Smoothing work well without SBM due to all the extra bits to quanitse into - or is it that SBM does more clever interpolation? TBH, it seems like voodoo to me!
Well I guess to see that....leave SBM on...and then while it is on, switch smoothing on and off and see what difference that makes. I agree, I would expect smoothing to still do something even in 8-bit mode. It is possible that smoothing requires SBM to be enabled otherwise the function is just defeated completely.
Well I guess to see that....leave SBM on...and then while it is on, switch smoothing on and off and see what difference that makes. I agree, I would expect smoothing to still do something even in 8-bit mode.
Perhaps it was just the material I was testing it with.
Can anyone confirm if this player has a source direct mode i.e. automatically sets output resolution/freq to match native material on the DVD/Blu-ray ?
I've checked the manual and can't see anything to suggests it does but there appears to be confusion as some suggest it can. I know some early Sony models (Pioneer based ?) could but this features appears to have been removed in models after the S300.
Thinking of a player but i already have a ps3 but it get abit noisy when watching films at low volume.
Would the s760 be much of an improvement over the ps3 picture quality and sound wise as i could tell a difference between my ps3 and my tosh ep35 hd dvd.
Can anyone confirm if this player has a source direct mode i.e. automatically sets output resolution/freq to match native material on the DVD/Blu-ray ?
I've checked the manual and can't see anything to suggests it does but there appears to be confusion as some suggest it can. I know some early Sony models (Pioneer based ?) could but this features appears to have been removed in models after the S300.
AVI
No Source Direct on the player.
Seen the unit,looked for the feature,couldn't find it.
No Source Direct on the player.
Seen the unit,looked for the feature,couldn't find it.
Very bad
I thought that it should be my next player but without source direct mode I can't buy it. I have to connect the player to radiance xs and then I have to find one with source direct mode....
Very bad
I thought that it should be my next player but without source direct mode I can't buy it. I have to connect the player to radiance xs and then I have to find one with source direct mode....
There may be some Pioneer BDP-51FD blu-ray players floating about out there on clearance as I think it is now discontinued- it has source direct. I have read of some people in Europe finding them on clearance for about 200 quid.
just got the s760 great bd performance, total natural untampered 1080 24p playback
my display is the high end sony x3500 10 bit panel
the only problem i have is in the video settings hdmi deep colour not sure if i should select 10 bit or 12 bit
if anyone can help that would be great...
You should be leaving the HDMI deep colour on AUTO for 95% of cases. Only if your TV and player aren't negotiating correctly should you change this. It will default to the maximum output your display is capable of.
However, outputting deep colour means upsampling the colour information. If you want "natural untampered", then you should set it to 8-bit which is the maximum a blu-ray can actually hold. And then turn SBM (super bit mapping) off. And then turn Smoothing, off. And ensure the reality enhancer is set to 0.
Even though the player failed 1080i 50Hz with 2:2 in test patterns, I'm curious to know if it can handle BBCs Life on Blu-ray correctly (which is 1080i with mainly 25fps material with some 50fps mixed in) and output 1080p?
Might be a long shot to ask, but if anyone has tested I'd love to know.
It's the only disc I have with 1080i 50Hz, but I would of course want it handled correctly by the player.
You should be leaving the HDMI deep colour on AUTO for 95% of cases. Only if your TV and player aren't negotiating correctly should you change this. It will default to the maximum output your display is capable of.
However, outputting deep colour means upsampling the colour information. If you want "natural untampered", then you should set it to 8-bit which is the maximum a blu-ray can actually hold. And then turn SBM (super bit mapping) off. And then turn Smoothing, off. And ensure the reality enhancer is set to 0.
About to purchase a 760 but have been told it does not read DVD discs created with PC editing programs eg U-lead DVD Movie Factory, Adobe video programs, Media Studio Pro 8 etc. Can anybody advise if this is in fact a problem with Sony Players and in particular with the 760.
Advanced Super Bit Mapping
E. & O.E.