New 1080p LCD = Poor Blu Ray playback

kiddakidda

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Hi All,

I was browsing through the interweb this fine bank holiday morning when I stumbled across what looked like a fantastic bargain of LCD TV. Richer sounds were selling a well reviewed Hitachi UT42MX70. So off I went and treated myself.

After installation I have checked my Sky HD playback - All good and slight but noticible improvement from my 3 year old 1024 x 768 plasma.

Onto games and the 1920 x 1080 looked stunning - well impressed.

Finally Blu Ray......... A severe loss of image quality, what went wrong!?

I play Blu Rays through my HTPC using Power DVD ultra that came packed with my internal LG Blu Ray drive. I have tried reloading drivers etc but no joy.

The Image qulaity looks as if it is playing in standard definition despite my display settings being on 1080P

The playback is really awful, can anyone shed any light on this??

Cheers :lease:
 
Hi All,

I was browsing through the interweb this fine bank holiday morning when I stumbled across what looked like a fantastic bargain of LCD TV. Richer sounds were selling a well reviewed Hitachi UT42MX70. So off I went and treated myself.

After installation I have checked my Sky HD playback - All good and slight but noticible improvement from my 3 year old 1024 x 768 plasma.

Onto games and the 1920 x 1080 looked stunning - well impressed.

Finally Blu Ray......... A severe loss of image quality, what went wrong!?

I play Blu Rays through my HTPC using Power DVD ultra that came packed with my internal LG Blu Ray drive. I have tried reloading drivers etc but no joy.

The Image qulaity looks as if it is playing in standard definition despite my display settings being on 1080P

The playback is really awful, can anyone shed any light on this??

Cheers :lease:

It is quite a difficult task to get a HTPC running absolutely perfectly so it runs Blu Ray unless you have killer hardware. Is the playback choppy? Is the image quality also poor. Are the colours washed out? Were you using exactly the same equipment with your last TV? It would be interesting to see how playback would be on a PS3 or a native Blu Ray player just for comparison sakes. It might not be the telly considering the fact that you can game quite happily on it. Are you connected via VGA or HDMI?
 
Cheers for your response,

I have not changed anything on my PC and Blu Ray playback on my previous Samsung Plasma was fine. All I was doing was boosting upto 1080P from 1080i/720P

My HTPC is a reasonable standard:

AMD Phenom II X3 720 BE
XFX Geforce 8200 MOBO
XFX 9600 GT Alpha Dog
8GB Crucial Ballistix RAM
LG Blu Ray / HD DVD Drive
Corsair HX 520 PSU

I don't have any stuttering on playback and the Blu Ray discs load quickly.

I can't help thinking that it may be just a settings issue somewhere. The picture really does look like it is standard definition.

Ta
 
Sorry, to answer your other questions:

On Blu ray Colours are washed out and Image quality has dropped substaintially.

On the flipside, I have just had a quick blast on Bioshock and it is a complete contrast. Colours look a lot more vibrant than on my old samsung and definition and motion blur are also much, much better.

Confused!! :confused:
 
:oops: Another question I forgot to answer.

HDMI from my Sony STR 820 Amp, DVI to HDMi from PC to AMP.

Nvidia control panel confirms that all is ok with HDCP and screen is definatley running in 1080P

Cheers again
 
I think you're right. I would almost certainly say this is a settings problem but even if it was I would still expect the picture to at least be sharp considering it'sa full HD panel. Have you tried using an alternative player such as VLC Media Player or GOM player (both free to download)? Generally, nearly all TVs come with poor settings out of the box so it's certainly worth having a look in here. Using THX Optimizer is a good start to getting the picture right for movie playback. You can find the THX Optimizer on THX certified DVDs such as Monsters Inc, The Incredibles etc.

There's certainly no interference from the AV amp as it doesn't do any video processing. The fact that everything appeared to work fine with exactly the same setup on your previous TV suggests that the TV settings may be the primary concern. What plasma did you have before?
 
My previous TV was a Samsung PS42Q7HD which I had for 3 years.

Never any problems with it and Blu Ray playback was good quality and I do feel it could be even better with this 1080P LCD.

It has to be a conflict or set up issue somewhere because SKY TV and games look great.
 
Bit more info.

I have just checked my information tab in PowerDVD Ultra and I am sure that it used to mention my graphics card??

Anyway, there is no mention of my 9600 GT and it also states that there is no video accelerator in use.

Does this mean anything??
 
Bit more info.

I have just checked my information tab in PowerDVD Ultra and I am sure that it used to mention my graphics card??

Anyway, there is no mention of my 9600 GT and it also states that there is no video accelerator in use.

Does this mean anything??

I don't use PowerDVD so I'm not sure. What exactly does it say instead? Try downloading VLC Media Player or GOM player as they are both free and very easy to use. I am assuming they support Blu Ray playback. This will confirm if it is a PowerDVD problem. Also, obiously ensure you have the latest graphics drivers installed. ;)
 
Well I am stumped!

I have looked at VLC and there is no metion of it being able to play Blu Ray or HD DVD.

When you watch Blu Rays it is obvious that something is downsampling the quality of the picture. It is certainly no better than traditional DVD playback.

I have a small program from cyberlink that is called BD Advisor which shows if your PC is Blu Ray and HD DVD compliant. This program always showed that all was OK but now shows that the nvidia drivers are not (latest version) and the graphis card is unknown??

Both of these I have never had problems with before and I checked the graphics card was HDCP before I bought it.

I cannot understand how by changing my monitor has caused me this more grief, It just does not make sense.

Any pointers would be great here??
 
***UPDATE***

After messing and tweaking till the late hours there has finally been some improvement.

For some reason PowerDVD was not getting on with the latest Nvidia driver anymore (185.85) and started to show error codes.

I have re-installed PowerDVD and then rolled back the driver to a previous version (182.50) and things are much improved.

It is now much closer to the playback from my previous Samsung Plasma. I'm still convinced that improvements can be made and I may start another thread regarding quality Vs budget HDMi leads.

Cheers All.
 
Quote! quality Vs budget HDMi leads.

I paid £30 for a gold plated HDMI lead from curry's however the pic doesnt seem any different from a £4.99 HDMI lead.....
 
This is what bothers me.

Whilst I was looking at TV's yesterday a nice chap in a well known PC retailer gave me the sell on a £40.00 Monster Cables HDMi lead.

There are so many cables around and I have personally not paid any more than £10.00 for a HDMi lead I just wonder if spending more would make any difference?

Anyone?
 
This is what bothers me.

Whilst I was looking at TV's yesterday a nice chap in a well known PC retailer gave me the sell on a £40.00 Monster Cables HDMi lead.

There are so many cables around and I have personally not paid any more than £10.00 for a HDMi lead I just wonder if spending more would make any difference?

Anyone?

Take that lead back, stick it around his neck and choke him with it. It won't make any difference WHATSOEVER. So long as the cable is fully capable of 1080p playback with HD audio then there is no reason why a £10 cable will be any worse than a £100 cable. People who try to tell me otherwise make me sick. Out of all the things I have read the only realy difference a more expensive cable would make is over long distances (50m etc).

I've yet to hear anyone proving otherwise. Seriously, it's a waste of money my friend. Glad to see you got things sorted. Regarding VLC player, I'm guessing you right click on the Blu-Ray drive and select 'Open with VLC Player' but I could be wrong. ;)
 

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