geogan
Prominent Member
So I have been seeing horrible colour banding in various movies and TV programmes since I upgraded my projector to Sony VPL-40ES.
It usually was apparent in scenes which have low lighting and gradient type images such as Game of Thrones or moody dark movies.
Affect is similar to this (but moving and strobing as the patterns change with light changes):
Any way for a long time I blamed Sony's SXRD technology for the problem because I couldn't see any other reason for it - after all I had set the video mode on the Onkyo TX-SR608 reciever to "Through" mode and didn't have it set to process the image in any way.
With "Through" mode you would expect a bit-for-bit copy of HDMI In -> HDMI Out
But it appears this is not the case with this reciever (and maybe others - more on that later)
So I was astounded to discover that if I removed the Onkyo reciever completely from the HDMI chain and just went source direct to projector (or even, as I have, source to Sony headphone amp to HDMI splitter box to projector) then the banding was gone - back to normal compression artifacts associated with source material only (which may be slightly bandy because of severe compression).
So then I had to figure out how/why the reciever was doing this - there was nothing in manual and nothing in menus to turn off.
Then I searched online and saw a post talking about the "Through" mode not completely removing processing and there was a secret operation to remove video processing completely.
This is it:
Onkyo TX-SR608 - Important find | AVForums
"If you really want to turn off all video processing:
Press VCR/DVR and RETURN on the AV receiver at the same time.
Select "Skip" in the "VideoProcessor" setting by pressing RETURN repeatedly on the display.
To reset back to the original setting, press the same button at the same time. "
When I do this and set to SKIP, the banding goes completely (you can tell the operation is major change because it causes the display to go blank as the source/display re-do HDMI handshaking)
The downside is you no longer have the on-screen Onkyo menus/volume overlays
I don't know how many other Onkyo models this affects, but any Onkyo owners could try to do similar procedure and see what happens.
Don't know if this is something to do with the Faroudja chip (does this do the overlays?)
Here's what it looks like in a scene from last weeks "Game of Thrones" on Sky Atlantic HD (33 minutes in where Sanza goes to visit Reek in the dog kennels if you want to check this scene on your own reciever)
This was a difficult image to capture - required a Panasonic GH4 camera in full manual mode mounted on large tripod to capture as the scene is very dark.
I have slighly overexposed the image so you can see the banding - it is very clear when I view projected image with my own F1.0 eyes but F3.5 lens is not so good!
Both images were taken with same settings of 1.6 seconds exposure at F4.1 and minimum camera ISO of 200 (no idea why GH4 can't do ISO 100)
VPROCESSOR:USE
Zoomed to top-left:
Here's what it looks like with processing skipped through hidden menu in reciever.
Note it still looks a tiny bit banding but that's just the camera capture - on screen it looks more or less a smooth gradient.
VPROCESSOR:SKIP
Zoomed to top-left:
I have seen similar results using a Windows desktop uncompressed 24-bit gradient background - with processing on you get horrible gradients and colour patterns, with it off you get a natural smooth gradient.
I may post these too as it is even more obvious with these examples...
Doing this also apparently fixes other things I noticed like stutter in certain display modes in certain movies. See below post:
Onkyo TX-SR608 - Video "stutter"? - Blu-ray Forum
"You guys need to call onkyo and complain. I called today and and told them of all the problems and they said "we don't listen to forum people, they need to call us about problems". They said they haven't heard of any of the issues yet. I had them test stuff on theirs while I was on the phone and sure enough the guy said he noticed the stutters every 10 seconds or so! They also acknowledged that they did see that the passthrough wasn't sending the signal untouched like it should but it was due to their new chip they used and there isn't a way to fix it. I'm trying to get my money back on mine as these are defects that as for now Onkyo is saying can't be fixed with a firmware update. One of the main reasons I got this unit is the new overlaid OSD and having to go into a secret menu and disable it is not my idea of a fix for picture and performance issues.
I have had the same problem with my 707, though it was easy to get around it. It only happened with 24p in my case, you have to set the video processor to skip on my particular unit (though before a certain firmware it reset each time after a power cycle).
Here a quote from the manual of the 707:
Video equipment can be connected to the AV receiver by using any one of the following video connection formats:
composite video, S-Video, component video, or HDMI, the latter offering the best picture quality.
For optimal video performance, THX recommends that video signals pass through the system without upconver-
sion (e.g., component video input through to component video output).
It is also recommended that you press the [VCR/DVR] and [RETURN] buttons on the AV receiver at the same
time. Select “Skip” in the “VideoProcessor” setting on the display. To reset back to the original setting, press the
same button at the same time.
I think this bug is present in every model that features Faroudja DCDi Cinema... at least every Onkyo model. My new 1007 suffers from this as well. It is very noticeable on scrolling credits.
Apparently the tools at Faroudja took the 24p too seriously. The problem is that the Faroudja chip is attempting converting a 23.976p signal to a 24p output. So every 40s or so... a frame is dropped. Way to go Faroudja.
"
It usually was apparent in scenes which have low lighting and gradient type images such as Game of Thrones or moody dark movies.
Affect is similar to this (but moving and strobing as the patterns change with light changes):
Any way for a long time I blamed Sony's SXRD technology for the problem because I couldn't see any other reason for it - after all I had set the video mode on the Onkyo TX-SR608 reciever to "Through" mode and didn't have it set to process the image in any way.
With "Through" mode you would expect a bit-for-bit copy of HDMI In -> HDMI Out
But it appears this is not the case with this reciever (and maybe others - more on that later)
So I was astounded to discover that if I removed the Onkyo reciever completely from the HDMI chain and just went source direct to projector (or even, as I have, source to Sony headphone amp to HDMI splitter box to projector) then the banding was gone - back to normal compression artifacts associated with source material only (which may be slightly bandy because of severe compression).
So then I had to figure out how/why the reciever was doing this - there was nothing in manual and nothing in menus to turn off.
Then I searched online and saw a post talking about the "Through" mode not completely removing processing and there was a secret operation to remove video processing completely.
This is it:
Onkyo TX-SR608 - Important find | AVForums
"If you really want to turn off all video processing:
Press VCR/DVR and RETURN on the AV receiver at the same time.
Select "Skip" in the "VideoProcessor" setting by pressing RETURN repeatedly on the display.
To reset back to the original setting, press the same button at the same time. "
When I do this and set to SKIP, the banding goes completely (you can tell the operation is major change because it causes the display to go blank as the source/display re-do HDMI handshaking)
The downside is you no longer have the on-screen Onkyo menus/volume overlays
I don't know how many other Onkyo models this affects, but any Onkyo owners could try to do similar procedure and see what happens.
Don't know if this is something to do with the Faroudja chip (does this do the overlays?)
Here's what it looks like in a scene from last weeks "Game of Thrones" on Sky Atlantic HD (33 minutes in where Sanza goes to visit Reek in the dog kennels if you want to check this scene on your own reciever)
This was a difficult image to capture - required a Panasonic GH4 camera in full manual mode mounted on large tripod to capture as the scene is very dark.
I have slighly overexposed the image so you can see the banding - it is very clear when I view projected image with my own F1.0 eyes but F3.5 lens is not so good!
Both images were taken with same settings of 1.6 seconds exposure at F4.1 and minimum camera ISO of 200 (no idea why GH4 can't do ISO 100)
VPROCESSOR:USE
Zoomed to top-left:
Here's what it looks like with processing skipped through hidden menu in reciever.
Note it still looks a tiny bit banding but that's just the camera capture - on screen it looks more or less a smooth gradient.
VPROCESSOR:SKIP
Zoomed to top-left:
I have seen similar results using a Windows desktop uncompressed 24-bit gradient background - with processing on you get horrible gradients and colour patterns, with it off you get a natural smooth gradient.
I may post these too as it is even more obvious with these examples...
Doing this also apparently fixes other things I noticed like stutter in certain display modes in certain movies. See below post:
Onkyo TX-SR608 - Video "stutter"? - Blu-ray Forum
"You guys need to call onkyo and complain. I called today and and told them of all the problems and they said "we don't listen to forum people, they need to call us about problems". They said they haven't heard of any of the issues yet. I had them test stuff on theirs while I was on the phone and sure enough the guy said he noticed the stutters every 10 seconds or so! They also acknowledged that they did see that the passthrough wasn't sending the signal untouched like it should but it was due to their new chip they used and there isn't a way to fix it. I'm trying to get my money back on mine as these are defects that as for now Onkyo is saying can't be fixed with a firmware update. One of the main reasons I got this unit is the new overlaid OSD and having to go into a secret menu and disable it is not my idea of a fix for picture and performance issues.
I have had the same problem with my 707, though it was easy to get around it. It only happened with 24p in my case, you have to set the video processor to skip on my particular unit (though before a certain firmware it reset each time after a power cycle).
Here a quote from the manual of the 707:
Video equipment can be connected to the AV receiver by using any one of the following video connection formats:
composite video, S-Video, component video, or HDMI, the latter offering the best picture quality.
For optimal video performance, THX recommends that video signals pass through the system without upconver-
sion (e.g., component video input through to component video output).
It is also recommended that you press the [VCR/DVR] and [RETURN] buttons on the AV receiver at the same
time. Select “Skip” in the “VideoProcessor” setting on the display. To reset back to the original setting, press the
same button at the same time.
I think this bug is present in every model that features Faroudja DCDi Cinema... at least every Onkyo model. My new 1007 suffers from this as well. It is very noticeable on scrolling credits.
Apparently the tools at Faroudja took the 24p too seriously. The problem is that the Faroudja chip is attempting converting a 23.976p signal to a 24p output. So every 40s or so... a frame is dropped. Way to go Faroudja.
"
Last edited: