Pixel-Plus owners/ DVD?

Nyquil Driver

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As this forum has its fair share of P+ owners, I thought I'd try to get to the bottom of something...

It's always intrigued me how some DVD's can look absolutely fantastic with minimal artifacts and yet several others look much less impressive. Obviously there are some discs with better transfers than others, but I've found that regular DVD reviews aren't an accurate guide where my Philips set is concerned.

As an example, I recently rented Attack of The Clones (under the impression that the image quality would be the best yet seen) but found that the picture was merely adequate actually and a long way from the best I've witnessed on my 28PW9617. The searing clarity and deeply 3-dimensional images found on other discs (like From Hell, Resident Evil and Dracula Superbit) wasn't in evidence IMO. So what's going on? it's not just because of the digital transfer of AOTC as I was similarly unimpressed with the R4 of Mummy Returns (not to mention the film itself!, although that's another story..)...

I want to know what other P+ owners think and which DVD's you've found to be the best/worst as I've begun to doubt the word of on-line DVD reviewers. There must be something wrong though as I'd personally rate series 2 of Spaced WAY ahead of AOTC in terms of picture quality!...
 
All R2 DVD through Tosh SD220 DVD on a 36"philips 9607


Gladiator this to looked 3d at times slight halo this was frst i watched and had a bit of trouble grtting useto the black of the blacks kept on tryig to adjust the contrast and brightness to see more detail in the dark areas but i dont thinck there was any its just i havent had a tv that can do black before only shades of grey.(would like to know what others think of this).The bit in the carriage near the begining of the film son daughter talking.

Shrek looked stunning could not look better on anything even anything to come in the next 10 years.

Monsters inc looked great.

Ice age looked great but the detail isnt as good as shrek so the tv cant do as much for it.

Pale rider the first time i realy notised the halo mainly around heads as they went in front of undergroth turning down the sharpness to almost nothing helps alot with this it also helps if you just try to forget it look at the person not as you would normaly dont watc the edges trying to spot the efect.

American wolf in london old film but the people did look 3d at times ,the sky was a bit grainy though and blood showed up well a good tv for horror i think.

The Phantom Menace looked good but not as 3d as i would have hoped but still verey good things did jump out 3d like at times but not as much as i expected still enjoyed it more than at the pictures and notised more.

yet to go the clones ,lotr,et,
 
RON- I know exactly what you mean about detail in darker scenes. I used to try and adjust my contrast all the time aswell, but if you increase it too much, then the brighter scenes can look over-saturated. The only time it really bothers me is when people are having a conversation in a dimly lit room and their faces are obscured with (what looks like) too much black. I understand that some parts of some films are supposed to be indistinct and/or moody, but it happens far too often to be attributed to that alone IMO (Panic Room may aswell be called "The Shadow People"!)...

Had a look at AOTC again this morning and I think I was probably over-stating things a bit in my first post. As with Episode 1, it's a generally commendable image, it's just that I expected more and I've certainly seen better. Personally, I think P+ is at it's best when a good quality film has a close up of people talking to each other (with the background less focussed than the actors) as the image can look like a moving glossy photo in those circumstances...
 
it's important to realise that CGI through Pixel Plus is where Pixel Plus seems to be good at (actually, exemplary at)

Which is odd when Pixar and Pixel Plus appear to be... (removed for legal reasons)...
 
Trade in a Philips Pixel Plus for the Bang & Olufsen BeoVision 3 (£2,600).

A bit wary of this recommendation? I can understand; however, don't be.

Like Frost says in Blade: "All our strengths, none of our weaknesses".
 
what the hell is it with you and B&O??
 
In the context of Pixel Plus, the BeoVision uses the Philips tube, but removes 99% of the problems

it's just information aside from the fact that Bang & Olufsen have opted to support Pixel Plus and improve it with better processing technology

the results will simply blow you away

anything wrong with that?

and no, I don't work for B&O - I had a Panasonic TX-36PF10 for 2 years and a Sony Wega before that!
 
er....

did i say you work for them?

I just notice that every thread you enter you mention B&O, broken record type stuff
 
Originally posted by astonbilla
what the hell is it with you and B&O??

:) It appears there is only one solution to every problem. Sorry two, the other is to throw silly money tweako cables at the problems as well.

It doesn't help anyone with a Philips problem.
 
testing a Pixel Plus tv with a tech+link s-video cable produced black and white pictures that are so well contained that blacks drop with melting wax quality and whites so dazzling on the gamepad that Rex uses in Toy Story, that it will catch your breath

chord's silver s-video makes colours so ripe, it's sickly sweet, and particularly with CGI movies - the effect is like watching fruit ripen in fast foward mode as David Attenborough chatters in the background

unless you have the right configuration and you know what works with what best, then Scart RGB pales in the capabilities of s-video and DVD playback

these nuances make a difference between an acceptable picture and one attributed to the ever ongoing problems promoted by this website

> no reference was made to actually me guessing that you meant I worked for Bang & Olufsen?
Boy did I fall for that one!
I feel... humiliated!
How could I live with myself ever again!

:laughs:
 
Originally posted by ixos1
unless you have the right configuration and you know what works with what best, then Scart RGB pales in the capabilities of s-video and DVD playback

I am sure you love your B and O tv, they make some very interesting but small and expensive tvs. You will find many agree with you about quote, it was well documented in a long thread that became a sticky detailing how most tvs deal with RGB signals (basically down converting them to s video) for internal processing. It general a large amount of correspondence and I believe STILL does. This isn’t new stuff, it has been very well cover recently. Well done for spotting the difference though. It sits at the top of the page everyday immediately in front of everyone who looks. It also dictates what is useful re cable specs. It isn't a pixel plus thing.

I am actually quite sympathetic to pixel plus (and B and O) and what it tries to do but it cannot generate new info (no scaler does) and is not a replacement for HDTV. Those of us who have compared HD signals and scaled DVD images know there is NO comparison. It is an ‘electronic fudge’, no more than that. Some like it, others can’t touch it with a barge pole. The B and O solution is no different, neither is DRC. They are compromises. They all have their strengths and detractors but it is NO alternative to HD. HD is much better not just is resolution but in particular colour as well (drawing from a bigger colour palate). Just look at the CIE.

Comments like trade in your….. aren’t helpful for someone for is after good disc / bad disc on pixel plus sets. Not sure I like you tasting notes on cables but it is a different approach, I give you that. It will generate comment I am sure but not one I will buy into! But I agree the detail is in the setting up to get the best from PP. Correct connection method and a set up disc. No rocket science here, well covered previously by others, it might help to minimise the bad points and enhance the strengths of PP for it’s owners. Surely people are after getting the best out of their current sets rather than buying yet another PP set, having been not happy with the first?.
 
The Beekeeper
Surely people are after getting the best out of their current sets rather than buying yet another PP set.
I agree trading in and changing is not a continual reality for most i think many of us have lives that need atending to but any help that goes towards getting the best out of what i have now or help towords making a choice in the futur is always welcome.

Nyquil Driver
I forgot i watched Panic Room on dvd and yes i did find myself adjusting brightnes and contrast but again i am not sure that there was more to see in the blacks or if it was how it was filmed i still think it might be more to do with the blacks actualy been black and the whites bright white compared to my old tv which did shdes of grey instead.
The first image on my tv was bob monkhouse on digital top box with pixel plus on he looked 500 years old so it picks up the details.

ixos1
I thought RGB through scart was better than s video areyou saying the philips would be better getting a s video signal through s video cables. I am using jvc flat gold plated cables RGB ext 1 & 2 dvd and top box

I MUST SAY THAT I AM STILL VEREY HAPPY WITH THE TV AND STILL THINK IT WAS THE RIGHT CHOICE AT THAT PRICE POINT
 
Have I misunderstood, or is there someone out there who really thinks S VHS is better tha RGB - or indeed component?

Switch off all the processing and enjoy an RGB source - you know it makes sense...
 
Originally posted by The Beekeeper
And watch your tv down convert your RGB signal to at best component, at worst composite and more often than not SVideo. It is all done internally.


http://www.avforums.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=43445&referrerid=15820

If that's the case,RGB overall still looks miles cleaner and more colourfull than straight S-Video to me.So whatever internal processing is going on,it does a very good job of it.

What happens,if anything,to S-Video internally?
 
Nyquil Driver.

I have to agree with you on the variable quality of DVD's.

I found Star Wars I & II to be similar in respect of them not being very sharp,unlike the fantastic quality of the Fifth Element,which I use as a DVD benchmark.

I think Star Wars I & II has been done like this to blend in the CGI with real life action and to also give it a phantasy like look.

Panick Room is as dark as it is to create a tense atmosphere,plus it was mostly shot in the middle of the night.

This is on a 50Hz Philips 32PW6515.
 
Wayne- Yes, that's exactly what I thought as TPM and AOTC are definitely lacking in sharpness (detail and colours seem fine). The difference between those two and other, much crisper offerings (like the R1 of Insomnia which I recently watched) is instantly noticeable and I'm sure that using a P+ set emphasises the differences.

Ron- I think you might be right about the brightness issues, as the Philips is probably designed to display a 'true' inky black whenever a pixel is intended to be black (or very dark grey even). As Wayne said though, Panic Room is probably overbearingly dark for stylistic reasons, so I'm prepared to give P+ the benefit of the doubt there...

The main thing I've been wondering is why the processing effects (halo etc) are more noticeable on some discs than others. I appreciate that certain types of images (like people moving while the camera-pans or movement in-front of fences/grates) will be a problem regardless of the disc in question, but you do get the odd DVD which is inexplicably full of it. Supposedly, bad MPEG artifacts make Natural Motion's job significantly harder than usual and so (in theory) the worse the encoding, the worse the problem. I've always found Superbit titles to be exemplary (esp Dracula and The Fifth Element), so the theory does stand-up in general. I was certainly pleased when I found that my R1 copy of Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back played with considerably less artifacts than the R2 I rented a month before.

Two discs that spring to mind that buck this trend though are Ali (R1) and Spider-Man (R4). They both have decent transfers and encoding, but both of them are noticeably hindered by processing in P+ mode (IMO at least). Not just halo either, but other motion related problems aswell (lag etc). I remember when I watched Ali (for the first and last time!) that all the fast action seemed to be causing problems. The wrestling scene in Spider-Man is spoilt in a similar kind of way, as it exhibits a sort of flashy colour seepage.

As a more general point, I've noticed that metallic grey/silver objects have a tendency to flicker aswell. It doesn't always happen, but I'm sure that I saw one film inparticular (a medieval title presumably, forget what it was) which had lots of flickery armour in it....

Anyway, sorry for prattling on like that, but I can't bring myself to just ignore the processing issues altogether because I've seen loads of films which are virtually artifact-free and an equal amount that are simply loaded with them!. I think there's something about certain DVD transfers that promotes these effects (maybe it's the tinting of the film? or some kind of post-production 'enhancement' perhaps?). Either way, my Gamecube games don't vary in performance in such an unfathomably erratic way!.
 
I must admit i cant help but wounder if the chip has its good days and bad days but that would be silly its a chip or does my tv have a life of its own.
Try watching a film and look for the halo around objects that move then watch the same bits but actualy look at the object not their edges it doesnt show narly as much i think .
When you talk to some one youlook them in th eye not at their edges unless you are dishonest.


I also found turning up or down the brightness or contrast can have an efect on the halo and reduce it and turning the sharpness right down.

havent yet played with the dvd settings yet i think it can do some things for image.
 

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