Hi!

After enabling the proper flag the tv shows looked a lot sharper and black appeared to be black, well too black. When watching a tv show with two us cops in black uniforms they where all black no detail at all.

So I started the calibration video in media center, and confirmed that no moving x was visible, and the shirt was also just one tone of black no details. So on my HDTV I increased the brightness (not the CCC controls) until the moving x disappeared and now I could see the details in the shirt. I still think the black is a little too black when watching live tv, but perhaps it is because I am used to watch washed out content.

 

HTSlider: U said that the calibration video was incorrect. Howcome it "feels" I calibrated correctly since the picture looking so much better now. Exactly what did I calibrate when I did the above procedure? I didn't have time to recalibrate using DVE or THX optimizer... perhaps this weekend. My gf at least said the picture was much better now without the grey fog. So someone is happy :)

kind regards

Henrik

Every forward step is a good step.

Now we just need someone to slap together some good silicon for us :)

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My VMC setup:
(2) Xbox360s
System 1 -
Dell XPS410 (2.6Ghz C2D, 2GB Ram,Nvidia 8600GT, Blu-ray internal, HD-DVD external (X360 drive), (2) Vboxx DTA150s (OTA HD), 1 HVR-1150 (OTA HD) and Dish Network

rgreenpc:

Every forward step is a good step. Now we just need someone to slap together some good silicon for us :)

So true....

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-Dave

MCP, MCSA, MCSE 2003
Windows Vista Connected Exp:Home Theater for Technologists
Windows Vista Connected Exp:Home Theater for Sales professionals

Home theater specialist (10+ years)

This thread and conversation has been great.  Especially nice to see some Microsoft input.

Since I experience all my Media Center content through extenders will any of these tweaks have an impact? or do these tips and tricks only affect PCs hooked directly to TVs?

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My Network Project - Media Center Blog

AndresE:

This thread and conversation has been great.  Especially nice to see some Microsoft input.

Since I experience all my Media Center content through extenders will any of these tweaks have an impact? or do these tips and tricks only affect PCs hooked directly to TVs?

Good question, Not sure I can help no extender setup yet (waiting till the next media center then will pick up a few of them). Anyone ?

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-Dave

MCP, MCSA, MCSE 2003
Windows Vista Connected Exp:Home Theater for Technologists
Windows Vista Connected Exp:Home Theater for Sales professionals

Home theater specialist (10+ years)

MrNorth:

Hi!

After enabling the proper flag the tv shows looked a lot sharper and black appeared to be black, well too black. When watching a tv show with two us cops in black uniforms they where all black no detail at all.

Which "flag" did you enable?

Personally I have found it is just about impossible to get the calibration right without using calibration videos.  There is a surprisingly large amount of TV content where the grey levels are not correct.

MrNorth:

So I started the calibration video in media center, and confirmed that no moving x was visible, and the shirt was also just one tone of black no details. So on my HDTV I increased the brightness (not the CCC controls) until the moving x disappeared and now I could see the details in the shirt. I still think the black is a little too black when watching live tv, but perhaps it is because I am used to watch washed out content.

Try Ian Kennedy's calibration source wmv (levels.wmv I provided a link to it over on avsforums.com above - maybe Ian will make it available again from his personal server at ).  Instead of simply showing an X or a shirt without information on what levels you are calibrating to, it includes a complete ramp from absolute black (0) on the left to white (255) on the right.  It also includes brackets to indicate where the 16-235 range is and provides a contrasting box like feature that helps to really show if anything outside of 16-235 is being displayed.

You want to calibrate your system so the range from 16-235 is visible.  Below 16 should also be black (same as 16) and above 235 should (theoretically) be white (same as 235).  Note that it is not always ideal, nor necessary to make 235-255 the same saturated white.  With some TVs, if you calibrate so 235 is full brightness white it may simply be too bright or may be forcing your TV to work too hard (potentially introducing distortion and/or reducing the life cycle).

Ian had previously hosted his calibration sources at:

I've created a pattern that's a bit easier to use when diagnosing levels issues:

http://www.funkbasealpha.com/video/levels.wmv

And the bitmap that it was made from:

http://www.funkbasealpha.com/video/levels.bmp

These are hosted on my personal website and it is slow.

MrNorth:

HTSlider: U said that the calibration video was incorrect. Howcome it "feels" I calibrated correctly since the picture looking so much better now. Exactly what did I calibrate when I did the above procedure? I didn't have time to recalibrate using DVE or THX optimizer... perhaps this weekend. My gf at least said the picture was much better now without the grey fog. So someone is happy :)

I'm not sure.  I do wonder if possibly a different wmv compression type is being used with the VMC calibration sources vs Ian's calibration sources and if it is possible that it is only on some systems that the VMC calibration sources are incorrect.  The other possibility is that someone at Microsoft simply made a mistake when putting together the calibration videos.

Whatever the reason, I have calibration sources in dvr-ms file formats for both HD and SD as well as confirmed calibration using  my AVIA calibration DVD.  Ian's levels.wmv calibration video does produce exactly the same calibration as the AVIA cal DVD, my SD dvr-ms cal sample, my HD dvr-ms cal sample, as well as the HD-DVD and Bluray calibration discs I have.  The Vista Media Center calibration samples are the only ones that don't match; on my two Vista PCs at least (one with an Nvidia card, the other with an ATI card; both are using the default Vista SP1 MPEG-2 decoder too).  I haven't really dug into the VMC calibration sample issue much though.  Once I found they didn't match, I stopped using them.

EDIT:  I decided to retest my main HTPC (driving our HDTV) using the VMC calibration sources.  To my surprise, with ATI's latest drivers and Microsoft's latest patches, the Brightness.wmv file is showing the correct brightness level (black levels) when played within Media Center (and WMP).  The Contrast.wmv file on the other hand is still incorrect and the white shirt includes levels well above 235.  Essentially, if I was to calibrate using the VMC calibration source, I would end up with the range 16-255 being visible (not the correct 16-235 that Ian's calibration source shows my system is currently calibrated for).

It is too bad that Microsoft decided to use the wmv file format to calibrate the playing of dvr-ms files in Media Center.  With dvr-ms files (mpeg-2) being fully decoded and processed by the video card's GPU and wmv files being decoded and processed by a combination of software and hardware, this seems to be almost asking for trouble.

Ultimately if your system behaves the same as mine (today), the Brightness.wmv file can be used to confirm black levels are correct (at least without any registry edits in use other than UseBT601CSC=1).  The Contrast.wmv file is still incorrect though (on my system at least).

EDIT2:  I just retested my "Study" Vista PC (driving a Viewsonic monitor) using the VMC calibration sources and all of the latest patches/drivers.  Here too these are now trying to calibrate for a 16-255 range (instead of the correct 16-235 range).

Stranger than that, by uninstalling all video drivers, running Driver Sweeper to clean out all traces of video drivers, and installing the latest Nvidia driver again - now grey levels ARE consistent between all applications on this PC.  Prior to this they were all over the place, including different between VMC and WMP.  Unfortunately, even with the ehpresenter registry edits, for some reason video grey levels are not being expanded anywhere anymore (they were prior to running Driver Sweeper).  Since the Viewsonic monitor is calibrated for 0-255, Recorded TV (and other video) needs to be expanded from the source 16-235 range into 0-255 so it will display correctly.  On this system with this Nvidia video card (6800 PCIe) and latest drivers, it is currently impossible to get 16-235 visible for video without screwing up photographs and PC applications.  Hopefully Nvidia's newer cards don't have this issue when the output is a PC monitor...

BTW, I did try to install my ATI HD2600XT in the Study PC, but there seems to be a major bug somewhere with the ATI X200 onboard video conflicting with the ATI HD2600XT when Vista is being used.  I can dual boot into MCE2005 and the 2600XT works fine, but booting into Vista, it bogs down to a crawl (15 minutes to boot and just about non-responsive after that).  Even with the on-board X200 disabled, the ATI driver installation log shows it recognizes the video card as an X200 and installs the X200 driver.  If I manually force the installation of the HD2600XT driver, it does "seem" to install but the system suffers from the same extreme sluggishness and non-responsiveness.  Note that with the Nvidia 6800 installed Vista works fine (except the 6800 has limited video processing capabilities and can only "just" play 720p).

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STB w/R5000HD USB I/O, Gigabyte GA-P35-DS4, Quad Q6600, 4.0 GB RAM, ATI HD 3870 512MB, Ultra XVS 600W PSU, 3x SATA 500GB, 2x SATA 300GB, LG GGC-H20L, PVR-250, Toshiba 51H83 (51" HDTV), Yamaha RX-V2400 Amp, 5x Energy Speakers, SVS Sub, Harmony 880 Remote

They do "allow" you to change the decoder.  You have to use a third-party tweak to do it, but it is "allowed"....Q

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HP m8430f
Vista 64-Bit
Q6600 2.4GHZ Quad 1066 FSB
5000GB+ Storage
4GB DDR2
ViXS Pure-TV-U 48B0 Tuner
VisionTek HD 650 Tuner
Hauppauge HVR 1250 ClearQam
GeForce 8500GT
WRT300N Router
DMA2100(1 wired, 1 wireless)
DMA2200(wired)
XBOX 360(wired)

iank:

This will enable a more efficient scaling path in the AV pipeline. On some GPUs it may result in a sharper image, on some it may get funky:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Debug\ehPresenter.dll]
"BoundByNativeSize"=dword:0

I'd love to give this a shot, but the "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Debug\ehPresenter.dll" line is not in my registry.  "Debug" doesn't even exist.  Do I need to create this from scratch?  If so, how?

sneakerx:

iank:

This will enable a more efficient scaling path in the AV pipeline. On some GPUs it may result in a sharper image, on some it may get funky:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Debug\ehPresenter.dll]
"BoundByNativeSize"=dword:0

I'd love to give this a shot, but the "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Debug\ehPresenter.dll" line is not in my registry.  "Debug" doesn't even exist.  Do I need to create this from scratch?  If so, how?

Here ya go....Copy between the lines, paste in notepad, save as tweaks.reg, if you do not want all the tweaks, remove the 2 lines of the tweak you do not want

__________________________________________________________

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Debug\ehPresenter.dll]
"BoundByNativeSize"=dword:0

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Debug\ehPresenter.dll]
"NominalRange"=dword:2

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Debug\ehPresenter.dll]
"NominalRange"=dword:1
__________________________________________________________

double click on your new tweaks.reg, click ok to allow to put in your registry, then reboot.....

Enjoy

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-Dave

MCP, MCSA, MCSE 2003
Windows Vista Connected Exp:Home Theater for Technologists
Windows Vista Connected Exp:Home Theater for Sales professionals

Home theater specialist (10+ years)

Using the Nvidia 177 series beta drivers which include the video levels adjustment (set to Limited 16-235) I can now get the correct black level in vista media center and media player with my 8800 gts 640 attached to my 2005 Samsung HL-R6167 either via vga or hdmi. In hdmi mode on the nvidia control panel I see the 'select digital color format' under the Video & Television section. RGB is the only choice in the pulldown menu.  The TV has no controls to choose between video levels (0-255 or 16-235 etc).

Photographs displayed in vista still have the black and white levels clipped.  I was previously using the Nvidia v163.75 to get the same results.

I'm interested in swapping in another videocard with harware h.264 and vc-1 decode and which also has decent gaming performance and wonder if the Nvidia 9600 GT cards + the Nvidia 177 series drivers would solve the remaining black level problem I see with photographs.

Perhaps for my application I'd be better off with an ATI solution such as a 4850 and setting ALL video/desktop levels to use 0-255 for use with the special ATI dongle which does a conversion?

One question I have about the ATI dongle that does the conversion, will the DVI -> VGA version do this?  I'll probably want to stick with using my TV's VGA in.....

Any comments appreciated

Thanks for the help, DavidinCT.  I added the BoundByNativeSize line to the registry and rebooted, but I don't think it made any difference whatsoever.  This is with an Avermedia M780 for the tuner and a Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H motherboard with integrated Radeon HD3200.  In fact, I had never even noticed any deficiencies in terms of video quality in VMC until stumbling across this thread.  With my TV's (Samsung FPT5084) internal QAM tuner the video definitely has added sharpness from broadcast 1080i with media center being just a notch below.  Maybe better deinterlacing is the answer as all I can get working now is Bob or Weave.  I'm hoping the next driver release from ATI will allow for adaptive deinterlacing with a dual core 5000+ rather than me having to pop in a phenom processor.

dabl:

Using the Nvidia 177 series beta drivers which include the video levels adjustment (set to Limited 16-235) I can now get the correct black level in vista media center and media player with my 8800 gts 640 attached to my 2005 Samsung HL-R6167 either via vga or hdmi. In hdmi mode on the nvidia control panel I see the 'select digital color format' under the Video & Television section. RGB is the only choice in the pulldown menu.  The TV has no controls to choose between video levels (0-255 or 16-235 etc).

<snip>

Hmmm....I'll have to check them out (the 177 drivers)...very interesting...

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-Dave

MCP, MCSA, MCSE 2003
Windows Vista Connected Exp:Home Theater for Technologists
Windows Vista Connected Exp:Home Theater for Sales professionals

Home theater specialist (10+ years)

Is there anything we can do to improve deinterlacing of film based content?  The stutter and flicker is pretty bad on my digital cable recordings, especially on HD content.  The extender on Xbox 360 does not have these problems, and I don't think it has any special hardware for deinterlacing.

This is really intersting. I'm away from home at hte moment and can't wait to get back and try some of this.

HTSlider, can you comment on what the Intel G34/G45 chip sets do? Any hint on the best setup for G35 connected to a panasonic HDTV via HDMI?

Cheers

Ben

EBH:

This is really intersting. I'm away from home at hte moment and can't wait to get back and try some of this.

HTSlider, can you comment on what the Intel G34/G45 chip sets do? Any hint on the best setup for G35 connected to a panasonic HDTV via HDMI?

Cheers

Ben

Although I was extremely close to purchasing an Intel G35 based motherboard last summer, I have absolutely no experience with them.

All that I know is that according to Intel, they were supposedly poised to blow ATI and Nvidia away as far as video quality and de-interlacing.  The reality at the time was there were many issues with the hardware decoding (for PowerDVD specifically) and a number of serious issues with driving HDTVs at the time (requiring the manual creation of custom resolutions through the registry).  I also wanted my Media Center to be capable of playing video games (although this wasn't high on my personal HTPC spec sheet) and the G35 is definitely lacking in this area.  After much consideration, I decided to go with a P35 based motherboard and an ATI video card.  If you have an older HDTV like mine (RP-CRT based natively supporting 720p and 1080i with ~3% overscan), the only video solution that properly handles overscan is ATI (Nvidia's very latest drivers might do a better job, but up to a few months ago they didn't handle HDTVs with overscan well).

If you have a modern LCD or plasma HDTV without any overscan and are willing to run a processor powerful enough to handle software decoding (for some HD content), I don't know off hand of any reasons not to consider a G35/G45 based system.  I would recommend considering motherboards with HDMI connectors on them, instead of using the add-on HDMI cards (unless the card is included with the motherboard).

One thing for sure is if I was planning to build a dedicated Media Center PC right now I would definitely consider the G35/G45 again.

Edit:  After a quick review of Intel's MBs, the DG45ID and DG45FC both sound like they would make a very nice Media Center system (I haven't read up on what, if any, issues there are though).

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STB w/R5000HD USB I/O, Gigabyte GA-P35-DS4, Quad Q6600, 4.0 GB RAM, ATI HD 3870 512MB, Ultra XVS 600W PSU, 3x SATA 500GB, 2x SATA 300GB, LG GGC-H20L, PVR-250, Toshiba 51H83 (51" HDTV), Yamaha RX-V2400 Amp, 5x Energy Speakers, SVS Sub, Harmony 880 Remote