HD200 v. Windows 7 Video Quality

[Evil_Attorney]

I finally picked up an HD200 with the hopes that it would replace the relatively loud client in my living room. While I love everything about the HD200, there was a stark difference in picture quality when compared with my Sage client running windows 7 with the Win 7 decoders.

A few more details, I have a 52" TV, only use 2 HD PVR's on my server, am running Win 7 on my client with the built-in windows decoders being used by Sage, and use HDMI to connect to the TV.

First, I flipped back and forth between live TV to get a general sense of the difference. It was apparent that the Win 7 was cleaner, sharper, and showed less compression artifacts.

I was then able to pause both the client and HD200 on the same frames, which really told the story. The Win 7 decoder showed about 1/2 or maybe even less of the macroblocking/compression artifacts around fast movement on the screen. The Win 7 picture also generally looked a little "cleaner". On a smaller TV, I'm not sure the difference would be as noticeable.

I'm assuming the Win 7 decoder does some fancy cleaning up of the picture that the HD200 is not doing. Is there any hope that the HD200 decoder could be improved with an update? Has anyone else noticed this?

Since I am a bit annal about picture quality, I am keeping my Win 7 client on the TV and will try to find another place for the HD200.

[Fuzzy]

I doubt anything can be done in the HD-200, the decoder is all baked into silicon. There's something to be said though, for it being able to give acceptable results using only 8 Watts.

[Evil_Attorney]

I agree, for 8 watts, the thing is amazing. On a 46" or lower, I don't think the difference would be as noticeable. I did not do a comparison between the Arcsoft decoder and the HD200, but I suspect they are much closer to each other. I remember seeing a noticeable difference between Arcsoft and Win 7 when I switched.

Is there any information about the extra processing/enhancing the Win 7 decoder is doing?

[Clift]

Wait, hold on.

I don't think it's right to start saying things like "for 7 watts it's amazing." i think the video decoder in the HD200 is top notch. There may be other reasons why you are seeing a difference. Have you looked to make sure that the picture settings on your TV are the same for both inputs: contrast, sharpness, vivid, color temp, etc.? Also, it may be possible (although I don;t know) that the Windows 7 decoder is playing games with the picture. In that case I would prefer the HD200 because you get an un-messed-with picture. THEN you can adjust your TV display settings to give you what you want in twerms of sharpness etc. As for macroblocking, I don't know why one would show more versus the other. Maybe someone who knows a little more about that could shed some light... stanger89, babgvant...

[Evil_Attorney]

Both my client PC and the HD200 are connected to my receiver, which does not process video in any way. There is one hdmi connection from my receiver to my TV. So, they are both getting the same settings. Like I said, I noticed a substantial picture quality improvement with the Win 7 decoders over Arcsoft too. Also, I am running the latest beta firmware for the HD200.

I'm sure that the Win 7 IS doing something else to the picture. Whatever it is, it is an improvement to my eyes, mostly because of less compression artifacts. The difference in artifacts was most noticeable with sports on a 720p channel (i.e., basketball on ESPN).

[Fuzzy]

I do believe the win7 decoders do some post processing to remove macro blocking, if the video hardware supports it (it's part of DXVA2). It won't make a difference in high bit-rate material, but lower quality material will have far less noticable compression artifacts with the win7 decoders than with the hardware chip in the HD200. I think this is going to be key if Youtube, hulu and netflix ever move to a directshow interface, and start taking advantage of the built-in decoders (or really any DXVA2 decoding system).

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by Evil_Attorney

Both my client PC and the HD200 are connected to my receiver, which does not process video in any way. There is one hdmi connection from my receiver to my TV. So, they are both getting the same settings. Like I said, I noticed a substantial picture quality improvement with the Win 7 decoders over Arcsoft too. Also, I am running the latest beta firmware for the HD200.

Sounds like you need to recalibrate your TV for the HD200. It's quite likely that the HD200 is outputting proper video levels, while the PC is outputting PC levels. This will result in the HD200 output looking washed out and artifacts in dark areas will be more apparent.

As far as quality, my HD200 is virtually indistinguishable from my Pioneer 51FD and both are better than my HTPC ever was.

[Evil_Attorney]

Let me just clarify, the color levels looked identical. I don't think there is anything too crazy about the PC client's video settings...I used a calibration disk in both my stand alone blu ray player and the PC to confirm that the PC is outputting "standard" colors.

This was mainly an issue of seeing more compression artifacts. There must be some post processing going on somewhere/somehow. I can't find any info on the internets about DXVA2 doing actual post processing.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by Evil_Attorney

Let me just clarify, the color levels looked identical. I don't think there is anything too crazy about the PC client's video settings...I used a calibration disk in both my stand alone blu ray player and the PC to confirm that the PC is outputting "standard" colors.

And are these two also going to the same input on the display (through the same AVR)? Is your Blu-ray player set to output standard video levels?

You should get something like the AVS 709 disc and try calibrating the HD200.

[Evil_Attorney]

I have an Insignia NS-BRDVD3 BR player that is also going into my Onkyo HT RC160 (along with my client PC and now the HD200). The Onkyo does not touch 1080P content, so everything is being treated the same by the TV. I don't think the BR player has any video adjustments, but I can confirm that tonight. If there were BR video settings, I didn't touch them. After a comparison with test discs (the AVS disc), I didn't need to adjust the client PC because they appeared identical to my eyes (I could quickly flip back and forth). I will try the AVS disc on the HD200 in the next few days.

Stanger, is there something that you've read that leads you to believe that there couldn't be a quality difference between h.264 decoders?

[Fuzzy]

As I had mentioned, he was pointing to actual artifacting, which would not be based on color levels. (if they were extremly out on one or the other, that could make the artifacts easier/harder to see, but as he said, side by side comparison (well, switch back and forth) yields even color levels. I think you'll find that blu-ray content will look the same from nearly any source, because the bitrate is high enough to not introduce any artifacting. However, HD-PVR sources, or other H.264 sources with lower bitrates, would indeed introduce noticable artifacts. Post processing can definately make a difference when it comes to reducing the visibility of those artifacts. i believe this is what he is seeing.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by Evil_Attorney

I have an Insignia NS-BRDVD3 BR player that is also going into my Onkyo HT RC160 (along with my client PC and now the HD200). The Onkyo does not touch 1080P content, so everything is being treated the same by the TV. I don't think the BR player has any video adjustments, but I can confirm that tonight. If there were BR video settings, I didn't touch them. After a comparison with test discs (the AVS disc), I didn't need to adjust the client PC because they appeared identical to my eyes (I could quickly flip back and forth). I will try the AVS disc on the HD200 in the next few days.

Stanger, is there something that you've read that leads you to believe that there couldn't be a quality difference between h.264 decoders?

Well it's a difference between a PC and a "standalone". The #1 cause of that, in general, is calibration. PC's have a nasty tendency of expanding video to PC levels and being generally somewhat unpredictable/unruly in that regard. It's always the first thing to check whenever I see a "my PC looks different than 'x'" question.

Different levels aren't always obvious outside of test patterns (it depends on content) and can have sometimes unexpected concequences. Video levels displayed on a display calibrated to PC levels will often have noise more pronounced.

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

As I had mentioned, he was pointing to actual artifacting, which would not be based on color levels. (if they were extremly out on one or the other, that could make the artifacts easier/harder to see, but as he said, side by side comparison (well, switch back and forth) yields even color levels. I think you'll find that blu-ray content will look the same from nearly any source, because the bitrate is high enough to not introduce any artifacting. However, HD-PVR sources, or other H.264 sources with lower bitrates, would indeed introduce noticable artifacts. Post processing can definately make a difference when it comes to reducing the visibility of those artifacts. i believe this is what he is seeing.

I haven't noticed anything on the HD200 that would explain the combination of things described (less noise and sharper), generally the extenders produce the best output I've seen.

[Evil_Attorney]

Also, I am using an NVIDA 9500GS. Could this be a feature of the Purevideo HD stuff? It is supposed to at least be capable of post processing of h.264 content.

http://www.nvidia.com/object/purevideo_hd_faq.html

Q. What is new in GeForce 8400, GeForce 8500 and GeForce 8600 GPU video processors?
These GPUs feature a new video engine that includes a bitstream processor (BSP) and an improved programmable video processor (VP). The BSP offloads the 100% of the CABAC and H.264 decode process from the CPU allowing playback of "full spec" HD DVD and Blu-ray movies. The new VP also has more advanced video post-processing algorithms which improve video quality.

[Tiki]

What about output resolution / scaling? Do you have the output of the HD200 scaled the same as the output from your video card?

[Evil_Attorney]

Everything is 1080p. I'm pretty sure this is a Purevideo HD post processing feature. I've seen a number of sites that discuss how the Purevideo HD hardware does post processing to reduce compression artifacts. Unless the HD200 uses an NVIDIA chip, it is not going to do any or the same post processing.

[Fuzzy]

Well, it's not so much an nvidia thing only, those techniques are used in a number of decoding systems. In fact, they are optional features in directx10, and the DXVA2 architecture. They are called different things, like PurevideoHD, and AVIVO, but they are all effectively the same things.

[whartsell]

I actually had the opposite problem with my HTPC and HD-200. My Win 7 HTPC with an nvidia card through HDMI looked far worse than my HD200 on the same input with the same settings. My TV was also calibrated on that input with an AVS disk in a BD player

[Evil_Attorney]

When you say it it looked worse, how do you mean? Less artifacts? Less smooth?

[Evil_Attorney]

Ok, please excuse the crude pictures...the quickest/easiest way for me to show the difference was to simply take a picture of the TV. I lined up some college basketball on ESPN as best I could. It is probably about a frame off, but this is representative of the difference between them at all times.

676 is HD200
678 is Win 7 decoder

677 is HD200
680 is Win 7 decoder

I compared basketball on TNT tonight, which is in 1080i, and the difference is less noticeable than on 720p ESPN.

[MrFusion]

Originally Posted by Evil_Attorney

Everything is 1080p.

Hmmm... so you're saying that you've locked the HD200 to 1080p output, for all material (even SD, DVD, etc)?

I found with my setup that when I enabled native output resolution switching the quality of what I saw onscreen improved significantly. It seems that maybe the HD200 upscaling isn't all that fabulous and might be introducing some of the crud you are seeing?

Have you tried native output res switching enabled?

Also, have you tried comparing Bluray side-by-side?

Cheers!