TV/Monitor/DVD issues

Smile said:

The ICC profile for monitor is like for a printer, it's recipe describing many variables such as: monitor, monitor driver, video card used, video card driver, OS, various settings. I had to calibrate some EIZO CG graphics series monitors they were new out of box. None of them connected to the Mac Pro would show anything remotely as they should. The auto calibration did not work as expected. Only after proper calibration using spectrophotometer they passed certification.

The integrated calibration has a plus, it stops you from calibrating too cold monitor !
You should always wait 60min without screensaver before calibration, but for unexperienced this saves time and money.

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First off this post and the follow up belongs in RANTS.
Second,
Self calibration functions to repeat a programmed calibration. If you just turn the monitor on allow it to warm up then ask it to self calibrate it's calibrating to what is already there, and that was done in a factory, far far away not where the monitor is currently located.
This conversation reminds me why I backed off here.

3dogs said:

If you just turn the monitor on allow it to warm up then ask it to self calibrate it's calibrating to what is already there, and that was done in a factory, far far away not where the monitor is currently located.

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The self calibration was done afterwards too, it did not return the monitor to the state it passed certification so it doesn't matter if it return to factory state, or to custom profile state. The included colorimeter measures at the side of the screen, what accuracy can we speak about.

3dogs said:

First off this post and the follow up belongs in RANTS.

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Well, it's up to the mods to decide.

stratman said:

Upscaling a 1080p image to 4k may look worse than a native 1080p monitor.

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Do you know why this is? I just bought a 4K TV, and upscaling from 480 (DVD) to 1080 makes it look blocky. Not pixelly, but blocky. It looks exactly like an image that's too highly compressed. My 1080 computer monitor has no such problem with the same source (even if I put my face up close to simulate that big screen. There's something about the way the TV processes the image. I just ordered an upscaling DVD player in the hope that the player would handle this better (and I needed one anyway).

@ThrillaMozilla

What 4K TV did you get?

From my reading, in general, 4K TV's do not do well with 480 resolution - the TV is upscaling the data ~x10! Upscaling 1080 is x4 to get to 4K. TV's must display the image in the TV's native resolution. I am not familiar with a way to turn off upscaling on the 4K's.

For more info on upscaling 4K TV's see the brief 3 page article at http://www.rtings.com/info/what-is-the-resolution

BTW, RTINGS.com is a good source for reviewing TV's.

The good news is that some TV's and DVD players upscale better than others. The short of it is it depends on the quality of the coding and chip used to upscale the data.

Research the upscaling abilities of equipment on AVS Forums.

ThrillaMozilla said:

Do you know why this is? I just bought a 4K TV, and upscaling from 480 (DVD) to 1080 makes it look blocky. Not pixelly, but blocky. It looks exactly like an image that's too highly compressed. My 1080 computer monitor has no such problem with the same source (even if I put my face up close to simulate that big screen. There's something about the way the TV processes the image. I just ordered an upscaling DVD player in the hope that the player would handle this better (and I needed one anyway).

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Thats down to several things.
1) Interpolation and how the source is handled during the upscaling process. Your monitor to your naked eye may look better but technically it isnt. If you google video interpolation it will make more sense. What your monitor is probably doing to keep things simple is slightly bluring things, the image thus does not appears as blocky
2) Colour space. Typically a monitor will do a higher (0-255) colour space than a TV (16-235)... more general info....
http://referencehometheater.com/2014/commentary/rgb-full-vs-limited/
What that basically means is the dark and light ends of the spectrum have more choices available if using 0-255 which in turn equates to more detailed output. You will typically notice "blockiness" if this is a factor in dark scenes or scenes of a solid colour (sky, grass, big bright orange explosion etc). A DVD on a TV even when via a HDMI typially will not use full rgb.
3) Frame rate and progressive Vs Interlaced... Again far too technical to keep short here but google around progressive Vs interlace and it will become clear, its quite possible your TV or Monitor applies something called IVTC which can make a massive difference to certain sources. This can benefit or hinder making interlaced material look smoother and less jagged where as applying it to progressive material will normally just make it blurrier (THIS is not a hard and fast rule though and becomes even more complicated for certain non standard material)

There is a whole bunch more. Typically its better to leave a external source (like a DVD) alone, disable all upscaling and other so called "features and benefits" the DVD player may have and display the source as native as you can. Stupid settings on a TV like auto contrast, auto black, vivid modes, auto brighness and so on (different manufacturers give different names) should also be disabled and you should adjust a TV properly and manually.

Thanks. That's quite a resource that I wasn't aware of, and I'm sure there are differences between TVs.

Nevertheless, the explanations I've seen don't make any sense. Upscaling is just interpolation, and nothing about interpolation should make the image blocky. The resolution over most of the image is fine when upscaled, but parts of the image are blocky, especially the less brightly lit parts of the image, or parts that are in motion (possibly for two separate causes). As I mentioned before, that defect is not present in the source, and it looks exactly like a video that is overly compressed.

Furthermore, the TV has no difficulty whatsoever in upscaling or downscaling a still picture. It's just video that is affected, and it flat out botches almost any video that's not 1080. I did see another 4K TV that did not show this defect on the same test DVD. That's all the proof that I need that it can be done right.

On the bright side, though, it's good enough for most of my purposes, and it's absolutely magnificent for slide shows. This is the first time in many years that I have been able to present a slide show with great resolution. In my opinion, that's the real advantage of 4K.

CakeHole, thanks, I just saw your post. I'll have to digest it later.

I think upscaling can be done properly, however, because I've seen it on an LG (played through an unknown DVD player, however). A DVD video must be upscaled somewhere in the chain in order to display it, unless I want to look at a tiny image in a big screen. With any luck maybe I can improve the situation a bit.

3Dogs said:

First off this post and the follow up belongs in RANTS.

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You were saying, maybe wishful thinking…

Yes, the subject has morphed, Mr. Hat, but I'm learning something.

I like Macs too. They're purty. Purty but unrepairable.

ThrillaMozilla said:

Nevertheless, the explanations I've seen don't make any sense. Upscaling is just interpolation, and nothing about interpolation should make the image blocky. The resolution over most of the image is fine when upscaled, but parts of the image are blocky, especially the less brightly lit parts of the image, or parts that are in motion (possibly for two separate causes).

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Thats down to the colour profile the TV is using (16-235) and when it upscales its basically guessing what information should go where using that LIMITED range of colour. DVDs typically are (this now gets technical) 8-bits per colour YCbCr with 4:2:0 chroma subsampling. YCbCr signalling basically means its a cut back/down version of RGB for transmitting a signal the 8-bits is the colour depth (amount of colours/shades available) and chroma subsampling is how those colours behave with adjacent pixels.

Your TV is obeying the standard when it upscales, where as when your monitor upscales it is likely also doing additional work to the colour space and then displaying it in whatever your monitor uses natively (for monitors thats normally 16 bit or more common today 32 bit colour). A monitor is also likely to support something called 4:4:4 chroma where as your TV despite it being 4K may not. That may only support a max of 4:2:2.

The chroma chart on this page and the image (not the video) gives a better idea of what is going on......
http://www.pixla.ch/blog/files/26139a69b347ab497071cb7cb0510560-5.html
The image of the small train (on the left) on this wiki page also shows what could be happening.... In fact that is probably better.... hint look at the red square on the side of the train 4:4:4 is how it should look, the lower the chroma though (images to the left) the more blocky it starts to look
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chroma_subsampling

Is that the type of "blocking" for 4:2:0 chroma you are talking about?? Typically the worse scenes will be dark/night scenes with slabs of black looking kind grey and rather than it looking smooth between the black and grey it will look like loads or blocking between the darkest black and grey bits of the image.

Water especially underwater and Blue shades also often look like rubbish with a low chroma value.

ThrillaMozilla said:

CakeHole, thanks, I just saw your post. I'll have to digest it later.

I think upscaling can be done properly, however, because I've seen it on an LG (played through an unknown DVD player, however). A DVD video must be upscaled somewhere in the chain in order to display it, unless I want to look at a tiny image in a big screen. With any luck maybe I can improve the situation a bit.

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A few things i would try first....
1) If your DVD player has one and you are not yet using it connect it up via HDMI socket.
2) If the DVD player has a "progressive" setting somewhere in its menus try that on and off (some manufacturers will name this stupid things like film mode or smoothing)
3) If both the TV and the DVD have some option to "upscale" make sure only ONE OR THE OTHER is in use, do not enable both (again may require some investigating if the manufacturers have named it something stupid like "lifelike mode")
4) if the TV with devices connected via component or HDMI allow it alter the colour space, (AGAIN some manufacturers will have silly names for this function (check TV manual) others will just have a menu setting which you can switch to RGB, Limited and similar settings.)
5) If the TV does not appear to have a colour space setting look in the DVD player for RGB and composite or similar setting and try altering that back and forth to see if that helps.

Considering its a modern 4K TV the required setting in menus should be there to make it properly upscale, any so called "auto" options in its menus may also be worth a play. Look through all the picture settings first then the TV settings, check manual on how to reset to default setting should you screw something up or forget what you altered

ThrillaMozilla said:

Furthermore, the TV has no difficulty whatsoever in upscaling or downscaling a still picture. It's just video that is affected, and it flat out botches almost any video that's not 1080. I did see another 4K TV that did not show this defect on the same test DVD. That's all the proof that I need that it can be done right.

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Nope it wont have isues with stills because still images (like jpegs from your camera or phone) are typically full RGB in 16 or 32bit colour so the TV does not have to guess the colour space, chroma and so much more, it can just basically get away with resizing the image. and your eyes as they see in colours rather than pixels can basically not tell the difference, even more so on a 4k TV if it is upscaled, even with your nose right against the screen if its upscaled properly you will have a hard time telling the difference in pixel size between it upscaling to 1080 and 4k, mainly because when its doing a still at 4K it does not have to do much to subpixels as there is no motion to deal with. You may still see it but if you can switch between 1080 and 4k on the same still image there is no way you will see 4x more pixels on the 4K version (because alot of them will either be the same or adjacent pixels will have the same colour).