Lots of grain and some lag when watching HD movies?

G

GenBanks

Gawd
Joined
Feb 26, 2008
Messages
634
Hi,
I'm using a Gateway FPD2485W 24" Monitor using a DVI connection.

I just bought an LG Blu-Ray/HD-DVD combo player.
I'm using CyberLink PowerDVD to watch HD films.

My problem is basically that when I watch films on my monitor (e.g. Tudors on Blu-Ray, or Heroes on HD-DVD) I can see a really distracting amount of graininess, some lag (most noticeable when the HD-DVD logo comes up) and blocky edges (similar to in games with no anti-aliasing on). This is compared to when I watch on my TV (50" 1080p Kuro, with toshiba EP-30 hd-dvd and pioneer LX70A BD player).

My question is, what causes this degradation in quality?

Is it:
My Monitor?
The software?
The graphics card?
The drive?

Generally speaking, is my monitor just fairly rubbish in terms of picture quality? (I didn't do any research when I bought it).
 
Do you have the latest drivers for the cards, and patches for PDVD? Are you using a HD version of PDVD, with Purevideo? Do you have some other codecs installed, like some from a codec pack? Are you using the right settings in PDVD?

Tried any other software?
 
I'm using Forceware 174.74, the most recent graphics driver available.
I'm using the HD version of PDVD, which came with the HD drive.
I don't think I have any other codecs installed, as this is a fairly fresh (less than 1 week) install of Vista.
I'm not 100% sure I'm using the right settings, but I know it's recognizing the films as HD discs.
I think I'm running the most recent version of PDVD.

Another way of describing what I'm seeing is that it's static. Especially in the background. It's like moving static superimposed on the image and it's quite distracting.
 
The grain is probably the result of the LCD, some LCD accentuate grain more than other LCDs according to BeHardware reviews. IPS and PVA more so than MVA. I believe it could be the PVA inside there.
 
Ah Ok... can you recommend a 24" to 30" monitor that won't suffer from so much grain and that will be good for HD movie watching?
I also do a lot of gaming, so that's important too.

I've sort of been itching for a monitor upgrade anyway :D
Or should I be contented with my current one and curtail my rampant consumerism?
 
There isn't much you can do since this is inherent of all LCD, some worse than others. You may want to look into a 32" LCD TV by Sharp which always is a good choice.
 
Well, the thing is that I've already got a TV (50" pioneer kuro 1080p - HD movies look great on it) and I sit quite close to my monitor at my desk so I'm not too keen to use a TV as a computer monitor.
 
try updating powerDVD first. when i installed it it said quality would suffer if i didnt update it.
 
The grain you see is from the cameras used to film the movie. You don't see it on DVDs because their resolution isn't high enough to show it. You don't see it as much on large TVs because most of them have image processors that do some denoising before displaying the video.

The solution... don't sit so close. You should be at least 3 feet away for optimal 1080p viewing on that size screen.

Also, some movies look a lot better than others. Try Pirates of the Caribbean - At World's End on Blu-Ray and King Kong on HD-DVD for top picture quality.
 
The new nVidia drivers are supposed to have some settings in the control panel to eliminate the noise, it should be under the "video and tv" branch. In PDVD, go to the video tab and click on advanced at the bottom under "read it clearly", select the mode in the first drop down box the look like a registry key.
 
Try watching one of those pure digital computer animated movies like toy story to see if there is still grain. If not, then it's just inherent in the source material, your monitor is just so detailed as to display it in all its glory.
 
Ok, I checked out the Blu-Ray of 'Ratatouille' and it is indeed the source that is the main problem. I also looked at the review of 'Heroes' on HD-DVD at High Def Digest (http://hddvd.highdefdigest.com/heroess1.html) and they mention it too. I guess the plasma has much better PQ filtering technology than my computer monitor though, which is why I didn't notice grain at all on the TV (and plus, I sit further away from the TV than the monitor).

I tried the nVidia grain reduction thing in the nvidia control panel, but it doesn't seem to have any effect at all. Perhaps it's not intended for HD films.
 
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