ryan.tollefson:

iank, I'd love to see a lot more about "unsupported reg keys" 

How about it Iank ? :)

Daddy needs a new set of keys. :P

rgreenpc:

ryan.tollefson:

iank, I'd love to see a lot more about "unsupported reg keys" 

How about it Iank ? :) Daddy needs a new set of keys. :P

me too.... I want some more keys !

DavidinCT:

rgreenpc:

ryan.tollefson:

iank, I'd love to see a lot more about "unsupported reg keys" 

How about it Iank ? :) Daddy needs a new set of keys. :P

me too.... I want some more keys !

How did the keys Ian posted above work out for you guys?

Do they only affect Media Center or do they affect everything?

They worked great but appeared only to effect MC.

rgreenpc:

They worked great but appeared only to effect MC.

I agree

I agree with the agreement. I was dubious at first but my blacks look somewhat better now. I'll know for certain when I watch something in dark at night over the weekend.

Hi!

Ok so what are you guys saying? Depending on wether I use  an ATI card or Nvidia card I have to make several settings to display proper color levels.

For my set, I use a Samsung Q96 50" plasma, with HDMI color set to low (as it should be)

When using it with ATI card, it should display the correct black levels? And you mention a difference between HD and SD. How do you make such a difference? If I play PAL 720x576@25i SD TV is this considered SD, while playing a mkv file encoded at 720p considered HD? I dont have blu-ray connected because of the lack of built in support. I buy them together with a friend and he rips them to me.

So generally, an nvidia card should be better to use when you only use media center? I recall somewhere that MS only tested with nvidia cards.

This has been debated over and over again in this forum, and still feels very confusing.

And how do I check if I really have the correct black levels? When I do the calibration in vista media center, everything is ok, but when I play a DVD there is like a gray layer of fog over the entire picture. My picture sources are:

PAL SD TV

PAL DVD

movie files (avi, mkv, etc)

kind regards

Henrik

I hate to break this to you but it's not the computer's fault.  In my situation it's Comcast Cable's fault.  They compress their channels so much!!  Media Center can capture MPEGs in the highest qualities.  It's the quality of the source that is making the picture look worse than it should.  For me this is the most frustrating part of the CableCard fiasco.  If CableCards worked like standard definition tuners in a computer, I would be able to use them and record in better quality from Comcast.  Even so, Comcast is accused of compressing their HD signals as well.  But I mess around with recording some ClearQam HD outside of Media Center and it looks great to me.  If Media Center could list the ClearQam HD channels I would be in business and it would look great in Media Center.  I know you aren't trying to bash Microsoft but your post is where a lot of the hate for Microsoft starts.  I know that's not what you were setting out to do.  It's unfortunate but, people who do hate Microsoft will use posts like yours to spread the word that Media Center doesn't record in the highest quality possible etc. etc. and it's just not true.  I also hate to say that the previous answers you have received concerning this topic are just overcomplicated answers given for the sake of being overcomplicated.  This whole site is overcomplicated though so I am not surprised....Q

ChiWax. I think we are talking about the potential of a pc in term of picture quality. Of course if you feed the pc low quality inputs the outputs will be low quality...but that's another issue.

DavidinCT. Thank you for bringing up this great topic.

When I build my pc 9 months ago (in Australia) using the Nvidia 8600gt it was considered a great video card for media playback. Unfortunately after hundreds of hours researching and tweaking the system to this day the picture quality from the pc is still below that of a cheap stb I purchased on ebay 2 years ago.

I find alot of people are happy with what  their htpc can do but very few are willing to find out if the picture quality of their pc are as good as the STB....and do something about it.

I guess part of the problem is ..well in Australia anyway...alot of people who are using lcd/plasma tvs are first generation consumers who don't have that many reference points as to what is great picture quality. In addition, the majority of people have 42-50" panels so they may not be able to discern/ care too much about picture quality of pc vs stb.

I purchased a new Epson 720p projector a year ago so on a 90" screen it is alot easier to tell among the sources. Thank god I was patient and invest in a cheap but high quality 720p projector to experiment/learn the various technologies involved in a home theatre.

..just want to vent my satisfaction in finding a group of people who does notice things.

If anyone does manage to get their htpc to output great picture quality (hopefully tested via HD HQV benchmark) please share your experience.
 

CuriousMurf -
I feel your pain a lot of us here have early-adopter-itis.

The jaggies tests are on 1080i content, something you will rarely encounter on BRD. For 1080i broadcast content you will use the MSFT decoder and in this case we will get inverse telecine and decent adaptive deinterlace if the GPU supports it and it is exposed in the proper manner via DXVA. MCE is bound by the performance of the GPU and its video process core (both AMD and NVDA have dedicated video processing silicon on their GPUs).

Ian, can you recommend a good video card + drivers that does the above you mention? I have lots of problems at home with jaggies on some PAL 720x576@25i content. Aspecually when watching live tv and watching DVDs that are not progressive (like the dvd box "The X Files).

I tried both Nvidia 7600GT and ATI 3850 and AMD 690G and all show the same issue. I also have issues with black levels like I metioned in teh above post, there is like a gray fog layer on the picture.

I HAVE calibrated my display according to the test pattern for brightness and contrast in media center. And there I confirmed that I can see the full range (moving cross). But yet mainly on live tv and DVD the pic is gray on areas that should be black. WHY?????????

I haven't tried any HD content except mkv files @720p. Dunno if they are considered HD.

I agree with HT Slider, this should just work out of the box. When I buy a blu-ray player or DVD player, I dont have to worry about black levels... why should this be so freaki´n hard on a Media Center.

kind regards

Henrik

I will try some of the below suggestions this weekend when I have more time but if anyone want to try it first please share your findings:

* use YCbCr instead of RGB and use data range 16-235 instead of 0-255

http://www.audioholics.com/tweaks/calibrate-your-system/hdmi-black-levels-xvycc-rgb/

(sorry the 'create link' button doesn't work today)

So what you say is that nvidia control panel and ATI CCC should be set to YCbCr and not rgb?

Is this always present? On some version of both above products, I have seen this but on my current setup it is gone. Then I guess I have to do a reg hack... as mentioned in the above posts. I will try this when I get home.

 

My frustration bottles down in that there seem so many players

- tv/projector

I set it to video levels

- gfx card settings

 add the UseBT601CSC = 1 registry entry

- media center settings..

This will set your nominal range to video levels, the current defualt for MCE. Use with properly calibrated consumer displays and projectors. IE: devices set for 7.5IRE blacks.
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Debug\ehPresenter.dll]
"NominalRange"=dword:2

 After settings this and rebooted, then I am home free?

Does it matter if I use DVI<->HDMI or HDMI<->HDMI. My motherboard supports both.

kind regards

Henrik

The picture quality of Vista media center is poor. I did an experiment a month or so ago recording a program on vista media center using one tv tuner and media portal using another identical tv tuner. As soon as I played the media portal video I could see immeidatly that it was better than the vista media center recording. I noticed the same on live tv. So why can an open source media center project produce far better video quality than a company like microsoft who spend millions on their products?

In my opionion microsoft dont seem to care too much about the media center market as they are so far behind all the open source projects. If mcirosoft tryed hard they could make the best media center software ever.

The feature I most want to see is the ability of using one tuner to record multiple programs at the same time if they are on the same mux.

ChiWax:

I hate to break this to you but it's not the computer's fault.  In my situation it's Comcast Cable's fault.  They compress their channels so much!!  Media Center can capture MPEGs in the highest qualities.  It's the quality of the source that is making the picture look worse than it should.  For me this is the most frustrating part of the CableCard fiasco.  If CableCards worked like standard definition tuners in a computer, I would be able to use them and record in better quality from Comcast.  Even so, Comcast is accused of compressing their HD signals as well.  But I mess around with recording some ClearQam HD outside of Media Center and it looks great to me.  If Media Center could list the ClearQam HD channels I would be in business and it would look great in Media Center.  I know you aren't trying to bash Microsoft but your post is where a lot of the hate for Microsoft starts.  I know that's not what you were setting out to do.  It's unfortunate but, people who do hate Microsoft will use posts like yours to spread the word that Media Center doesn't record in the highest quality possible etc. etc. and it's just not true.  I also hate to say that the previous answers you have received concerning this topic are just overcomplicated answers given for the sake of being overcomplicated.  This whole site is overcomplicated though so I am not surprised....Q

 

VMC has poor quality regardless of the source. I use the same source and Cyberlink PowerCinema has alot of better quality in the picture. Why hasn't Microsoft allowed us to change MPEG-2 decoder (or any other decoder) in Vista Media Center. An option like this would change VMC from hell to heaven. It seems like Microsoft has somewhat given up entering our living room. As it was mentioned here, they are so far behind.