Nasty "jaggy" effect on progressive DVD player

[neilalford]

I recently got a Sony 930 DVD player and I've noticed a rather unpleasent effect when watching DVDs that come from a video source, basically any TV series. I get a jagged toothcomb effect down the sides moving objects.

My immediate thought was that it was to do with the progressive scan (I'm using the player with a Panasonic PTAE100 projector), so I tried switching the progressive mode to Video instead of Auto, but that didn't make any difference, I then tried turning off progressive entirely but the problem was still there.

Anyone have any other suggestions, is it some side effect of the PS, a fault, something else?

I've been using the projector with a Sony 7700 player with non-progressive component out and not had any problems.

[BrianDay]

The problem is this:
A good interlaced player will give a better picture than a budget progresive player...I'm sorry to break the news mate, but it's fact. There's a whole heap on this over on the avforums...I had a Yamaha 540 which was pal & NTSC progresive. There was ghosting on all the credits and jaggies all over the place. Particularly bad was edge enhancement...I was getting it on discs that other people said were devoid of it.
I changed to 4 year old Pioneer 737 (a £700 player in it's time) and everything is now clear. It only outputs NTSC progresive, but the pal interlaced picture is better that the pal progresive picture was on the Yamaha...no jaggies, no ghosting - even in interlaced mode.

Edit - to prove this theory, the 7700 you were using before was Sony's flagship player of the time, where the 930 is at the budget end. To finish mate, pal progresive is in it's infancy...high end scalers and HTPC's handle it fine, but you might need to pay upwards of 2 grand for a decent one...

[LouBarlow]

It's all to do with framerates or refresh rates I believe.

On my old Pioneer I had to turn off prog-scan when watching video-sourced material as it presented the effect you mention, and also some slow-down-y effect.

My new Yamaha player seems slightly better, but I still have to turn off prog-scan when watching certain PAL TV series.

[LouBarlow]

Originally posted by BrianDay
The problem is this:
A good interlaced player will give a better picture than a budget progresive player...I'm sorry to break the news mate, but it's fact. There's a whole heap on this over on the avforums...I had a Yamaha 540 which was pal & NTSC progresive. There was ghosting on all the credits and jaggies all over the place. Particularly bad was edge enhancement...I was getting it on discs that other people said were devoid of it.
I changed to 4 year old Pioneer 737 (a £700 player in it's time) and everything is now clear.

Thats quite bizarre - I downgraded from a Pioneer 737 to the Yamaha you mention, and with my set-up the Yamaha outperforms the Pioneer in every regard, especially skin-tones etc which are frankly shocking on the 737 :gag:

The prog-scan on the 737 is also far weaker than the 540 (which considering the 737 was one of the first prog-scan players isn't that big a deal) but you appear not to have noticed the issue I had with it, so its best I don't mention it :D

[neilalford]

Hmm, I've been considering swapping back to my old player for a while, due to the CD playback of the 930, sounds like this will probably force the issue then. Then I'll just wait till I can afford a decent PS player.

If it is a PS issue though I'm a little confused as to why it still happens even with PS turned off.

[BrianDay]

Originally posted by LouBarlow
Thats quite bizarre - I downgraded from a Pioneer 737 to the Yamaha you mention, and with my set-up the Yamaha outperforms the Pioneer in every regard, especially skin-tones etc which are frankly shocking on the 737 :gag:

The prog-scan on the 737 is also far weaker than the 540 (which considering the 737 was one of the first prog-scan players isn't that big a deal) but you appear not to have noticed the issue I had with it, so its best I don't mention it :D

Pioneer is defo better mate - by a mile. The only issue I have with it is the IRE setting, which, when set correctl (to 0) leaves the picture on my Sony PJ a little dark. Using the Yamaha, the picture was brighter but blacks were grey and not the black thay should have been...rented films look a lot better, but, the progresive picture from NTSC discs is stunning...maybe you had a faulty one?
I've read a lot about faulty 737's (lip sync, green tint etc), but mine suffers from none of them...and it is, quite simply, the best sounding DVD player I've had when hooked up to my Pioneer THX amp.

[LouBarlow]

Well it's not better in my experience, and I had the Pioneer for years, since the first month it came out....maybe you had a duff Yamaha as apparently the quality-control on this model leaves a lot to be desired?

The picture via NTSC prog-scan was indeed excellent, but I had bad problems with fast moving objects, especially quick edits and such-like - a kind of missed frame effect, where the player skips back into interlaced mode for a moment.

The basic interlaced PAL was very poor on my set-up, with left to right streaking on credits and such-like, which was magnified 10-fold via component (RGB wasn't too bad)

As I say, I forked out just under 100 quid as a kinda experiment, and I've been very, very pleased with the results, with deeper blacks than the 737, and certainly an improvement in detail levels, with none of the prog problems I mentioned above.

I guess it is very much dependent on the rest of your hardware, and whether you get a good player, but to say the 'Pioneer is defo better' is plainly not true, as my experience shows.

[Graham01]

I had a Sony 930 player, and while it was very well built, the progressive performance seemed to make the picture a little too soft, Unlike the Panasonic S75 I now have which definitely makes progressive scan images look sharper.

It was not that the Sony was bad in PS - Jaggies are definitely reduced, but I did notice on my projector's screen that the player setup menus had ghosting in progressive, whereas in interlaced all the text on the setup menus was sharp & clear. To be fair, I may have just had a problematic machine.

Another thing to bear in mind is that the Sony is sluggish to skip between chapters and on menu selections. If this sort of thing bothers you, then a player like the Panasonic (or even better, but for a lot more £££, the Denon 2200).

Hope this helps.

[MartinC]

if memory serves, I thought jaggies on progscan was badly done motion-adaptive deinterlacing on the chipset... or the effect of a disc in video mode. ?

certainly the chipset does make a difference, faroudja DCDi is specifically to stop jaggies on video material.

the 737 was a very early ps machine and a poor chipset if I remember correctly... I wouldn't expect it to be that good at all.

[LouBarlow]

Originally posted by MartinC

the 737 was a very early ps machine and a poor chipset if I remember correctly... I wouldn't expect it to be that good at all.

It's not, but hey, horses for courses!

It also has one of the worst examples of the chroma bug I've ever seen...even so, I loved that machine for years :D

[MartinC]

ditto had a 717 for 3-4 years. very reliable machine.

the 737 was still as good but the progscan was poor compared to what you would expect now.

[Yoshi]

Originally posted by MartinC
the 737 was still as good but the progscan was poor compared to what you would expect now.

I agree. However, budget prog scan players are not as good as high end (as the 737 was regarded) interlaced players. There's pages and pages of the stuff over at www.avforums.com - most of written by people who know what they are talking about.
(I'm not for one minute suggesting here that people DON'T know what they're talking about...but some of these guys live & breathe home cinema...)

I'm going to pop out to RS tonight and pick up a couple of players - one being the Yammy, the other being a Toshiba 530 - which I've read and heard absolutly nothing about. I picked up a sophiscated piece of equipment when I was in Germany about 17 years ago. It's called a WIFEOMETER. Believe me, if it's any worse than what you had before, this thing'll let you know!!:nuts:

[LouBarlow]

To be honest I prefer to believe my eyes rather than a bunch of geeks on an av forum :dork: :lol:

Anyone not believing that the Yamaha out-performs the Pioneer 737 in both modes, is welcome to come round my house and experience it for themselves. It's not brain science - a 100 pound player with a half decent chipset, will outperform a 7 year old high-end player with naff chip-set and primitive prog-scan technology.

I'll even throw in tea and biscuits.

[BrianDay]

Where do you live - serious question BTW? And believe it or not, it's not as simple as that. It all depends on the discs being watched, quality of the de-interlacer etc. fact is, Marantz use the same de-interlacer in the DV4300 as Pioneer did in the 737, the only difference being it's been upgraded to do Pal progresive. If the disc isn't flagged correctly (I admit that the yamaha dosen't use flag detection...probably it's biggest falldown), the de-interlacer WILL NOT de-interlace the information correctly, no matter how good.
The Toshiba 9000E has one of the best interlaced images ever produced by a DVD player and will outperform any budget progresive player today. And that's at least 4 years old.

Next time you use your Yamaha on the big screen, check for the following:
Ghosting on the end credits - particularly where the graphics are white.
Banding on the end credits.
If you have it, the opening scene on Star Trek insurection. The Yamaha I had had terrible jaggies in that scene which is full of rooftops with tiles on them. (Must be R2 BTW)

My Pioneer has none of these artefacts - even in de-interlaced mode - whilst the Yamaha was tripped every time in progresive mode.

Could you tell me someting about your Yammy please? Does it have a facility to detect film mode/video mode? Mine didn't and I'm wondering if there's been a firmware upgrade to rectify this.

And as for the chroma bug...well I only watch Toy Story 2 probably once every 18 months...:D

[MartinC]

Brian, completely agree that this is not a simple black & white issue.
discs, the de-interlacing chipset and the components in a dvd player all complicate the issue.

however.. what do you mean by "outperform" when talking about the tosh 9000? I can understand sound and build quality... but picture...very debatable.
regardless of how good its was at the time, an interlaced dvd player like the Tosh 9000 may produce a great picture on a normal TV but on a big pj screen it simply wont be as good as decent budget(?) progressive player that has gone into the right mode for a DVD... tosh, harmon kardon even the sony. (depends on what you mean by budget).

ditto the 737 and Marantz chipset.. very different build apart from that chipset, just the same as the Arcams, Toshibas and loads of others using the chipset also (even with £500-700 price gap).

Star Trek Insurrection should be fine in R1 as a test btw... why did you stipulate R2 specifically on this? :thinking:

[grimley]

Originally posted by neilalford
I recently got a Sony 930 DVD player and I've noticed a rather unpleasent effect when watching DVDs that come from a video source, basically any TV series. I get a jagged toothcomb effect down the sides moving objects.

My immediate thought was that it was to do with the progressive scan (I'm using the player with a Panasonic PTAE100 projector), so I tried switching the progressive mode to Video instead of Auto, but that didn't make any difference, I then tried turning off progressive entirely but the problem was still there.

Anyone have any other suggestions, is it some side effect of the PS, a fault, something else?

I've been using the projector with a Sony 7700 player with non-progressive component out and not had any problems.

Oh dear, I've bought a 930 to go with my Panny AE300, But I can't test it yet 'cos I'm still waiting for the Component cable to turn up from the USA. I hope I don't get the same probs otherwise I'll be off to RS to get a deal on a player there (& get rid of the sony while I'm there too, I knew it was a mistake to buy that player....)

[Bonzo Banana]

Does anyone actually know how the different chipsets compare for progressive scan and what chipset is fitted to these players mentioned? I'd be interested to know which players are based on which technology? For example how does the Zoran Valddis 5 compare to the mediatek MT1379 or the sigma chipset in the Kiss players?

[MartinC]

or better yet a Sage Faroudja or Silicon Images if you want to buy a decent player ;)

hometheaterhifi is usually pretty good for progscan tests although it is US specific so no PAL ps info.

http://www.hometheaterhifi.com/volume_7_3/dvd-benchmark-introduction-9-2000.html

very good info on the chroma bug also on the same page.

the Zoran is fine as a chipset... used in everything from a basic Tosh and some cheap makes right upto an expensive Arcam.

[LouBarlow]

Fascinating read that Martin - thanks.

The Pioneer 737 definitely exhibits 'combing' through bad edits, and it's handling of chroma is absymal.

What chipset does the Yamaha feature incidentally?

[fatfrank]

Originally posted by MartinC

however.. what do you mean by "outperform" when talking about the tosh 9000? I can understand sound and build quality... but picture...very debatable.
regardless of how good its was at the time, an interlaced dvd player like the Tosh 9000 may produce a great picture on a normal TV but on a big pj screen it simply wont be as good as decent budget(?) progressive player that has gone into the right mode for a DVD... tosh, harmon kardon even the sony. (depends on what you mean by budget).


Hi,

Another thing to consider is the quality of the deinterlacing that is built into the display / projector being used.

As the quality of inbuilt processing gets better (Faroudja's DCDi being the obvious example) it's not unusual for an interlaced signal being deinterlaced by the display to produce results that equal, or in some cases better, the results you would get from feeding the same display a progressive signal.

The Toshiba 9000 could well look better than a progressive scan dvd player if the display it's connected to has high quality internal processing.

[BrianDay]

Ok...man enough to admit I may have been wrong. (in some things - not all...;) )
When I mentioned the Toshiba 9000e player, this (http://www.homecinemachoice.com/testbench/DVDPlayers/Toshiba/ToshibaSD-900EDVD) review in particular sprang to mind...a review of the 9000 (the player before this) states that the picture via s-video is better than most players RGB output...it had to be really 'cos Toshiba completly ommited a Scart plug from the specs...

It seems as though fatfrank has said what I have struggled to say all along...it's a combination of things that matter in PQ...not just the DVD player.
I went out and brought a Sony 730 to see what all the fuss was about. The PQ is defo better than the Pioneer in Pal mode using progresive, but I don't think it's so cut and blow dried in the NTSC PS mode. One thing is for sure. The Sony is better in all departments than the Yamaha ever was - which is what I based my previous Pal PS experiences on. There are no jaggies (even on difficult discs...). There is no ghosting. There is no banding. The picture is nigh on the best I've seen on my PJ ever. So humble pie is well & truly scoffed in the case of the Sony...however, The Yamaha is still to convince me...

[MartinC]

Brian - your link doesn't work.
did you mean http://www.homecinemachoice.com/testbench/DVDPlayers/Toshiba/ToshibaSD-9000.shtml ?

fatfrank makes a good point about the projectors de-interlacing.
some are very basic (Panasonic for example), but there does seem to be a lot more now (even below £1500) bundling in a Faroudja which should do a comparable job.

[eddiepollock]

i have a marantz dv4300 and when i watch tv series with side scrolling credits, they go so fast its hard to read them, it just look s like a blur! could anybody explain this phenomenon??

(thought this might loosly tie in with this thread rather than start a new one)

all help appreciated

[Bonzo Banana]

I noticed that sunplus license silicon images SIL503 de-interlacer technology and embedd it in their SOC dvd chipset. This chipset was used on the maxim £25 progressive scan dvd player from skybuy. Assuming this de-interlacer is still quite highly regarded surely any cheap dvd player can afford to have a decent de-interlacer nowadays. Of course I don't know if the embedded de-inerlacer is cut down somehow compared to the seperate i.c.

I mean a de-interlace i.c. is a fairly simple circuit compared to dvd decoding chips isn't it? Theres no reason why it can't be fitted to ultra cheap dvd players?

I wish someone would take the lid off the Yamaha 540 and tell us actually whats in there circuitry wise.

[Quey]

I'll probably be in the market for a good quality PS player soon to go with my Pana AE300, I'll looking to spend up to £400 but could perhaps go a bit higher, which player would you recommend for good pal/ntsc PS ?