DVD playback in consoles

[rounin]

I was comparing the Pioneer with the PS3 not the standalone SONY player which is made by Pioneer.

I meant that those were the same players. But regardless, I'd like to see some comparisons since I haven't seen any.

As far as firmware upgrades well the standalones can be firmware upgraded too so that doesn't really mean much.

No, the PS3's firmware is not the same as a standalone's firmware because the hardware capabilities and flexibility is not even close.

Like I said software decoder =! best PQ since PQ depends on a variety of factors including what happens after the decode. I've yet to see any scaling algorithm from SONY that can compete with a hardware HQV solution and I don't see one coming in the near future. If SONY was so good at upscaling algorithms they'd be designingtheir own upscaling chips that compete with HQV and other similar chips.

Like I said, what happens after the decode shouldn't be as big as an issue when its all digital from decode to output through HDMI output. I didn't mention any upscaling, or upscaling algorithms, but I don't see it as anything CELL should be unable to do for movies(or has been done in some other software form in opensource...).

 

[SteveC]

I thought it was pretty interesting which DVD they chose to test and then labeled the 360 as unwatchable.

http://dvd.ign.com/articles/451/451201p1.html

I think I smell a conspiracy.

 

[rabidrabbit]

I thought it was pretty interesting which DVD they chose to test and then labeled the 360 as unwatchable.

http://dvd.ign.com/articles/451/451201p1.html

I think I smell a conspiracy.

Who are using that disc? I thought it was the HQV Benchmark Disc they were using
http://www.hqv.com/benchmark.cfm

Edit: Ok, I see it's at the end of the Extremetech article, but it's not the only disc they're testing. The Sin City I don't think is generally considered to be a badly flagged disc or otherwise unaccepted quality when evaluating visual quality.
And the Denon machine which they compared it to, managed the disc much better anyway, so it's not just the discs fault.

 

[Diamond.G]

Who are using that disc? I thought it was the HQV Benchmark Disc they were using
http://www.hqv.com/benchmark.cfm

Edit: Ok, I see it's at the end of the Extremetech article, but it's not the only disc they're testing. The Sin City I don't think is generally considered to be a badly flagged disc or otherwise unaccepted quality when evaluating visual quality.
And the Denon machine which they compared it to, managed the disc much better anyway, so it's not just the discs fault.

The Denon uses Cadence based de-interlacing. That dvd is broken for any player that relies on flag based de-interlacing. (Which is a lot of players).

 

[ninzel]

Just to be clear,this is the DVD player in the 360 box,not the HD-DVD add-on the are reviewing correct?

 

[Nesh]

The PS3 is banking on this performance. It is integral to the value proposition that Sony is trying to sell to Joe Public. If it had crap playback quality I don't imagine they'd have too much luck in selling it as a premium product in that field in addition to being the latest game console from Sony. Or wait, that's right, it's not a game console - my bad Kutaragi. Kudos to them for apparantly also providing standard DVD playback performance that is superior* to a $1500msrp hi-end player.

http://www.audioholics.com/productreviews/avhardware/DenonDVD3910Review4.php
*Denon DVD-3910 Benchmark total score: 75/130

For some reason though I doubt the ps3 would produce a better picture than this player. But all that matters is the score at the end.

fyi:
Samsung BD-P1000 Benchmark total score: 73/130 msrp $1000
Helios HVD2085 Benchmark total score: 30/130 msrp $200
Oppo DV-970HD Benchmark total score: 53/130 msrp $149
Helios X5000 Benchmark Score: 20/130 msrp $579 (networked media player)
Marantz DV-9500 Benchmark total score: 72/130 HDMI 57/130 COMPONENT msrp $2099
Yamaha DVD-C750 Benchmark total score: 66/130 msrp $329

Correction. Its not JUST a game console

 

[Dave Baumann]

Just to be clear,this is the DVD player in the 360 box,not the HD-DVD add-on the are reviewing correct?

Yes. An HD version of HQV benchmark hasn't been released yet.

 

[ninzel]

Yes. An HD version of HQV benchmark hasn't been released yet.

Ok, it's just that to counter this it seems some people are throwing up the HD-DVD add on reviews. Which may be vaild,I just want to be sure is all.
So this problem ,does it exist in the DVD drive itself or are the failures as a result of something being done within the 360 box itself? If the latter is true then the same problems or failures could exist with the HD-DVD add on sine the HD-DVD add on also goes through the 360 box.

 

[infinity4]

Denon DVD players are a lot more expensive than XB360 premium aren't they???

 

[Zaphod]

Ok, it's just that to counter this it seems some people are throwing up the HD-DVD add on reviews. Which may be vaild,I just want to be sure is all.

I have only seen this (at least on this board) in the context of providing dissenting opinions of the Xbox as a DVD player. It's just that the video-centric reviews are (naturally) focused around the release of the add-on.

So this problem ,does it exist in the DVD drive itself or are the failures as a result of something being done within the 360 box itself? If the latter is true then the same problems or failures could exist with the HD-DVD add on sine the HD-DVD add on also goes through the 360 box.

All picture processing is done by the main Xbox hardware/software for both players. The HD-DVD add-on just passes the data to the 360, and should (apart from some extremely theoretical 'audiophile' nonsense) provide exactly the same PQ for SD material as the built in drive.

 

[ninzel]

All picture processing is done by the main Xbox hardware/software for both players. The HD-DVD add-on just passes the data to the 360, and should (apart from some extremely theoretical 'audiophile' nonsense) provide exactly the same PQ for SD material as the built in drive.

And so this would in fact effect HD content playback as well.?.?

 

[Dave Baumann]

So this problem ,does it exist in the DVD drive itself or are the failures as a result of something being done within the 360 box itself? If the latter is true then the same problems or failures could exist with the HD-DVD add on sine the HD-DVD add on also goes through the 360 box.

Essentially video processing can be broken down into two primary areas: the decode process (i.e. the actual process of taking all the compression mechanisms that are used to encode the video into the resultant file) and then post processing/image quality enhancements that can operate on the decoded frames of data.

HQV is not a test of the decode process, it is a post processing test. While some of the tests are very important (de-interlatincing for TV content, 3:2 pulldown, etc.) a number of the tests are somewhat corner cases. 360's DVD player is not broken, in that it adeqautely does the decode process in order to diaplay the film, however at this point in time they do not add much in the way of post processing enhancements that some DVD players do - this is, of course, one of the differentiators between DVD players and how higher models can charge higher prices.

If you read the article you'll see that ExtremeTech point out that you should complain to MS to "fix" it (although "improve" is actually more correct). ExtremeTech will have gained familiarity with the HQV benchmark through their use of it on the PC. HQV become popularised about a year or so again for SD video benchmarking on the PC - try and take a look at reviews over the past year of AMD's (ATI's) and NVIDIA's HQV scores and you'll see that there has been a steady rise, even on the same boards. ExtremeTech have clued into this from their use of HQV on the PC over the past year and is suggesting that there is no reason the improvements can't be brought to the 360.

As for the HD DVD playback, the same principles apply - there is a decode process and there is post processing. Again, the decode process is obviously fine, but what post processing is there? Generally speaking, so far, HD sources behave nicer because they are HD and there are there is limited content to be able to explore corner cases. However, specifically in this case, MS further licensed "ATI Avivo" for video processing, whch may cover more than just the decode process. (In truth, I have no knowledge what it covers)

 

[Dave Baumann]

All picture processing is done by the main Xbox hardware/software for both players. The HD-DVD add-on just passes the data to the 360, and should (apart from some extremely theoretical 'audiophile' nonsense) provide exactly the same PQ for SD material as the built in drive.

It does also depend on what's been licensed.

 

[Zaphod]

It does also depend on what's been licensed.

On what what's been licensed? Are you saying that the add-on software upgrade for the 360 improves on the quality of the DVD playback software (over a console without the add-on)?

 

[ninzel]

Essentially video processing can be broken down into two primary areas: the decode process (i.e. the actual process of taking all the compression mechanisms that are used to encode the video into the resultant file) and then post processing/image quality enhancements that can operate on the decoded frames of data.

HQV is not a test of the decode process, it is a post processing test. While some of the tests are very important (de-interlatincing for TV content, 3:2 pulldown, etc.) a number of the tests are somewhat corner cases. 360's DVD player is not broken, in that it adeqautely does the decode process in order to diaplay the film, however at this point in time they do not add much in the way of post processing enhancements that some DVD players do - this is, of course, one of the differentiators between DVD players and how higher models can charge higher prices.

If you read the article you'll see that ExtremeTech point out that you should complain to MS to "fix" it (although "improve" is actually more correct). ExtremeTech will have gained familiarity with the HQV benchmark through their use of it on the PC. HQV become popularised about a year or so again for SD video benchmarking on the PC - try and take a look at reviews over the past year of AMD's (ATI's) and NVIDIA's HQV scores and you'll see that there has been a steady rise, even on the same boards. ExtremeTech have clued into this from their use of HQV on the PC over the past year and is suggesting that there is no reason the improvements can't be brought to the 360.

As for the HD DVD playback, the same principles apply - there is a decode process and there is post processing. Again, the decode process is obviously fine, but what post processing is there? Generally speaking, so far, HD sources behave nicer because they are HD and there are there is limited content to be able to explore corner cases. However, specifically in this case, MS further licensed "ATI Avivo" for video processing, whch may cover more than just the decode process. (In truth, I have no knowledge what it covers)

ok.

 

[Dave Baumann]

When I say that its one of the main differentiators between DVD players (post processing IQ enhancements), this is also the case for HD optical players. The HQV benchmark is made by Silicon Optix - the primary upsell feature of Toshiba's latest high end, $1000 HD DVD player is that it features a Silcon Optix post processing chip for post processing IQ enhancements.

 

[-tkf-]

Essentially video processing can be broken down into two primary areas: the decode process (i.e. the actual process of taking all the compression mechanisms that are used to encode the video into the resultant file) and then post processing/image quality enhancements that can operate on the decoded frames of data.

I´m not sure exactly how a Progressive Flag in the MPEG2 decoder is handled vs Post Processing ie, does the decoder(?) switch to a differet kind of decoding technic when the "Post Processing" discovers a wrongfull set flag? And though i might be wrong, i wouldn´t be surprised if the decoding part is an black art and very open to different technics that improve the quality, i think that KK hinted at this with the PS3 Blu-Ray decoder. And in most cases (if not all) the decoder and whatever post processing there is done must be very tightly integrated.

In any case and without discussing, a dvd player´s quality is the sum off both parts, if i were to buy a "Corner Case" dvd and it looked like shit on my player but not my friends, i would put the blame on my shitty player. And just those corner cases is why i bought a Panasonic XP50

 

[Dave Baumann]

The decoder is pretty mcuh just about taking to compressed data and greating an image - AFAIA the decoder will not change behaviour. Post processing can alter behaviour based on the flags set in the content; however one issue is that the flags can be incorrect for all the content so it can become a case of ignorning the flags and analysing the content to best decide the processing.

 

[Graham]

I just found this article today.
I think ET are doing themselves a disservice by labelling the article 'Xbox 360's Seriously Flawed DVD Playback'. Right off the bat it's doesn't sound very objective to me, and just sounds like it's a click grab.

I don't watch many DVDs, but those I do watch consistently look better on my 360 than my almost equally priced stand alone player. I've yet to see any interlacing artifacts actually, where my standalone player gets them all the time - especially on animated material, to the point it gets difficult to watch. I don't even have it plugged in anymore.



If I'm reading the replies here correctly, basically the gist is that the system cannot cope with an improperly flagged DVD?

 

[kyleb]

That is a big part of the tests, but the 360 fails the de-interlacing tests with the proper flags noise reduction as well. There are example pictures in the article, both of the benchmark tests and real world examples.