more blocks ontv than on monitor with ati radeon ve

[((( atom )))]

hi,

when using the tv-out of my ati radeon ve i have /more/ blocks on the tv than on my monitor! very amazing + very annoying!
besides that the quality of the outputis very good.

does anybody have a clue about optimizing this? would be /very/ appreciated...

regards

[BeNBeN]

Hi, try this simple methode : be sure to open the player AFTER you switched to TV.
I had the probe and i solved it that way...

A+
BeN

[Koepi]

You may want to look into the thread called "lumi masking" in the xid forum, there a solution is discussed with which the blocking on TV is prevented (it's an endodinh method though).

Regards,
Koepi

[((( atom )))]

@ben: sounds funny.. but i will try about everything to be able to watch movies properly on my tv again.. ;)

@koepi: what a thread! just had time to cross-read it (early in the moring now..) and i will get into it deeper anyway later. thx. i wonder, if it might help, though, since on my monitor there are simply hardly any blocks at all..

funy thing is, that my tv-output got so much worse (in terms of blocks) since i bought this ati card. the monitor-output is fine so i believe it to be something in the converting/outputting-stage of the tv-out section of the card.

big question here is: what has to be done to an image to make the blocks visible again, when all the other picture-parameters (brightness, color, contrast, etc.) are visibly identical? (some ideas for answers might come out of that lumi-thread..)

any ideas?

[Koepi]

Making blocks visible?

I thought you want a smooth picture, I somehoe don't understand that correctly. I assume a typo now ;)

Try ffdshow and it's noise-feature, it'll give you a convenient visual impression on TV. You can try lowering the luma-offset with it, too.

Regards,
Koepi

[((( atom )))]

lol, of course i don`t want to make 'em visible. i just thought: hmm, what does it take to make 'em visible (because something is doing it..). if i knew that, i could do something against it.
- looking for the source, that was.

i'll try the noise option as soon as it gets darker (too bright in my place to watch tv during day :)

[((( atom )))]

so i tried the noise-feature in ffd-show: it gets a little better, but these blocks i am facing are still all over. i watched a scene with smoke around a fire and the smoke is an array of blocks, separated into 4 differently coloured sub-arrays. :(

i might start a new thread about wich parameter of an image is mostly responisble for displaying them, since i came to the conclusion it is hardware-related and my tv-output amplifies right this parameter way up..

[Didée]

I´m a little confused about all the different kinds and brands of ATI cards out there, but in general:

ATI had some major driver probs in the past. First advice is to always try the newest drivers you can get your hands on.
Head over to www.rage3d.com (and see you back in ~ 2-3 weeks after reading, reading, ...)

E.g. my AIW 8500DV suffered long time from a broken gamma ramp, which made the "dark-blocking" extremely visible. Thanks heaven this seems to be fixed now!

But you seem to experience "general-blocking", not only in the dark parts, right?

You may also try switching TV as primary/secondary display in the advanced properties pages - this might alter something.

-----
Computers help you to solve problems you wouldn´t have without them.

[atcronin]

i think i know what your talking about, i had a shit house display at 800x600. extra 'dirty' looking blocks around the screen.

got rid of it easy enough, went into 1024x768. now youve got a ve, which same setup as my old radeon aiw, with which i never had such a problem, however it could have reared its head during my transition.

well seeing as you cant switch to 1024 (to my knowledge) i dont know wtf is going on.

i dont like not being able to run at 800x600 because you cant overscan at 1024.

the aiw was brilliant for tv out, everything looked fine, text was very readable at 800x600, but on the 8500 800x600 has the pos blockyness and 1024 doesnt have overscan and naturaly text is unreadable.

oh well im sure they fixed something that caused them to brake this.

guess just have wait for them to get around to it.
we are still waiting for a completly working forced vsync.

but from what i hear your still better of then with a nvidia card.

[((( atom )))]

it doesn't help - blocks galore!

i tried:
- switching trough all resolutions
- installing latest drivers
no change.

the picture on my tv actually looks as if no postfiltering was ever applied to it, i.e. cause by not-applying overlay. i have seen this happen with cards that had problems initiating overscan caused by video-files that didn't stick to a mulitple-of-32-width. my monitor-overlay is definitely fine, though. just to make sure, it isn't anything like that i installe dthe divxg400-filter, without any changes. this filter helped me out before with other problems, where i didn't expect it to...

as i understand, the overlay, wich is needed for postfiltering is directly written to the tv-output-chip and sent to the tv. (correct me, if i am wrong). if this is so, the picture sent to the tv-out chip is fine and something in the output-stage messes it up again. it wouldn't make sense to calculate the image twice (once for my monitor and once for my tv) since it is the same.

really thinking about putting back in my elsa erazor 3 :(

[Didée]

Originally posted by ((( atom )))
(correct me, if i am wrong
Uh, I never followed the electrons on their way, so ...

Just to make sure: Did you perform a really clean install of the new drivers?
You know, the funny ATI procedure: uninstalling, NOT REBOOTING, manually deleting all ATI*.* files, manually cleaning the registry, rebooting, hooraynowwemayinstallnewdrivers!

If the system only smells like there could have been previous installs of ATI stuff, you'll end with a mix of old/new drivers ...

BTW, XP or 9xMe?

[((( atom )))]

xp it is.

no, i didn't totally take everything apart, but i uninstalled the old drivers and did a reboot before i installed the new drivers. nevermind, anyway, because the new drivers were the same ones as the old ones.. (tehy were up to date, still did a new install..)

[arminio]

To me, this look like your TV out is not with overlay - If you alreay set TV out as primary and monitor as secondary and srtill have this problem, looks like your card won't do overlay with TV - OUT.

You try install VOBsub and force it to start each time when you start playback of AVI (not just when there are subtitle file present) - it will do some strange "overlay" simulation (or whatever) which might help ...

[((( atom )))]

arminio, thx for the suggestion, i'll try it 2nite.

is there any other way to check weather overlay is working or not?

[arminio]

I use lame :) method:

Install Radlight player (only player that easily, efficiently and propperly display subtitles in overlay mode) and play AVI along with some subtitles (be sure that VobSub, DivXG400 and other filters that support diplaying subtitles are off) - if part of subtitles (that are over picture) are transparent, overlay is OK. Otherwise (if letters are on black background), overlay is not active.

Now, if subtitles are transparent on monitor and on TV have black background, overlay is active for monitor and not for TV (always one device have it on and other off). This can be solved by setting TV as primary output display and monitor as secondary.

[((( atom )))]

valuable information. thx a lot, i can only try it tomorrow, when i get home..

[((( atom )))]

well, i tried and i tried...

i could veryfy thatthetv-output is definitely overlayed and still there are blocks.

i give up!

[atcronin]

well im not so sure i know what your talking about now.
because the blocks i see at 800x600 are much smaller then standard macroblocks. they are completly seperate to the video, they are there all the time, just much more noticable in movies, but cna be seen in darkish background pictures.

but the radeon shouldnt be getting that problem because i am only aware of it as a 8500 problem, and then only on some cards.

so you could try replacing card?

but definatly try to pin piont the problem first. see if its a video thing or if its always there, try w/wo overscan on, try different flicker reduction settings, turned off can sometimes produce artifacts.

but if all else fails, just get a external vga2tv converter and use that. that way your still able to use the dualhead just wont be needing the svid out.