- Jan 4, 2005
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Over the last several days, I've been experimenting with HD playback on my Intel system, having finally acquired a Dell 24" Ultrasharp. At first, I was a bit disappointed with the playback quality I was getting. Many scenes in 1080P looked little better than a standard-def or progressive-scan 480P display. SO, playing around and asking questions, here's what I've learned...
- Many HD discs use relatively poor encoding algorithms, so you see a lot of color banding in large swaths of color, and graininess in some dark brown backgrounds.
- in other cases, such as the current ATI Catalyst software, you can do things to substantially improve the HD playback.
In Catalyst 8.8, the place to go for optimizing your HD playback is the Graphics Settings -> 3D - All Settings tab. It offers the following triggers for changing the 3D and HD quality of the signal:
Smoothvision HD Anti-Aliasing
- I disable Use Application Settings; max out the Level slider and set the filter to Edge-Detect.
Smoothvision HD Anisotropic Filtering
- I disable Use Application Settings and max out the Per-pixel samples at 16X.
Catalyst A.I.
- I disable this and set it to Advanced on the slider.
MipMap Detail Level
- I max this out.
Wait for Vertical Refresh
- I max this out to Always On.
Adaptive Anti-Aliasing
- Enabled, set to max quality.
After doing all this and playing with the Avivo Video settings, my HD display cleaned right up in many areas. In the Planet Earth series, mountain outlines, seascapes and sky scenes that previously looked somewhat blocky and indistinct now look like they're SUPPOSED to look. In other words, stunning. I still see some color banding sometimes, but I'm pretty sure that's due to the movie encoding.
It's an interesting group of settings. As far as I can tell, disabling the Use Application Settings checkboxes and maxing out the antialiasing and anisotropic really seems to do the trick. I get no stuttering or slowness of playback. Since I'm really not a gamer, the impression I get is that doing this as a general operating mode for the system doesn't affect things at all. I also note that running 3DMark06 with all these settings as described above yields an interesting result - 3DMark thinks it's running at 1280x1024 when in reality the system is forcing the benchmark program to run at the native 1920x1200 with all settings at max! Not only that - I'm actually getting pretty decent scores. (10197 with the 4850HD which I just slapped in there.)
I'm sure my system is brutal overkill for HD playback. But what the hell. Doing this on a PC with a $400-$500 monitor and a $130 Blu-Ray drive is sure a nice way to experiment with Hi-Def.
Questions/thoughts/tips?
- Many HD discs use relatively poor encoding algorithms, so you see a lot of color banding in large swaths of color, and graininess in some dark brown backgrounds.
- in other cases, such as the current ATI Catalyst software, you can do things to substantially improve the HD playback.
In Catalyst 8.8, the place to go for optimizing your HD playback is the Graphics Settings -> 3D - All Settings tab. It offers the following triggers for changing the 3D and HD quality of the signal:
Smoothvision HD Anti-Aliasing
- I disable Use Application Settings; max out the Level slider and set the filter to Edge-Detect.
Smoothvision HD Anisotropic Filtering
- I disable Use Application Settings and max out the Per-pixel samples at 16X.
Catalyst A.I.
- I disable this and set it to Advanced on the slider.
MipMap Detail Level
- I max this out.
Wait for Vertical Refresh
- I max this out to Always On.
Adaptive Anti-Aliasing
- Enabled, set to max quality.
After doing all this and playing with the Avivo Video settings, my HD display cleaned right up in many areas. In the Planet Earth series, mountain outlines, seascapes and sky scenes that previously looked somewhat blocky and indistinct now look like they're SUPPOSED to look. In other words, stunning. I still see some color banding sometimes, but I'm pretty sure that's due to the movie encoding.
It's an interesting group of settings. As far as I can tell, disabling the Use Application Settings checkboxes and maxing out the antialiasing and anisotropic really seems to do the trick. I get no stuttering or slowness of playback. Since I'm really not a gamer, the impression I get is that doing this as a general operating mode for the system doesn't affect things at all. I also note that running 3DMark06 with all these settings as described above yields an interesting result - 3DMark thinks it's running at 1280x1024 when in reality the system is forcing the benchmark program to run at the native 1920x1200 with all settings at max! Not only that - I'm actually getting pretty decent scores. (10197 with the 4850HD which I just slapped in there.)
I'm sure my system is brutal overkill for HD playback. But what the hell. Doing this on a PC with a $400-$500 monitor and a $130 Blu-Ray drive is sure a nice way to experiment with Hi-Def.
Questions/thoughts/tips?
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