I see this fancy gamma feature on the latest moome cards, but would it be better to keep the gamma setting in the HTPC instead?

Just a thought.

Any HTPC/CRTPJ owners that decided to put the gamma correction in the PJ with such a card or decided to keep the pj card straight forward and keep the gamma adjust pc based?

HTPC Gamma is not the same as the one in the moome card. I had gamma boost on my old HTPC with Theatre Tek and it would simply raise the brigntness level on the entire picture. You then had to lower the Brighntess on the PJ which put you pretty much back to where you were.
The Moome card's gamma has a special curve built in which boosts gamma on the very low end, exactly where it's needed for a CRT. see this post for more info
http://www.curtpalme.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5416

HTPC Gamma is not the same as the one in the moome card. I had gamma boost on my old HTPC with Theatre Tek and it would simply raise the brigntness level on the entire picture. You then had to lower the Brighntess on the PJ which put you pretty much back to where you were.
The Moome card's gamma has a special curve built in which boosts gamma on the very low end, exactly where it's needed for a CRT. see this post for more info
http://www.curtpalme.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5416

Hi, I know the difference between the brightness (shift/offset) and gamma (curve)....BUT this curve can also be set in the pc (Pstrip, Nvidia)

Arno,

What if you want to adjust gamma if watching from BluRay/HDDVD or other non-HTPC equipment, how are you to adjust gamma?

Arno,

What if you want to adjust gamma if watching from BluRay/HDDVD or other non-HTPC equipment, how are you to adjust gamma?

In case of that "if" it would be a problem indeed...BUT....dedicated HT + HTPC (HDDVD/BR-drive on board) ;)

Any gamma change on the PC WILL cause banding. In Powerstrip you can see how many colors you are really getting.

Although the black parts you don't see won't mind the banding as it would still be an improvement.

Another thing you can to on the PC is non linear gamma. Or rather change the LUT to make the levels correct. But as mentioned it will cause banding.

Any gamma change on the PC WILL cause banding. In Powerstrip you can see how many colors you are really getting.

Although the black parts you don't see won't mind the banding as it would still be an improvement.

Another thing you can to on the PC is non linear gamma. Or rather change the LUT to make the levels correct. But as mentioned it will cause banding.

As far as I know Powerdvd for HD-DVD & Blu-ray does not allow gamma adjustments on the overlay. About the only way to get adjustments is to rip your HD-disk to the hard drive re-encode with then play with Windows Media Classic. This was way too much work for me, so I use a Box 1021 for a gamma boost.


Mike

Forget both the Moome gamma and the HTPC gamma and look for a used Lumagen HDP Video Processor, 11 point Gamma and now added color gammut control. a calibrators dream......

Athanasios

Any gamma change on the PC WILL cause banding. In Powerstrip you can see how many colors you are really getting.

Although the black parts you don't see won't mind the banding as it would still be an improvement.

Another thing you can to on the PC is non linear gamma. Or rather change the LUT to make the levels correct. But as mentioned it will cause banding.

Hm, never heard of that or seen it....any background info on that?
But ...if that is a fact....good reason for a card with gamma on board...

Hm, never heard of that or seen it....any background info on that?
But ...if that is a fact....good reason for a card with gamma on board...

If your using an HTPC to a CRT why use digital? Analog just works! The analog output of most video cards is 14 bit while the A/D on a moome is only 12 and you cannot go beyond 150Mhz bandwidth unless it's the new moome card that's not shipped yet.

Trust me there is NO advantages to using digital on a CRT with an HTPC unless you have very LONG cable runs.

Mike

If your using an HTPC to a CRT why use digital? Analog just works! The analog output of most video cards is 14 bit while the A/D on a moome is only 12 and you cannot go beyond 150Mhz bandwidth unless it's the new moome card that's not shipped yet.

Trust me there is NO advantages to using digital on a CRT with an HTPC unless you have very LONG cable runs.

Mike

10m of cable here and there was a good improvement switching to digital (and for analog I used 5x RG Coax cable)...so...

10m of cable here and there was a good improvement switching to digital (and for analog I used 5x RG Coax cable)...so...

No kidding what projector? I saw actually saw degrading of sharpness when I tried using a Moome card on my XG, granted it was a Gen 1 card.

What I used to judge was this little test pattern program I wrote. The 1 on 1 off pattern on the Resolution tab

http://www.acdnow.com/misc/testpattern.zip

here are a few hot keys:

Hotkeys:
S – double click Shows setup dialog box or
Page Up – Increase line intensity
Page Down – Decrease line intensity
R – Toggles Red on/off
G – Toggles Green on/off
B – Toggles Blue on/off
C – Toggles Center circles on/off
N – Toggles Corner circles on/off
D – Toggles Diagonal lines on/off
Esc – Exits program


Just unzip and run. You must have Dot.Net 2.0 framework installed.


Mike

[QUOTE=MikeEby;14133766]If your using an HTPC to a CRT why use digital? Analog just works! The analog output of most video cards is 14 bit while the A/D on a moome is only 12 and you cannot go beyond 150Mhz bandwidth unless it's the new moome card that's not shipped yet. Trust me there is NO advantages to using digital on a CRT with an HTPC unless you have very LONG cable runs. I saw actually saw degrading of sharpness when I tried using a Moome card on my XG, granted it was a Gen 1 card.the old Moome 10bit DVI card has little or nothing in common with the current product.
I have to admit my HTPC wasn't tweaked to hell and back some some folks use. However, it was a $1K when I built it and when I switched to the new Moome HDMI+HD-A2 player ($500. total) it was better in every way.The HTPC was softer and didn't have the color saturation. Also, HTPC/Theatre Tek gamma boost was useless and really boosted brigtness levels as well as skewing the colors.

[QUOTE=MikeEby;14134151]the old Moome 10bit DVI card has little or nothing in common with the current product.
I have to admit my HTPC wasn't tweaked to hell and back some some folks use. However, it was a $1K when I built it and when I switched to the new Moome HDMI+HD-A2 player ($500. total) it was better in every way.The HTPC was softer and didn't have the color saturation. Also, HTPC/Theatre Tek gamma boost was useless and really boosted brigtness levels as well as skewing the colors.

The first Moome card left a bad taste in my mouth, $250 and I really was never able to use it. EDID problems and black crush, I could have solved it with an external scaler but had most of the parts laying around for the HTPC so I added a HD-DVD/BD combo drive and had a decent solution. The newer cards are much better I understand.

No question an HTPC is not for everyone. My Vista HTPC is by far the most stable I have ever built. It took some tweaking with Powerstrip to get a 1080p image I liked. But once I got it dialed in I haven't touched it.


Mike

No kidding what projector? I saw actually saw degrading of sharpness when I tried using a Moome card on my XG, granted it was a Gen 1 card.

What I used to judge was this little test pattern program I wrote. The 1 on 1 off pattern on the Resolution tab

http://www.acdnow.com/misc/testpattern.zip

here are a few hot keys:

Hotkeys:
S – double click Shows setup dialog box or
Page Up – Increase line intensity
Page Down – Decrease line intensity
R – Toggles Red on/off
G – Toggles Green on/off
B – Toggles Blue on/off
C – Toggles Center circles on/off
N – Toggles Corner circles on/off
D – Toggles Diagonal lines on/off
Esc – Exits program


Just unzip and run. You must have Dot.Net 2.0 framework installed.


Mike

Mike the pj is an 1272...
Nice tool by the way ;)

Mike the pj is an 1272...
Nice tool by the way ;)

Thanks! I just keep it on the desktop when I need to do a quick convergence touch up its there. The lines are 1 pixel wide on the cross hatch pattern much smaller than most projectors built in patterns. It should adjust itself to fit whatever resolution you are running.

What resolution are you running your 1272 at?


Mike

Thanks! I just keep it on the desktop when I need to do a quick convergence touch up its there. The lines are 1 pixel wide on the cross hatch pattern much smaller than most projectors built in patterns. It should adjust itself to fit whatever resolution you are running.

What resolution are you running your 1272 at?


Mike


At first 1280x720p.....BUT....after some time back to 576p....sharper ;-)

BUT...soon the 1272 will be gone and my 9500lc Ultra is up ;)

Anyway.....ever seen the "banding" due to HTPC gamma setting as mentioned in this topic?

...The analog output of most video cards is 14 bit ...

Have you found a way to use it?

I have searched for hours trying to get more then 8 bit out of mine.
Even the ability to have a custom LUT that addressed the output in more then 8 bit would make me happy. = gamma without banding.

At first 1280x720p.....BUT....after some time back to 576p....sharper ;-)

BUT...soon the 1272 will be gone and my 9500lc Ultra is up ;)

Anyway.....ever seen the "banding" due to HTPC gamma setting as mentioned in this topic?

Cool on the 9500lc Ultra that is quite an upgrade... No... I have not see banding...I only use PowerDVD and only play HD-DVD & Blu-rays. The gamma adjustments on my ATI card have no effect on PowerDVD, this is why I use an external box for gamma boost, I wish it did not work that way…..But that is the way PowerDVD works.

Have you found a way to use it?

I have searched for hours trying to get more then 8 bit out of mine.
Even the ability to have a custom LUT that addressed the output in more then 8 bit would make me happy. = gamma without banding.

Interesting...No I do not...I think the gamma adjustments in the Moome are done in the analog domain after the D/A, so this should not create banding issues either. What player and video card are you using that you see banding?


Mike

Mike, What processor and parts are you running in your HTPC for stable performance? Thanks

Mike, What processor and parts are you running in your HTPC for stable performance? Thanks

ASUS Maximus Motherboard with Intel X38 chipset.
Q6600 Core 2 Quad CPU.
LG GCC-H20 HD-DVD Combo Drive.
4GB ram DDR2 800 Generic.
Video: Asus/ATI X3850 w/512Mb DDR3.
The OS is Vista Ultra 32 bit SP1.
PowerDVD 7.3 with latest patch.

Mike

This is how gamma correction looks using an 8 bit LUT
The left side is uncorrected, as you can see every step of input has it's own level of output.

On the right image i have boosted the gamma quite a lot, here you can see that the darker parts skip over a few output levels.
At the high end you can see some input levels share the same output level. Meaning that slightly different color will look the same or make a big jump.

Now if we could find a way to have the 8 bits of input map into say 10 bit we could avoid having low precision at the low end and having input levels share the same brightness at the high end.

Hope it explains the issue that is really irrelevant to what gfx you use. Most gfx is suppose to do what i wanted above but I have yet to find out how to do it.
The data shown is pulled from the LUT and was changed by Powerstrip, It is probably rendered incorrect but it's only an example.

Has anyone tried this with the nvidia control panel or ffdshow levels ?
In both you can create custom curves with multiple points.
You may want to check this thread (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=780914&highlight=gamma+htpc).

I have used Nvidia custom gamma curve few years now. It works for both overlay and desktop. No banding and I like it better than external gammabox. Gammaboxes could elevate signal over 0,7 Vpp, boost also below black and 50ire information that I don't like...

I'm moving to Ati+Powerstrip and I think this combo need TNR software (member here) for importing custom gamma curve.

I'm moving to Ati+Powerstrip and I think this combo need TNR software (member here) for importing custom gamma curve.

What is TNR software?

Mike

Just saw this: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1042214

Solves the banding and is quite detailed.

Hmm. I seems to have mistaken me without actually looking at the numbers. Powerstrip does indeed write more than 8 bits to the LUT. However it rounds it wrong for some reason, it goes to 254.0078 instead of 255 (0.9961)
The app linked to wrights the numbers properly.

I have yet to test it on an analogue output but will do that later.

I don't have any issues with banding using Powerstrip Gamma on my HD2600XT connected to my XG via Analogue.


And I also have a boat anchor Moome ISS card. It works fine with standalones, but not my PC...grr.

Just saw this: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1042214

Solves the banding and is quite detailed.


Yep, tried it ...works but also ordered the moome card today (just to be sure) ;)

Powerstrip does indeed write more than 8 bits to the LUT. However it rounds it wrong for some reason, it goes to 254.0078 instead of 255 (0.9961)

Yes, I also noticed this. Powerstrip doesn't use 65535 as the highest value (16 bits) in the LUT. In VideoEqualizer you get a correct linear gamma curve when pressing the reset button.