I'm not sure if this is the right forum for this question especially considering this is my first post, so please feel free to move it if it is not in the correct forum. I am writing to find out if the blu-ray discs actually include a true, unadulterated native 1080p/24p source video stream (assuming that all HDCP requirements are met with compliant cable and TV) and/or if the player itself is doing anything to alter the video even when not nessecary.

The background on this question is that when I play a blu-ray video in my computer (a media/gaming rig designed and self built with full HDCP compliant hardware), on my computer monitor set at 72Hz the videos look very clear except there is still a little bit of that snow in the picture. It might be that I'm just sitting to close to my screen, but I can detect grain in the film, sometimes more than others. It's not a transmition snow, nor is it a TV background noise snow, but rather it appears sort of like as if the system is reconstructing the video stream back into 1080p/24p after having been altered or recorded in something else.

Watching Transformers through a HD-DVD and HD-DVD player through USB it had a picture that had absolutely no snow or grain in it except for a few scenes that had admittedly included some grain. Planet Earth from blu-ray respectively had very little grain or snow in it. (I'm aware the external player wasn't ideal especially the cable and the possible transmission limitations but it was either $40 for the x360 external player or 200 for the PC internal player, and it played plenty well enough.) Now, I'm not sure what the source of this picture discrepancy is, and i'm leaning towards it being the way it was recorded and the grain of the film, but could this also be caused by the video not being recorded on the disc and/or played by the player in pure 1080p/24p? Even the Blu-ray movies that produced a clearer picture don't look quite as clear as the scenes in Transformers and Planet Earth did in those scenes. Is it possible that the player is breaking down or converting the image before the TV undoes this conversion? I.E. 1080p/24p -> Telecined to 1080p/30p (possibly also -> interlaced to 1080i/60i before being inverse telecined back to the origional 1080p/24p?) If anyone happens to know what is causing this minor pixel snowing in the picture, please help!

*(Example of what I'm talking about can be provided if needed.)

Honestly, I'm so lost as to what alterations are truely happening inside of the system because I can't figure out where to start to eliminate the source of the discrepancy. All I really want to know is definitively what is causing the picture to have that slight pixel snow so that I may begin altering how my rig is handling the feed. Any insight to what is the source of it will be very much appreciated.

I set out to build a theater system with an LCD that posts a direct multiple of 1:1 pulldown of 24p without altering the picture, connecting it via HDMI 1.3 type B or C, and using my custom built media only rig for playing HD video. I've got the cable, the rig, working on narrowing down the right TV for the location, and all that is left is determining how to handle the stream. Any help on this matter is very much appreciated.

Almost all film-sourced Blu-rays are encoded directly at 1080p23.976. Your depiction of "snow" is strange... Grain is part of the source, see the various DNR threads/arguments going on. And I've never seen deinterlacing artifacts described as "snow" before.

Perhaps you could take a screencap or photo of the issue?

Every BD title I've seen demo'ed had what I think the poster is referring to. Hard to describe exactly, but it kinda turned me off from Blu-ray. I can always tell when a BD is on by the pic structure....even PS3 game/movie demos have that same look.

It's not film grain, that much I'm sure. Maybe earlier encodings weren't that great.....

Every BD title I've seen demo'ed had what I think the poster is referring to. Hard to describe exactly, but it kinda turned me off from Blu-ray. I can always tell when a BD is on by the pic structure....even PS3 game/movie demos have that same look.

It's not film grain, that much I'm sure. Maybe earlier encodings weren't that great.....
Well older titles may use telecine which may be worse than film scanners/digital intermediates (and newer titles which use a digital intermediate will have had the original negative scanned I think, but older titles won't have). If the video is paused and the "snow" remains static, that will rule out the TV/connector I think. Maybe it's film grain, or an encoding artefact like (macro) blocking (like using too low a bitrate), maybe an aspect of how they telecine it? Perhaps it will help if an example film is given (you say every blu-ray has this but the OP says it only happens with some films, and not with others - or is saying it only happens with Blu-ray but not HD-DVD - but surely the same encode on either system should look the same?). I wonder if it could also be related to the picture settings on the TV? (like sharpness or other settings being to high?).

I can always tell when a BD is on by the pic structure....even PS3 game/movie demos have that same look
Well if they have a pic structure (like a grid structure) that isn't present when watching normal TV, I'd think that might be an artefact of the telecine machine. But you say it happens even on PS3 games (and the OP isn't using a PS3) so I don't think that could be the reason (I suppose with the "pic structure" you could be looking so close you're seeing the actual pixel structure of the HDTV screen?). Also, a "pic structure" doesn't sound like "snow" (which sounds more random, like noise/interference/grain) :confused:

It might be that I'm just sitting to close to my screen, but I can detect grain in the film, sometimes more than others. It's not a transmition snow, nor is it a TV background noise snow
It might just be normal film grain, which some films have more than others (will be more noticeable in darker scenes)

Well if they have a pic structure (like a grid structure) that isn't present when watching normal TV, I'd think that might be an artefact of the telecine machine. But you say it happens even on PS3 games (and the OP isn't using a PS3) so I don't think that could be the reason (I suppose with the "pic structure" you could be looking so close you're seeing the actual pixel structure of the HDTV screen?). Also, a "pic structure" doesn't sound like "snow" (which sounds more random, like noise/interference/grain) :confused:I don't own or play any PS3 games, but was referring to game/movie demos playing from a PS3. I could tell by that "look", they were being spun from a BD disc. And I've seen BD demo'ed in a variety of places/sources and can always tell....even when the player is put up out of sight.

Hopefully, these were just all early inferior encodings and will vastly improve, as I plan to purchase movies on BD eventually.

It is very hard to describe exactly, and since I have only seen 2 HD-DVD titles I'm not sure as to whether or not it is present on the other HD-DVD titles. But I have seen about 30 blu-rays and so far everyone of them has had it. It has the same exact symptom as when you have a strong power source running near by the video cable, or if you had a too large of screen for the size picture that you're playing it on. A perfect example of the problem would be Spiderman 3, when it shows a close up on someones face and there seems to be a grain or texture that is very much more noticeable on a persons face. Its even apparent in the CGI and animated scenes, although not nearly as much so. The fact that it was present on the CGI and the animated pictures makes me believe it to be something other than grain, because they can just go in and alter the picture on the computer that they made the picture on. On real film though, the problem comes out so much more.

It seems to follow an alternating checkerboard pattern at very very high speeds if you look closely enough and watch it for a while. Because of this pattern and because of the fact that its much more present on film rather than animated pictures, it leads me to believe that either the source, or the player is taking the original film and running it through a 2:3 telecine, and upon reaching the monitor/TV, it inverse telecine it back to the original. If it were doing this, then it would explain why it has a symptom that resembles or could be described as looking like it's trying to re-assemble an interlaced picture. Programing wise, it would also be a whole lot easier to send the picture in a 1080i/60 signal and let the TV pick up the cadence to inverse telecine or let the old school TVs post it like this, rather than the opposite. Because of this logic, I tried running the blu-ray through my computer and ripping the source video out of the blu-ray and using the computer to avoid the possibility of any telecine or any other conversions, but it was still present in the picture. So now, I'm starting to wonder if the blu-ray really is 1080p/24p or if its 1080p/24p -> 1080i/60 for simplicity sake of older TVs and laziness when converting from the old films. (Technically, they could claim 1080i/60 as being 24p since it is originally 24p and can easily be converted back to the original source using the cadence and since all current TVs have the ability to do so, but it would probably leave some residual pixelation on the picture.)

It seems to follow an alternating checkerboard pattern at very very high speeds if you look closely enough and watch it for a while.
Couldn't this be the macroblocks that you are seeing? - because of the way the video is encoded using mpeg style encoding? Perhaps it might be better if they sometimes used smaller macroblock sizes (for the moving bits) and also used a higher bitrate. Also, if the sharpness (and brightness?) on the TV is high this might emphasize the effects?

PS: It wouldn't surprise me if some chips internally used interlaced and then it got converted back to progressive. But I don't know much about that. I'm not sure it would produce the effects you are seeing (like wouldn't any side-effects caused by this only be about 1 pixel/line high (or give a feathering effect, reduced resolution or perhaps slight jerky motion if it got it wrong), and not like a checkerboard pattern which would be several pixels high - like if it was the macroblocks it might be 4, 8 or 16 pixels high or something like that?)

I guess that the macroblocks could be a possible explanation, but that wouldn't explain why Blu-ray association wouldn't set the standard acceptable level of quality to try to at least match the quality of the runner up in the High Def standard war. It'd be an incredibly simple task to improve the quality, and it's not like HD-DVD had an overwhelmingly more advanced player system nor a ridiculously higher capacity than Blu-ray. The standard HD-DVD was equivalent to the Blu-ray 2.0 profile, so therefore, the more recent titles should look very close to the same quality as Transformers did, especially a movie like 10,000 BC since probably half of both movies is CGI, and since the current Blu-ray profile during the final stages of making and release of 10,000BC has basically the same potential as the HD-DVD profile during the release of Transformers. The only difference at this point would be the encoding quality of the video on the disc itself or whether the player is properly playing back natural HD. I'm looking forward to seeing how they compare and will probably post when that time occurs.

I can't post links to pictures yet as it requires 3 posts, so after this post, I'll post in a link to a full sized picture off of a Spiderman 3 Blu-ray, pirates 3 Blu-ray, and HD-DVD Transformers all in 1080p. They're all 3 from the website Highdefdiscnews.com because the pictures that they post full versions of look the closest to the same thing that I am seeing on my rig. I would post an image of my own screen shot, but I don't have an image hosting service that will retain the original image without sizing down or altering the image.

Spiderman 3 (http://www.highdefdiscnews.com/reviews/spider-man_3/image1full.jpg) This picture has some of the above mentioned artifacts in it. Most noticeable on the faces during play.

Pirates 3 (http://www.highdefdiscnews.com/reviews/pirates_of_the_caribbean_3/image1full.jpg) Pirates 3 had it as well, although not nearly as badly or as noticeable. Between the CGI and the normal film, the mentioned artifacts would disappear. So it was only present on the non-animated/computer generated scenes, and it was the most noticeable on Kiera's face, the governors face, and Beckett's face, probably due to the lack of the heavier contrast values. Anything really light in the movie showed it pretty well, such as the white clothing with enough texture that these small dots would be noticeable variations.

Transformers (http://www.highdefdiscnews.com/reviews/transformers/image2full.jpg) In this movie, there is none of the artifact visible. Some of the model utilizing scenes can be detected that they are models, but the case in point is that you cannot see any of this distortion in any of the "actual film" scenes.

I don't know to be honest. I have the transformers movie, but I don't currently have the other two. Perhaps the question could be answered better by one of the compression/encoding experts or one of the members who knows about film scanning etc.

I did wonder why though, in each of the screenshots the picture size was 1920x1080 without black bars, even though those films are 2.35-2.40:1 movies which would have been encoded with black bars. :) Not that it makes much difference to this question. I do notice a sort of dithering in the faces of the Spiderman 3 shot - I'm not sure whether that's film grain/encoding artefacts or what - though it's supposed to be one of the best titles for PQ. In the Transformers pic I notice a kind of circular banding in the picture on my CRT. The pirates 3 pic seems good to me - well in terms of I don't see the specific artefacts that you mention (but again I haven't watched the disc itself).

Those are promotional photos... gg.

Those are promotional photos... gg.
Oh, so that's why they're all 1920x1080 but don't have black bars :D :rolleyes:
What does gg mean (good grief?)? But if they were promotional photos - why would they need to be 1920x1080? Why the specific pixel size of a HD image?

So these definitely aren't a 16:9 crop of Super 35 film frames rather than matted/cropped to 2.35:1 or 2.40:1?

Do the details really matter? It's instantly obvious the second two don't look like they came from a disc. No grain and way sharper than anything on HD/BD. Spider-man might cropped and enlarged to 1080.

I agree that all 3 isnt screencaps.

Pirates is a digital still. And Transformers seem to be a still aswell.

Thats why I made the comment in the post above them that I would gladly put up my own screen cap if my image hosting service didn't automatically crop, resize, and alter the pictures. But, even though they are promotional pictures, the fact of the matter remains that the pictures on that site *are almost identical* to the same thing that I'm seeing, and thus why I chose those particular ones over others. Out of the 30 odd BD that I've watched, and out of the 2 HD-DVD, the HD-DVD ones didn't have that grain effect to near the degree as almost all of the blu-rays. I figured I should post an example of it, but I guess for future personal reference I'll remember that its just going to hinder progress since the contents apparently going to be ignored over the external sources even though the reasoning for it is provided.

Thats why I made the comment in the post above them that I would gladly put up my own screen cap if my image hosting service didn't automatically crop, resize, and alter the pictures. But, even though they are promotional pictures, the fact of the matter remains that the pictures on that site *are almost identical* to the same thing that I'm seeing, and thus why I chose those particular ones over others.

I would be very suprised if the pictures are almost identical. If you take a still with a digital SLR it will come out very differently from a screencap from a Super35.


Out of the 30 odd BD that I've watched, and out of the 2 HD-DVD, the HD-DVD ones didn't have that grain effect to near the degree as almost all of the blu-rays.

So you base judgment comparing 30 BD to 2 HD???

Can you list what HD you have seen?

On HD-DVD, I have Transformers, had The Departed, and have watched Planet Earth. On Blu-ray, I have seen Planet Earth and some others, and own about 15-20 movies, hocked about 10 of them that I had. I also have an imported Starship Troopers BD although now I'm pissed that they're bringing it in to the US and I could have waited.

I guess the real point I should make is that the Starship Troopers BD and Transformers HD-DVD looked flawless all the way through, yet heres other BDs that don't. I only saw 3 HD-DVDs total, and saw about 40 BDs total, but all of the HD-DVDs looked better than most of the BDs. I'm just curious if it's because the BDs were older and they used a different form or method of encoding or something that would explain why there is such a clarity difference.

Many HD DVD shares the same encode as BD (Warner)

But its not a format issue, titles have very different estetics, and it is so much more apperent on HD then it was on DVD.

Thats why I made the comment in the post above them that I would gladly put up my own screen cap if my image hosting service didn't automatically crop, resize, and alter the pictures.

Lately people have been using www.imagebam.com. It seems you ARE talking about grain differences though? I believe the first two are Super35 and Transformers is anamorphic.