I was watching 300 last night and I noticed for the first time that in dark scenes, the black area would have a purplish-grey (ripple /flicker). I am running it with a VGA cable to my HTPC and do have the other cables (component / HDMI) connected to the projector. Has anyone experienced this? What is the technical term for it? Solutions?

Hi kraze98nyc,

Depending on what the pattern looks like, you might be seeing MPEG2 compression artifacts in that particular disk or noise in your VGA connection.

Since you're using an HTPC, try displaying a dark grey desktop and see if the problem is still there. If it isn't, it's likely your source disk. If it is, it could be noise getting into your VGA link either through the cable ( especially if it's long ) or into the VGA card itself.

If you see the problem with a dark grey desktop, try using DVI/HDMI and see if it goes away. This would indicate that you're getting noise into your analogue VGA link. Easiest fix would be to continue to use DVI/HDMI. If this is impractical, try a better quality VGA cable next.

Jonathan

I'm using a 15ft MonoPrice Heavy Duty VGA cable. I will try the DVI/HDMI tonight. Thank you for your response!

Funny, I watched 300 last night on my 400.
Didn't notice anything funny going on in the image. It was a fairly dark movie that had shadow detail problems at times but it wasn't very dark in my livingroom either.

background info: I am using a 50ft component cable passed through a Pioneer 816k receiver.

I was only able to test output from my standalone DVD player via components and did not see the artifacts in dark scenes. I tried to output several shades of dark grey on my HTPC but didnt see them either. I was using the basic onboard VGA port so I couldnt test the HDMI output until I hookup another computer. One thing worth noting was the output from the HTPC even with VGA was far superior to the DVD player + components.

So you know the artifacts are occuring when I use 300 on my PowerDVD 6 software and they "freeze" when I pause the movie. I'm thinking its either the software or the cable.

Will test HDMI tonight.

If you didn't see them via your VGA link on the dark grey desktop patters, it's most likely in the source disk. If your brightness level is elevated at all, it tends to really show up the muck that's buried in the blacks on a lot of DVD's.

Jonathan

Think i figured out the problem. It was in powerdvd, when I used a color profile other than original I saw the artifacts but on original its perfect. I even upgraded to PowerDVD 7 Ultra and saw the same thing. I guess these color profiles are a bad idea?