The "Official" Onkyo TX-SR608 Thread (No Price Talk) - Page 59

In many cases, that can be caused by the sync being lost by your TV. IOW, it can be as much an issue with the TV as the AVR. The best thing you can do is, if you continue to experience it, is run your source direct to the TV and see what happens.

Hi all,

This doesn't seem to be the SAME issue as described above, as it's only for split seconds and only affects Blu-rays, but I hoped to get your advice on something...

Ever since we got our Onkyo about 30 days ago, I've thought I noticed an intermittent video stutter (picture pauses slightly) on all Blu-rays that we've watched. The wife wasn't seeing it so I thought I was maybe dreaming, but then I saw a user review on Amazon that commented on the same thing. I seem to have fixed the problem by turning the 1080p/24p setting OFF on the Blu-ray player, but to me that's not really a good solution as I'm supposed to get the 1080p/24p I would think.

This is the last day I can request a replacement for free on Amazon, so I'm wondering if anyone else on here has noticed the same thing or not. Not sure it makes sense to replace with the same model if it's a defect in the model, but if it's a fluky thing that's only affected a few of them then I might try it.

Thanks!

What is the refresh rate of your TV..??

The ARC needs to be supported on both ends - receiver and TV, so both of then would have to be very new (not even every HDMI 1.4 device has ARC).

If someone has built a HDMI 1.4/ARC TV that somehow is limited to stereo on SPDIF output, I'd like to know who that manuacturer is, to never buy anything from them.

And if you're stuck with an old TV, ARC on your receiver is not useful to you anyway.

Good question...it's a somewhat older (as in 2 yrs) Samsung LED DLP, and according to the spec sheet I've found on it it has this: 480i/480p/1080i/1080p
(60Hz/30Hz/24Hz) input support

So, if I understand your idea, I need to run a digital optical cable OUT from Sharp HDTV to AVR and re-assign that input to recognize the TV signal from Netflix. Then, I manually switch to TV/CD on AVR when I watch Netflix via the HDTV and receive the audio signal using the optical cable. If that works, then I don't need to enable RIHD or use the ARC capability. Is that correct? Thanks for your help.

How do I enable ARC? I have a Samsung C8000, and the hdmi 1.4 cord going to the stereo.

Regardless of what you may have heard regarding the AVR, the TV is where the problem begins. When reproducing a 24fps at 60Hz everything is sped up and it would look like you were watching the film in fast-forward. To solve this problem, 3:2 pulldown was created. This process creates four film frames for every five video frames and then plays alternating frames three times each and two times each and alternates every four frames. This means four film frames play in the time it normally takes to to play five video frames. However, this process has changed over time. Progressive-scan video and BD video has made it so one frame is added to every four (playing one frame three times and the next twice) to make it easier to upconvert and to compress. Both processes cause judder but the second causes a bit more.

60 divided by 24 = 2.5 and there is no such thing as half a frame, which is why it is necessary to add an extra frame.

Blu-ray Disc is encoded at 1080p/24p right on the disc.

LCD panels with 120Hz refresh rates generally correct for judder. How..?? 120 can be divided by both 24 and 30 with an even number of frames.

If your BD player has an "Auto" setting, you might try that as well. Lastly, if you see no visual change when outputting 1080p/24 as opposed to your turning it off at the player, then stick with the off setting. Let your eyes be your guide.

woecarlson... I'll add one other note... much like the "rainbow" effect experienced by some folks watching a DLP unit, some are sensitive to judder, some are not. That would explain why your wife does not see it.

Thanks so much...that is great background info on the issue!

I guess the reason(s) I was thinking the AVR was the culprit was 1) the user at Amazon that noticed the same issue and 2) we had an older Denon receiver prior to this Onkyo and I never saw the issue there with the same BR/TV settings at work.

This does make sense, though, about the TV. Also, I did notice that the Onkyo "Monitor Out" setting was on Through previously, and when I changed it to Auto it started upconverting the Satellite signal. I might turn the 1080/24 back ON the BR player while leaving the AVR set to Auto and see what that does. If nothing else, I can turn if OFF on the BR until we upgrade to a newer TV (in a few years hopefully).

Thanks again!

To your last question, you can't. Either you will process video, or you will lose the overlay OSD. Tough choice.

Netflix from blueray will play what netflix sends. That is, stereo. Does not matter how you connect netflix or what you play it from. They don't even do 5.1, so you can stop worrying about 7.1 for now. Only blueray discs (and not even all of them) will give you 7.1.

About HDMI-CEC (aka HDMI Control/KuroLink/BraviaLink/VieraLink/Anynet+). I would consider it "antifeature" on HDMI receivers, and knock off points for having it, though fortunately you can turn it off.

This thing is hanging around since days of HDMI 1.1 and was designed before HDMI receivers existed. It is not meant for HDMI receivers and will conflict with the very idea of HDMI receiver (route everything via HDMI to receiver and out via HDMI to TV).

It was designed with these assumptions in mind:
- all your HDMI sources are connected right to TV, and
- SPDIF output from TV goes to receiver for audio.
- your TV picture comes from TV tuner (cable or broadcast), not an external cable/sat box.

If your setup is like that, HDMI-CEC is useful to you. Otherwise it will drive you mad. Here is why:

- any time TV is powered on, or receiver is powered on while TV is on, receiver will switch to a designated "TV input". On some receivers (Sony and Pioneer) it can't be HDMI (not when HDMI-CEC is enabled).
- any time a blueray/DVD player is turned off while TV is on, TV will switch to it's internal tuner.

Of course if you had setup matching the description above, this would be exactly what you want. But with typical HDMI receiver setup, this will just make your wife hate you.

One feature of HDMI-CEC is showing (in somewhat crappy way) the receiver's volume level on the TV screen. If you also have OSD overlay like Onkyo or Denon, you will see two volume indicators.

Bottom line is, if you want to see volume level on TV screen, buy a receiver with OSD overlay and disable HDMI-CEC. Unfortunately on Onkyo 608 you may have to sacrifice video "purity" for that, since it won't show OSD overlay if you disable video processing. I don't know if Denon has the same caveat.

As I re-read the post, something else I want to ask about. I'm a bit confused by the Video/Film mode settings on this unit. Do you have any recommendations? Currently I have it on Custom (Video) and Auto (Film) and it is "supposed" to determine the source (video or film source) and apply a 3:2 pulldown depending. I think the other options are "Cinema", "Through"

Your're welcome ... the problem with reviews by users is we never are really given the background equipment for the review. Much has been made of the judder issue, both in this thread as well as in other threads dealing with displays. The culprit is many cases is the display device, not the source component or the AVR.

We are faced with so many settings these days, from the source to the display, it's very easy for an owner to set something somewhere along the line that something else is not happy with. Thus, the beginning point for troubleshooting should always be the display device. Technology progresses so fast that it's difficult in many cases to meld even a 2 year old display with a new component.

I use "through" and allow the processing chip in my display to do the work. My unit has a Reon chip, which is superior to the AVR's ... in your display, you may find the AVR processing to be superior.. I don't know.

The best guage is what you are seeing. Play with it and settle on what you think looks best, since that's what really matters..

1.You should be able to turn off all the CEC anoyances. An exmaple of an anoyance I had: the 608 will turn off when you turn off your TV, but you can disabled this option in the 608 hardware setup menu. Turn off TV Power Control. Similarly there should be options in your TV's menu's to disable other things that could potentialy anoy you like the double volume display (which only shows up if you use the TV remote's volume buttons), but to disable it completely I just had to shut off some other option in my TV menu. So you should be able to use ARC just fine.

2. Use whichever implementation you like better. It shouldn't make a difference quality wise.

3. Press Setup on the remote Under menu #4 Source Setup then Picture Adjust. In here you can set Through, which will minimize the processing. I have my bluray set to Through and my cable box set to custom, because I find it actually helps my cable.
3 or 4 people have reported dropped frames when using 24fps mode on their bluray players, but your cable is 60fps and shouldn't be choppy. Are you sure it isn't your cable itself? My Time Warner cable is garbage compared to ATT Uverse I had before I moved.


I believe you only need new cables if you are using the ethernet feature of HDMI, as that is the only feature that required a physical change in the cables. Otherwise any 1.3 cable should have enough bandwidth, especially if he's already run 3D through it with no problems.

EDIT: whoops, there was a whole nother page I didn't see, this post is probably seems out of place now...

I've A/B'd two units side by side using the same display and source. The ingrained video processing reported even using the "through" setting is so minimal, that setting for a complete passthrough and losing the GUI/OSD is really not a tough choice.

Set it for through, keep the GUI/OSD .. the leftover minor processing is much ado about nothing ..

AMEN

I believe its the norm for displays to only output stereo over optical. The reason is TV's have to decode the signal then output it as pcm, and most TVs only have 2 crappy little speakers, so they just pull out a stereo signal and its this signal that gets passed along on the optical cable. It would be an added expense (and one not that many people would use) to add extra hardware to decode into 5.1 instead of 2.0 just for output to optical.

With ARC they don't need the extra hardware, they can just pass on the audio signal without decoding it first.


There are many many levels of video processing available in the 608, not just On or Off. Using Through will give him the OSD and the most minimal amount of processing possible (just enough to be able to show the OSD). For the record I use Through for my blurays, and for my cable I turn on some more additional processing options.

The rest of your post that I snipped out: for the most part I agree with you, CEC is stil an immature technology that doesn't quite give the user enough control so it ends up not always working exactly how you'd want it to. Fortunatly its not an All or Nothing situation. Most things give you options beyond just on and off (my TV and 608 do, my bluray player does not), so you can still use CEC, but disable the parts that anoy you.

+1 .. exactly

There is no reason for TV to decode 5.1 if you have turned of internal speakers in the menu and set it to use external speakers. There is no reason to decode into PCM either. All it has to do is pass origial 5.1 encoded signal out to SPDIF, which does not take any extra HW.

In any case, your argument would apply equally to SPDIF and HDMI ARC - if you can pass unmolested 5.1 into one of them, you can also pass it into another.

As far a video processing goes, Through may not be the best to keep OSD. I have found that Through still uses the default Noise Reduction setting of Low. I have found the best to be Custom. You can then, through the setup menu (NOT THE HOME BUTTON), switch NR to off. I think the minimal NR setting is low even on the "Through" setting. Turning the NR off gives me the best display with all my sources. Give it a try.

good tip, thanks for sharing

I've got the same stutter. My tv is a vizio that is 120hz, accepts 24p, has frame interpolation as well if needed. The only way I got rid of the video stutter with blu-ray's was to do the VCR return trick posted in this thread that turns off all processing in the receiver including the GUI. I'm not happy about this.

That last reply has me wondering again if it is indeed a receiver or display issue. Also, I posted something similar on the bluray.com "receivers" forum and 2-3 others have piped in with the same issue on this unit in just the last 4 hours.

From the info I posted earlier, it appears our TV "should" be able to handle the 24fps, and I was not getting this jitter on the Denon receiver we had previously on the same blu-ray player, so now the evidence seems to be swinging towards the AVR being the culprit...which is frustrating since it sounds so good! I think it might work to just turn off the 24 fps part on the blu-ray video settings, but again that's just a workaround for something that really shouldn't be happening.

Wonder if Onkyo would ever admit to an issue and try a firmware update or something? The customer service I talked to this morning was not at all helpful...

You can always run your BD straight to the TV and see what happens as an experiment. Using the same settings on the BD that caused the issue.

You'll find that AVR's do not have a distinct sound. That's really not a reason to keep it if you're unhappy with it.

Keep in mind that if you see no difference other than the elimination of judder with 24FPS turned off or to auto on the BD, there is nothing wrong with using it that way. Use your eyes as your guide. They are your best source of information.

Well I was strongly considering the TX-SR608 as replacement for my Pioneer VSX-920k but I ended up pulling the trigger on the Denon AVR-891 last night. All I can say is wow! Much superior to the Pioneer (and a bit more expensive). Video quality on my PN58C8000 is noticeably improved and I thought it was good before. The unit sounds amazing too and better than the Pioneer, especially with so many more settings available for crossover frequency and the ability to adjust crossover on a per speaker basis. The reasons I didn't go for the Onkyo was because of concerns over the longevity of the internal fan and all this talk of degrading video and losing the OSD to fix it (doesn't seem like an ideal solution to me) and random clicking, etc. The OSD on the Denon is amazingly intuitive and the system is very configurable.

I'm not knocking the Onkyo because I haven't owned one and I'm sure it's great. I just thought I would share with you the reasons why I did not go with the Onkyo and that my first impressions of the Denon are very positive.

Hey guys, I have a questions. First off I have the 55CU8000, Onkyo 608, fat Ps3 (1st or 2nd Generation) and Dish Vp722. Everything is running into the 608 via HDMI, and then out from the reciever to the 8000.

I read that some people were having the conversation about the PS3 streaming audio to the Onkyo 608. I believe I have this set up correctly but wanted to make sure I wasnt missing something. I have the PS3 set to Linear PCM and not bistream. When playing Avatar yestersday I saw that the reciever showed PCM on the display, along with All Channel Stereo. I noticed that when I changed it to bitsream it showed DTS or Dolby Digital. But from my understanding PCM is the best way to send the audio from the PS3 to the reciever. Im somewhat of a Newbie when it comes to all of this and im trying to make sure I have everything set up to get the most out of my HT esperience.

I also have been having the double volume problem when I use the DIsh remote or the TV remote which is very annoying. I will try playing with the setting in the Hardware menu. I do like being able to turn on both the tv and the reciever just by hitting the TV power button though. With my setup the reciever has to come on for me to get picture and sound. Of course I can then turn it off and the passthru function works .

I am considering replacing my current HDMI 1.3 receiver with one of the new HDMI 1.4 Onkyo's. I have been trying to make sense of all the information from DirecTV out there saying that the 3D broadcasts will not work when sent through any current receiver on the market and the HDMI cable must be directly connected to the 3D capable TV.

Can anyone confirm or deny if, say the new ESPN 3D soccer channel, will work when routed through this Onkyo 608 receiver by HDMI? Or do you have to connect the HDMI cable directly to the 3D display to get the 3D picture to work properly.

I know this is the case with all older HDMI 1.3 receivers (connect directly to new 3D TV) but was wondering if DirecTV 3-D signal works when routed through these new 1.4 receivers.

I have the 608, running everything thru it, and just watched ESPN 3D this morning without any issue. My HDMI cables are all 1.4, however.

I might have missed a post, but what do you put your Film Mode to (for watching BluRays unmolested)? I also assume Edge Enhancement is set to 0?