Onkyo TX-NR818 "official" owner's thread discussion - Page 31

Hello 818 owners and followers! A friend of mine had the nerve of getting me looking at HT gear with one his recent purchases which of course triggered upgrade fever for me!

Here's my setup:

• Dedicated HT - 11.5 ft x 20 ft (8 ft high), no windows. Two rows of power recliner seats, thick frieze type of carpet. Standard drywall finish on walls and ceiling. Dark earth tones color scheme.
• Onkyo TX-SR706 AVR
• Epson 8350 projector at rear wall of room to a fixed frame 106 inch screen (projects from equipment closet)
• Polk Audio 265-RT in wall speakers (3 in front, 2 on side/rear)
• Polk Audio DSW Pro 500 subwoofer
• Sony BDP-360 BD player
• Media Center PC - most things run through this, to include cable TV via HDHR Prime CATV tuner. Huge photos, music and movie collection sit on my home network and are accessed by this system and others in the house
• XBox 360

Most people that come by think things sound and look great. I'm content but long for "bigger" sound. My upgrade path was going to begin with a SVS sub most likely but now I'm considering bumping the AVR first. I've had very, very good luck with Onkyo through the years so I'm thinking of sticking with them. Lots of the bells and whistles the 818 brings to the table will go unused by me. I don't plan on multi zones for this receiver, the internet apps don't do much for me since I have a huge collection already as well as existing streaming option through the Media Center PC. We use the theater mostly for movie watching and music (and music video) listening. The kids love that aspect of things. I'm a rocker by nature (Shinedown is a good example of my taste) so big and heavy equals goodness to me. Kids love all of the new stuff that is also heavy on the bass. I tried the Audyssey eq with my 707 and hated it. Seemed to shrink my music.

The big things that interest me about this is the bump in power, current HDMI standards, more HDMI inputs, the top of the line Audyssey feature and mostly the warm reviews from some pretty knowledgeable people on this forum.

I would really appreciate thoughts that any of you may wish to share regarding my setup and how the 818 may make a difference!

Does this receiver have color management in the isf mode, and is the isf mode open access or does it need a code ?

Not from what I can see from the manual - that would be impressive spec at this price point.

If it works the same as the 809, then ISF Day and Night are identical to Custom, apart from being locked from inadvertent change. After selecting one of the ISF Picture Modes, pressing Display for 8secs worked on 809 to allow access to the same settings as Custom.

P70-71 of the manual for the controls available.

A lot of these settings are easily accessed and controlled (beta) with ORemote.

Try this it works on my 5507 preamp:

ByPass Scaler: On the front panel, hold down the VCR/DVR button and press Return.

- Rich

Very interesting.

Do the higher tier AVR's from other brands do this?

I'm most interested to see if Denon does...

The holding the DVR button (if there is one of those) and pressing return.
If it is spported it will, bring up a menu on the front panel display.

- Rich

Howabout when you engage Pure Audio mode? It supposedly bypasses all video circuitry.

I'm looking to get one of these, but not if processing cannot be defeated.

Quick side note. I have had my HTPC source set to full on the 876 since I got it. Auto never worked right. Was a pain with analog cable channels because it stretched them but everything I watch now is HD anyway.

Anyway, I've been messing with my setup. I pulled a 6450 out of another machine I had and replaced my 5570 in my HTPC since you linked the anandtech article. I was still getting a few micro stutters and a lip sync issue. 6450 as you said isn't perfect but should be very close to 23.976.

My old HTPC with a 5450 worked great and I don't remember the lip sync issues or micro stutter.

So I did 2 things
1. Turned back on ESVP in the CCC (had disabled it with the 5570)
2. Turned off "motion enhancement" (was on 120Hz low) on my Sharp 810UN.

I think it was turning off motion enhancement that did it. TV episodes on XBMC are now synced perfectly and stutter free (we just finished watching 2h worth). And I'm going through my TX-NR876 set for the same "Through" and "Full" as you have set on the 818. I never changed that. TV Episodes were definitely 24Hz because my TV flashes that when it switches from 60Hz to 24Hz.

Can't wait to get the 818 on Tuesday.
Edited by AndrewS99 - 7/7/12 at 4:40am

I've seen motion interpolation algorithms on multiple brands of televisions stutter. Sometimes, it'll agree with the source, and sometimes it won't. Netflix, for example: on my Roku 2 XS, stutter city. From my BDP-S790, smooth as silk, no stutter whatsoever. As soon as I ditched my Roku 2 XS I was able to re-enable my cherished Motionflow Standard/Auto 1 without the deleterious side-effect I experienced with the Roku 2 XS. Back to enjoying Netflix as I prefer it, soap opera effect and all.

For those with Sony TV's, when your source causes stuttering when Motionflow/Auto1 is enabled, you can keep it enabled, just use Cinemotion: Auto 2. It'll at least give you a little sliver of the motion interpolation you're after, without the stutter, at least -- without the stutter that we're talking about here.

The sharp 810UN has "motion enhancement" which is what I disabled for sure but it also has "film mode" which I never had on because of the soap opera effect you mention. There is motion enhancement 120Hz Low and 120Hz High - I always had it set to low.

Hopefully motion enhancement disable was it. I'll even try watching some basketball without it and see if having it off makes a difference. Maybe the ATI 5450 was ok with motion enhancement while the 5570 and 6450 aren't for some reason.

Doesn't seem to be but could this related to KB2658140?
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2658140

Another decent writeup on the issue here:
http://experts.windows.com/w/experts_wiki/71.aspx


With the recent rash of posts I'm less excited about disturbing my setup!
Edited by Barry Hartmann - 7/7/12 at 4:36am

Jmpage2
Try turning on ESVP in the CCC even if you had it off when the Yamaha was hooked up. When I was referring to Full vs Auto I was referring to the Onkyo, not the TV (didn't word it right in the previous post - fixed it)

Also, Onkyo has released firmware for the whole xxx9 line as of a couple of days ago that refers to issues with "Through" in the release notes. Since those use the same vid chipset maybe it's forthcoming for the 818. Maybe they're just catching up the xxx9 fw with what is in the 818 too though.

Which CCC/driver version are you using? I'm on 12.4 drivers running 64 bit Windows 7.

Since I'm not having any stuttering now, I will see if some gets introduced on Tuesday when my 818 gets in and report back.

It would be interesting to see if the device is affecting the accuracy of your GPU's timings (as odd as this sounds it is not the first time I've heard reports of it).

If you load up a 24p file in MPC-HC then press Control + J (you will need to have the DX Runtime installed for this to work) it will tell you what the GPU's refresh rate is.

This issue only effects certain files when played in Windows Media Center. It is not related to the issue you're seeing.

You should be able to truly bypass the video processing.
I use this because I have a Lumagen Radiance in the display chain.

If your HTPC is causing the problem, it will not help.
You can easily reset it to enable video processing so there is no realy harm.

- Rich

ESVP = Enforce Smooth Video Playback in the CCC configuration under "Quality"
Also, the 12.6 drivers brought back an old bug where every time I reboot, scaling goes back to -15% (black bars all around) even though the slider is at 0. Not sure if you are seeing that too.

One more thing to try. Back a while ago, I ran into an issue where XBMC installer wouldn't silent install the June 2010 DirectX updates on a 64 bit Windows 7. I manually downloaded and installed them. If they're missing, they would cause a jumpy picture for sure.

Can you try connecting the HTPC directly to the display?

- Rich

Sweet. I'll get my HTPC drivers updated and let you know.