BD-UP5000 Grain - Page 3

I have a suggestion for the noise/grain issue :
Test players with the BD/HD-DVD "Tim Burton's Corpse Bride". This movie has no film grain at all (it's shot with D-SLR Canon eos 1D mkII @100 iso with always the exposure needed). So if you get noise with it on the sammy 5000, it's definitely the player adding noise (digital noise), otherwise, it would mean it's the natural film grain when you see it on other movies (and in this case, I doubt anyone is capable of telling what player is more accurate with grain)

oops : forgot to tell, if you have noise on this disc with every player possible, maybe it's the display

I tried all levels of sharpness in the player, and the black pepper never disappeared. That was actually the 1st thing I tried two weeks ago when I got the player. Also, as I mentioned in the owners' thread, movies that are purely digital in nature do not show the black crawling dots. It's the way the UP5000 handles film grain : no film grain, no digital grain. Film grain, added black crawling dots.

This will be my last post on this subject. As I said a few times already, there is a difference between the normal film grain and that added digital grain : both forms of grain do NOT look the same. Getting close enough to the display, it's easy to see. The digital grain is very sharp black dots (the size of a pixel each), the film grain looks as if it's an integral part of the picture : the first one is not supposed to be there.

Could you tell me exactly what scene I should look at in Transformers to see the black crawly dots? (like what chapter or time should I look at?). I want to really check for this but am not sure what is meant by the "snow scene"?

For now I was just checking with FF Return of the Silver Surfer movie since I had it on,
It's interesting I tried changing my Sharpness setting and noticed that the sharpness setting is under the HDMI settings submenu. I am using component 1080i to connect to my display and not HDMI. I wonder if the sharpness setting only changes and affects HDMI output or does it adjust sharpness for all video outputs on this Samsung UP5K?
I tried changing mine from sharpeness = off, to high and saw no noticable difference in PQ on my Sony KD-34XBR2 CRT display.

transformers, ch 3, during the fly over to the ship...

Hmmm, Okay. I think that is the scene I've been looking at. Unfortunately my UP5000 player seems to always show a number "3" in its front panel display meaning chapter 3 no matter how many times I hit the skip chapter button. ? Anyway I see a scene that has a flyover to the ship in an iceberg filled waters with white snow on the ice caps. Is this the scene?
It is at time 09:42 approximately as shown by my player.
I do see some sprinkly dots or noisey graininess on the white snow capped icebergs and theyare glimmering. But it does not look so horribly intrusive on my screen. The scene is so brief and over so quickly, I don't think it bothers me at all now that I see it more precisely. all the other movie scenes are pretty nice and don't have all those crawly dots in the snow scene. I don't know how much is really in the source and how much is caused by UP5K player though as I have no other player to compare against.

Oh, I should add that my player was set with sharpness = high during this observation. I will try it with it off now...

Update: I just viewed the scene with sharpness = off now. I still saw the same crawly dots noise on the white snow caps.
I then tried sharpness = low and saw the same thing. I don't think the sharpness control settings work for component out on this model.
No difference observed with the different sharpness settings. It might only be for HDMI video connections only.?

^Yes, that is likewise what I'm seeing over HDMI with sharpness off. However, the same dots are visible over the 360 add-on (Elite)! This tells me it's a digital artifact problem with regards to how the players process the signal OR it's present in the video feed itself as a compression artifact. These were also visible on a smaller 720p display I own, just less pronounced naturally.

Corpse Bride was mostly flawless for me, though I do remember seeing some digital noise in the background of one scene. Otherwise perfection. I'll be revisiting the title and comparing it on the 360 add-on in the near future.

On a similar note, I watched "A Scanner Darkly" last night and due to the rotoscope animation, there was no noise to be seen. Only negative was some banding in some of the background hues (i.e. sky).

Guys,

It's been well over a year since I used DVE to calibrate my TV.

I could swear DVE describes sharpness as something used in the CRT world because the broadcast technology of the time was essentially trash. With the pixel/pixel control in the flat panel display it's an unnecessary evil (we don't need it).

I could swear Kane said to bring sharpness down as low as possible and walk away. If lowering sharpness is having a positive impact then this may be the case.

It's flat panel 101 boys!

Can anyone who used the disk recently confirm?

BG

So, did we establish whether changing the 5000 from 1080p 60fps to 24fps affects the grain? And what about to 1080i....same thing? HDMI or component output.....any difference?

I can confirm that's what I see from settings on ISF calibrated sets (including mine). I believe the sharpness on my Sony LCD is down around 25 or 30 (out of 100).

Tostito,

Amazing how quickly I forget stuff... I am getting older. My main theater plasma was ISF calibrated about 6 months ago... Duh.

I would not touch the settings on a calibrated TV. How about the 5000. Have you tested the impact of playing with the players internal sharpness settings?

BG

A little bit. I tested it enough to find out that it did about what I expected it to do and that I didn't want to use it. Basically, as I turned it up contrast boundries got sharper and sometimes had that weird halo effect you see when sharpness is too high (test patterns or text show this well). Grainy films got worse as expected. In my case at least, if I want to adjust sharpness I think I'm better off using the TV to do it.

It's very simple. I have no issues with HD DVD movies, Pirates of the C that is supposed to be the best looking BD, has grain, looks like someone turned up the Sharpness to almost full. I'm going to return the 5000 and get the new Denon. too bad because HD DVDs look better