[bmwrob]

One interesting phenomena with video artifact is that in some cases you need to be taught to find them. They don't pop up naturally. Once you see them, they could be very annoying and you can't live with them. Dithering is one artifact that for me is extremely annoying. This problem is seen on every move in more or less every scene as soon as the picture pans. I've been very close to throw my LT150 out of the windows a few times due to this. In the last second I have managed to control myself, realizing that even a small 3 pounds machine could cause some serious damage after a fall from the 33:rd floor! I do occasionally see rainbows, but as they are so rare, they really don't bother me. The same goes for X-hatching (which needed to be pointed out by Li On before I even saw it).


The now famous (or I should say infamous) "Chroma Bug" which been around for a while but was not really noticed before the guys at "The Secret" brought it up. From not being noticed it's now for a few the worst plague ever happened to Home Theater. I get the impression that some people would rather have a good old Panny RP91 then the new Denon 9000 or even the awesome Ayre D1, due to the CB! This for me is just understandable. Turning it around, some people can't understand how the dithering on the LT150 can be such a big fuzz.


I'm a owner of a Pioneer DVD player, which according to "The Secret" is suppose to be the worst of the worst in regards of CB and still it doesn't bother me. I start to wonder if I'm either immune against it (sorry there's no vaccine in HK) or if the AX10 is masking it pretty well.


Take a look at the following attachments. How would you guys rate the severity of the CB on this pictures? The pictures are captured directly from the LT150 which should mean no scaling at all has been done within the projector (hence the stretched image) . So what you see is exactly what the PJ is feed with.


It would be nice if someone else with a LT150 or someone with a PC capture card could post the same "unscaled" pictures with a CB free player and more common CB monster as Pioneer's DV-38A.

 

[Li On]

Hi Rob,


You're welcome to check out my new setup with the "famous" Panny AE100 which has it's own forum in the forum!


I can't comment much about the chroma bug nowaday as most of the time I'm seeing a chroma bug free picture. Yes, my current DVD player is a Panasonics...


One thing is certain I believe, take the AX10 and remove the chroma bug (whether you notice or not), the picture should be even better. Why the manufactuer is not doing the fix is beyond me!


regards,


Li On

 

[bmwrob]

Noticed that that didn't work as I wanted as the pictures were bigger then 600x600 pixels. Here is another try with cropped pictures.

 

[bmwrob]

Another one.

 

[bmwrob]

Another one.

 

[bmwrob]

The previous picture was of course not from Toy Story but The Fifth Element so a little misleading naming.

 

[bmwrob]

Another one.

 

[bmwrob]

Quote:

Originally posted by Li On Hi Rob, You're welcome to check out my new setup with the "famous" Panny AE100 which has it's own forum in the forum!

That would be nice even though I already have seen your "famous" AE100 at TK place. I must say I was impressed with its performance if the price is taken into account. I couldn't live with its screendoor though in the same way as I can't live with my LT150 dithering problem. I would also throw away that filter you were using as it gave the picture as pinkish color IMO. If you're so happy with the AE100, maybe you are willing to sell your XG85 to me for a good price


The day I go back to Sweden (and have the space for it), I will most definitely go for a CRT unless the digital technology has catch up.

Quote:

I can't comment much about the chroma bug nowaday as most of the time I'm seeing a chroma bug free picture. Yes, my current DVD player is a Panasonics...

Why not! If you haven't seen it for a while, I guess it will bother you even more to see it now! As you have seen many players with the CB, you might be able to rate the severity of it on my pictures.

Quote:

One thing is certain I believe, take the AX10 and remove the chroma bug (whether you notice or not), the picture should be even better. Why the manufactuer is not doing the fix is beyond me! regards, Li On

No doubt about it! The less artifact the better picture. Sooner or later the CB will be history. I believe some of the big manufactures are sitting with either some agreement with buggy MPEG decoder suppliers or still have stocks of old decoders. As it exists bug free decoders on the market, sooner or later the manufactures from the old school (read buggy ones) needs to do something or they will be out of business. Thanks mainly to "The secret" guys it will hopefully be soon.

 

[jlm]

having seen a few examples of the bug first hand, i would say your images show none of its effects. i used the very same scenes, guided by Secrets; compare your images to Secrets for validation.

 

[mooneycj]

I don't think you can see the chroma bug during pause play. I don't see the chroma bug either on these screenshots. I did notice some edge enhancement, however


Corey J.

 

[bmwrob]

I believe the pausing will remove the CB on some players, e.g. some Sony machines. This should not be the case for Pioneer. Nevertheless, the picture I have taken has not been paused! They are in full motion and simply captured from the LT150 as they are. The only thing I needed to do was to crop them to be able to fit them as attachments.


BTW: It’s mainly JPEG compression artifacts you see, not EE.

 

[DBNyack]

I see the effect on the first one with Toy Story Logo. I don't see it on the other ones.


Actually, the second one seems like it's kinda blurded a bit. Do you think the jpeg compression could have smoothed out and blurded a bit of the images?



Edit: I take that back. On another look, I do see it on all the images. However, I really really have to look closer after the second one to notice it.

 

[jlm]

i looked at the first and second images, agree about the blurring on the second (although the center area is sharp) and i still see no evidence of chroma bug streaking. i looked using two different monitors: 17" 1600x 1024 SGI flat panel and 21" 1920x1200 Sony CRT.

 

[dmunsil]

I'm not sure I understand how the images were captured. What does "directly from the LT150" mean? It has a digital output for screen captures? Are you sure that no scaling or processing is going on?


First off, that big Toy Story logo is not the best place to look for the bug. It's hard to see the bug on a chroma edge when it coincides with a luma edge (like against the black background). It does look to me, however, that the bug is there, but it's either a very minor case, or something is filtering it. If you look at the yellow letters STORY close up, there are streaks of red poking into the diagonal edges on alternating scan lines, which is a classic sign of the chroma bug.


On the big red button, the bug is fairly visible even at 1X zoom. But zoom in on it and you see the telltale red streaks sticking out on either side. Again, this is not the worst I've seen.


I've never seen the AX10, but earlier Pioneers have had a relatively minor chroma bug problem, all things considered, while the later Pioneers we've looked at have been pretty bad (though not the very worst).


In the end, you have to decide. Borrow or buy a player without the chroma bug, and cap these same scenes, and see whether you feel the change is worthwhile.


Don

 

[tomdkat]

These pics look damn good to my untrained eye.... Even with the CB, I would be VERY happy with video quality like that in the posted pics....


I just wonder how the DV_38a would look connected to my TOshiba 57HX81....


Peace.....

 

[pham]

Quote:

I'm not sure I understand how the images were captured. What does "directly from the LT150" mean? It has a digital output for screen captures? Are you sure that no scaling or processing is going on?

The LT150 has a compact flash slot that can capture a single frame from the input. The capture is always performed at native resolution and to my knowledge, is not subject to any kind of post-processing except jpeg compression. It may be possible that the jpeg compression could be smoothing the chroma bug ever so slightly. I don't remember if frames can be captured to TIFF or some other uncompressed format.

 

[sspears]

Thanks Pham. That is a pretty cool feature. I have an LT150z at home, I will grab a couple of screen shots from a few different players and see if the compression is doing anything to the image.

 

[Tom_Bombadil]

The image with the pig looking down at the cowboy had chroma bugs jumping off of the screen at me. The first thing I noticed when that image appeared on my screen was not the clarity of the pig nor the crisp images & good color. It was the top of that red can with chroma problems all over it. Next was the little red wooden car at the top of the screen. Even that red "button" in the cowboy's hand has it.


I admit I'm very sensitive to chroma bugs, to the point of when they are present, they dominate the screen.


I once had an early version of the Echostar Dishplayer 4700 receiver, which had a chroma bug problem. It drove me mad, I once counted all of the chroma problems I noticed on the screen of a movie over 1 hour and got up to over 300. Happily, Dish fixed the problem and replaced every one of them from people who complained.


But the interesting thing was that the chroma bug was present in every single 4700 shipped over a 3-4 month period. Yet less than 5% of the purchasers turned in the product for the replacement.


OTOH, I have almost no sensitivity to the DLP front projector "rainbow" problem. I can watch an entire movie and see almost none of them.


Tom B.

 

[tomdkat]

Quote:

Originally posted by Tom_Bombadil The image with the pig looking down at the cowboy had chroma bugs jumping off of the screen at me. The first thing I noticed when that image appeared on my screen was not the clarity of the pig nor the crisp images & good color. It was the top of that red can with chroma problems all over it. Next was the little red wooden car at the top of the screen. Even that red "button" in the cowboy's hand has it.

After taking a second look at the "pig" pic, I DO see some streaking around the edges of the red "button" in Woody's hand, but that's about it....


I'm VERY grateful that my sensitivity is NOT the same as yours as my movie viewing experience would probably be very challenging....


Thanks for posting the comments as they've helped me learn MORE about how to actually see the bug "in action"....


Peace......

 

[jlm]

i looked at that pig pic again too; what i am seeing is a bit of image edge smearing on the red edges which i have always attributed to y/c delay problems, thinking the c-bug produced striping in some of the saturated color solid areas. am i out of whack?