Monitor video quailty is poor?

Trevor451

Hey guys I bought a acer p236H HD monitor off pixmania. The specs of the monitor seem decent (5ms response time,1920X1080 resolution, 8000 contrast ratio) but while watching full HD video there are some problems

Anyway when watching this trailer on youtube in 1080p in fullscreen you can see very pixelated and blocky images :mad:

I changed the contrast mode in the monitor to film and have turned off the Video stuff in the Ati catalyst control center but it does not really make a difference

I know that pixmania are a horrible company to deal with when you have a problem so I want to know is there any other stuff I could try before returning the monitor to them and getting a refund?

Thanks,
Trevor

Moon54

Don't know, video looks ok for me.

Maybe your flash player needs updating;
http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/

Venom

OP watched that video on a Acer GD245HQ and it played perfectly @1080p so its not Youtube. Check drivers and codecs.

Trevor451

Venom wrote: »

OP watched that video on a Acer GD245HQ and it played perfectly @1080p so its not Youtube. Check drivers and codecs.

Okay I updated my graphics card drivers to the latest version, updated flash, got a monitor update off windows update, deleted divix codec. So I have no clue what to do now

I should also mention that the games that I have been playing (mass effect 2, just cause 2, l4d2) all look good in 1080p

Moon54

Strange one, maybe try this monitor test program;

http://www.passmark.com/products/monitortest.htm

The fact games are ok would suggest the graphics card's ok.

If you're watching in IE, maybe try Firefox, or vise-versa.

grizzly

Can you post a screen shot?

(image is a crop of a screen grab – 30 secs in @ 1900x1200)

grizzly

Trevor451 wrote: »

I should also mention that the games that I have been playing (mass effect 2, just cause 2, l4d2) all look good in 1080p

If you've no trouble with these games, it's not going to be a faulty monitor, most likely something to do with the software. I wonder if it could be your connection? Perhaps YouTube is lowering the quality based on your streaming speed.

Trevor451

Hi I have a 30mb upc connection and I get really fast download speeds off steam (around 2.7mb/s) so that's not the problem

Anyway I have attached a screenshot of the video below and as you can see it looks pretty bad. The video does not always look as bad as that and its mainly when its fading in/out on peoples faces

I will also give the monitor test program a shot and I will post back here when I am done with it
Thanks

marco_polo

That part of the trailler looks just as bad on my monitor as in your screenshot, if I was having a guess I'd say due to overly agressive video compression more than likely.

Voodu Child

Youtube videos do look crap, but normally not that crap. Attached is screenshot of same scene, doesnt look as bad.

Your gamma looks too high, that always exaggerates compression in dark areas, and it also looks like deblocking is being skipped.

Make sure all the picture settings in your GPU control panel are normal, that you havent adjusted brightness, gamma, contrast etc. Turn off any enhancements like dynamic contrast. Make sure levels are 0-255.

Do the same with your monitor, turn off any crap like dynamic contrast or 'film' modes. That stuff normally makes the picture worse, not better. You should be aiming for natural accurate picture settings/not OTT contrast boosts.

In the youtube video, right-click to bring up flash settings and maybe toggle hardware acceleration on or off depending on what it is set currently. See if it makes any difference, not sure what the ATI video acceleration support is like.

Nothingbetter2d

could it be down to a crap graphics card?

what spec gcard have u and is it a discrete card or an onboard chip on your motherboard?

onboard chips tend to suck bad for hd rendering. due to the fact they share system ram which is often half the speed of ram on discrete cards.

marco_polo

Voodu Child wrote: »

Youtube videos do look crap, but normally not that crap. Attached is screenshot of same scene, doesnt look as bad.

Your gamma looks too high, that always exaggerates compression in dark areas, and it also looks like deblocking is being skipped.

Make sure all the picture settings in your GPU control panel are normal, that you havent adjusted brightness, gamma, contrast etc. Turn off any enhancements like dynamic contrast. Make sure levels are 0-255.

Do the same with your monitor, turn off any crap like dynamic contrast or 'film' modes. That stuff normally makes the picture worse, not better. You should be aiming for natural accurate picture settings/not OTT contrast boosts.

In the youtube video, right-click to bring up flash settings and maybe toggle hardware acceleration on or off depending on what it is set currently. See if it makes any difference, not sure what the ATI video acceleration support is like.

Are you not getting in a poor quality fade in like this though (from 1 to 2)

Edit: Actually on a second look the OPs image quality is substantially worst than mine (in my defense it was 4 am ).

OP: If your games have no problems then I really doubt the monitor is defective from a hardware point of view. Out of interest how is normal DVD playback for example?

Trevor451

OK I poped in 2012 dvd (not that good of a movie :P) and it looks like crap as well

My system specs are:
AMD athlon x3 3.2GHZ*
ATi Radeon 6850
4GB black dragon ram
Gigabyte motherboard
Windows 7 home premium 64 bit edition
Acer p236H monitor

* I unlocked my CPU so I get a bit of a performance boost however I tested it without the 4th core enabled and it still looks like crap

Maj Malfunction

The monitor looks fine imo, I reckon the issue is software related. There should be no need to overclock your CPU to play HD video, your hardware specs are more than adequate.

Try using VLC http://www.videolan.org/vlc/ I find it ideal for playing all videos without all the hassle with codecs. It's worth and try and will cost you nothing.

marco_polo

Trevor451 wrote: »

OK I poped in 2012 dvd (not that good of a movie :P) and it looks like crap as well

My system specs are:
AMD athlon x3 3.2GHZ*
ATi Radeon 6850
4GB black dragon ram
Gigabyte motherboard
Windows 7 home premium 64 bit edition
Acer p236H monitor

* I unlocked my CPU so I get a bit of a performance boost however I tested it without the 4th core enabled and it still looks like crap

That looks ok to me, I wouldn't worry about the sharpness of the image because a DVD is standard defination, it will never look the best if you sitting quite close to a 1080p monitor. Moreso interested in the how the colours etc look on playback (maybe sit back a few feet more than normal ).

Voodu Child

Yeah, looks about expected for a DVD, they are low resolution and use the old MPEG-2 codec. A side effect of getting a big HD monitor is that suddenly all your old videos look like ass.

It doesnt really seem to have the same issues as the youtube screengrab you posted. That one had pixellation which not been de-blocked and something funny going on with the levels.

challengemaster

Youtube is known to have quality issues with content uploaded, especially HD stuff. You'll never see any true HD content on youtube.

Skerries

have you tried codecs like Klite or CCCP?

Trevor451

OK I downloaded big buck bunny 1080p video off the divix website. Everything looks great except for the bit at the start when its fading in.

Its kind of the same with the videos on youtube as well. When video is fading from a dark colour into a light colour it looks bad

Moon54

I can't seem to find that monitor on Pixmania.
Is it a 3D 120hz one?

Maybe try borrowing another monitor. Might help to narrow it down to just your monitor.

challengemaster

Might have something to do with this?

Acer Adaptive Contrast Management (80,000:1 ACM)

With an 80,000:1 contrast ratio, the Acer P236H delivers a high level of

clarity and detail for stunning picture quality. This is made possible by the

advanced technology of Acer Adaptive Contrast Management, which

optimizes contrast by analyzing every scene, adjusting images frame by

frame, and enhancing detail and gradation even in very bright or dim

scenes. What's more, with ACM, the LCD monitor uses less power and

saves energy.

Trevor451

OK I turned off the video stuff in the ATi controll pannel and all of the weird green pixels were gone.

However the weird fading in on the trailer still remained however I just had a look at my dads laptop (1080p screen as well) and it looks nearly identical so there must be nothing wrong with the monitor

Moon54

Ah cool, it's good to know the monitor is OK.