DVD Pixelation

[ROLANDg]

I've recently purchased a budget-priced DVD Player.
Playback quality is great, just what you'd expect from a DVD, however, on the dark scenes of Peacemaker, I can see slight 'pixelation' or 'moasaic' like appearance.
So far this is only on Peacemaker - would this be an indication of the quality of DVD Player or perhaps the quality of DVD recording ?
- I can also see the 3 wide RGB bands running vertically down the screen on long dark scenes, namely the credits.
Im using a Scart set-up to AV2 (AV2 has no RGB connection)
Is this normal/correct ?
- I use my Cable Digital Decoder on AV1, AV1 has RGB connections - why doesnt AV2 ?
Do i need to change my connections, or is it the low-end DVD Player ?

[MPereira]

The pixelation you see in dark scenes -- or more accuratelly, in scenes where there is a predominance of a certain color -- is due to the color-depht used in the D/A converter of most players. If it is a 10-bit converter -- like in the majority of models available -- then you´ll have only 2^10 = 1024 colors. The same phenomenon occurs in the darker scenes of "Cast Away", like in the scenes just before the protagonist reaches the island after the plane crash. Check it.

I don't know jack about SCART connections. Have you tried to connect DVD to TV using RCA or S-Video cables?

Good luck!

[TIbrO]

I get that on my Tool DVD which has all of their music videos before the new album ones. I always figured that an MPEG-# stream could never make perfect darkness, or perfect areas with one solid color. Even on the computer, with the brightness turned up, I can see the same macroblocks in solid color scenes.

I found that the same exact thing happened to my own footage once encoded to MPEG-1 at DVD resolution and 4600 CBR.

Another movie I noticed this in is Blade, when he is talking to the girl in the apartment after he beats up the cop who works for the vampires. The background wall actually has a gradient lighting to it, because the curtains are semi-down and the light pattern casted onto the wall goes from real intense lighting to dark shadows. The damn wall looks like an old MPEG-1 did in Windows 3.1 with 256Color display did. I can clearly see the five different shades of bluish white that makes up the wall. When you focus on the character on screen, and not the wall, you never see it. Too bad Blade was the first DVD I ever bought, and I watched the movie to analyze DVD and its picture quality instead of watching it for enjoyment and for the sole reason of being entertained for two hours. This is on my APEX AD-703 that I have had ever since Feb 2001. Since that day, I have turned down the brightness on the TV some, and I put in a movie disc ready to ignore the artifacts of digital compression. Now, evertime I watch a DVD, and then later see the movie on TV or on VHS, I can truly see the superiority of DVD, though.

[jeex]

i noticed the pixelation in the movie "boogie nights" when marky mark was getting yelled at by his mom in the dark, there was a wall behind him, it was sorta shadowy, and there was massive pixelation.. so i returned my apex 500w that day, exchanged it for a sanyo dwm-370, watched the same scene, and it looked magnificent..

apex = bad quality picture, but will play almost anything.

[TIbrO]

The Complete Superman Collection arrived at my house yesterday. Superman is yet another movie with crazy lighting and gradients in lots of scenes. Again, I could see the pixelization and lack of color dithering. I love my Apex AD703, but now I am beginning to really notice how bad the quality from the Apex player is.