White specks when viewing videos while computer is connected to TV

[guy24s]

My computer is connected (HDMI) to a LED TV and when watching movies, occasionally dark scenes will be filled with small white specks / pixels. It rarely happens when watching current movies or shows, mostly just with movies from the 70s / 80s. The video files are ripped from BluRay and they look flawless on my computer screen, it's only when I play them on the TV that this problem occurs. I'm attaching a photo of what it looks like.
I searched online and found others having the same problem, but the only advice was to exchange the HDMI cable and apparently it fixed the problem for those people. So I ordered a new HDMI cable from Amazon and made sure I didn't pick the cheapest one I could find and chose one with good ratings. Well, today the cable arrived and the screen looks just as bad as before, even with the new HDMI cable.
What could possibly be going on here? Oh, the problem was the same on my old TV (I got a new one last year), so I doubt it's the TV's fault.


[Attachment 71206 - Click to enlarge]

[jagabo]

Yes, speckles like that are the sign of HDMI transmission problems. How long is the HDMI cable to the TV? The longer the cable the more likely that type of problem is. If you're running at 4K try switching to 1080p to see if it gets any better (lower bandwidth will be less susceptible to problems). If you're using a long cable (greater than 10 feet) try moving the computer closer to the TV and using a shorter cable (6 feet or less) -- at least for a test.

[johns0]

I would say the issue is the older videos are just grainy/speckled to begin with it,on my pc i notice older video right away when going into black scenes.

[guy24s]

I would say the issue is the older videos are just grainy/speckled to begin with it,on my pc i notice older video right away when going into black scenes.

Of course that would make sense, but the same videos look more or less flawless on my computer screen, that's the weird part. Even weirder is that it doesn't happen on every old video. I watched a 1971 movie last night with plenty of dark scenes, and there were no specks. A couple nights earlier I watched a 90s movie and it was filled with specks to the point where it almost became unwatchable. Both movies had similar compression rate and both looked fine on the computer screen, only on the TV one of them looked bad.

Yes, speckles like that are the sign of HDMI transmission problems. How long is the HDMI cable to the TV? The longer the cable the more likely that type of problem is. If you're running at 4K try switching to 1080p to see if it gets any better (lower bandwidth will be less susceptible to problems). If you're using a long cable (greater than 10 feet) try moving the computer closer to the TV and using a shorter cable (6 feet or less) -- at least for a test.

The cable is 20 feet, lol. I didn't know the length had any impact on the transfer rate but now that you explained it, it makes sense.
But it still doesn't make sense that it doesn't happen on every movie.

[pandy]

The cable is 20 feet, lol. I didn't know the length had any impact on the transfer rate but now that you explained it, it makes sense.
But it still doesn't make sense that it doesn't happen on every movie.

Try different cable - usually when HDCP is active and overall link quality is bad some color noise can be visible - HDCP noise is RGB type - if your speckles are white, gray and larger than pixel then issue can be somewhere else.

[jagabo]

The cable is 20 feet, lol. I didn't know the length had any impact on the transfer rate but now that you explained it, it makes sense.
But it still doesn't make sense that it doesn't happen on every movie.

Yes, you would not expect the age of the movie to make any difference.

If you have your player set to automatically switch graphic resolutions depending on the source file's resolution, that could cause problems with some video's but not others. Because higher resolutions require higher bandwidth in the cable. In this case a 3840x2160 24 fps movie will be more likely to fail than a 1920x1080 fps movie.

[guy24s]

The cable is 20 feet, lol. I didn't know the length had any impact on the transfer rate but now that you explained it, it makes sense.
But it still doesn't make sense that it doesn't happen on every movie.

Try different cable - usually when HDCP is active and overall link quality is bad some color noise can be visible - HDCP noise is RGB type - if your speckles are white, gray and larger than pixel then issue can be somewhere else.

I already tried exchanging the cable to no avail. Any suggestions on a good cable I could try?

The cable is 20 feet, lol. I didn't know the length had any impact on the transfer rate but now that you explained it, it makes sense.
But it still doesn't make sense that it doesn't happen on every movie.

Yes, you would not expect the age of the movie to make any difference.

If you have your player set to automatically switch graphic resolutions depending on the source file's resolution, that could cause problems with some video's but not others. Because higher resolutions require higher bandwidth in the cable. In this case a 3840x2160 24 fps movie will be more likely to fail than a 1920x1080 fps movie.

All movies I play are 1080 and never higher. Would I still need to change the settings in the player? I use MediaPlayer Classic and VLC to play them.

[jagabo]

If you haven't explicitly set those players to switch resolution to match the source they will use whatever your current resolution your graphics card is set to. What resolution is your graphics card set to output? If 4K try changing to 1080p.