2014-01-20, 07:38
I've been using XBMC (on Windows 7) on an original Intel NUC for what must be about a year now, and have been very pleased. My Pioneer Kuro PRO150 plasma (still a fantastic quality picture) takes whatever refresh rate I throw at it, so I've configured the Intel drivers to allow 23.976p, 24p, 50p, 59.97p, and 60p, and it switches appropriately.
Lately I've been viewing more native PAL programming, and I'd begun to be irritated by what I took to be significant black level crushing, to the point where I could instantly tell whether a video was being played back at 50hz or not. At first I thought it just unfortunate stylistic choices, but it seemed to be happening far too often - so tonight I checked a particularly dark files on my PC, and sure enough black information was indeed being lost.
My first check was to make sure that the Kuro wasn't applying different picture settings depending on refresh rate, but it wasn't. Then I played the 25p file back at 60hz in WMP, and it looked fine. Turned off refresh rate switching in XBMC, and the file looked fine at 60hz. So, then I forced the desktop to 50hz, and noticed immediately that blacks were crushed - thanks to the Intel driver app, which has like a 10% transparent black background, where at 60hz I could see what was on the desktop behind it and at 50hz I couldn't.
Long story short, the "Use YCbCr" button in the driver app hadn't been selected. Why wouldn't I have had that selected for a television? Because there's absolutely no difference in the Kuro's color reproduction at 23/24/59/60hz whether this box is ticked or not - no crushing of blacks either way, because I suspect the television is adjusting to the incoming color space as appropriate. But, for some reason at 50hz and only 50hz, backs come out significantly crushed if you try to feed it full RGB, but not if you feed it component.
Anyways, just a minor tip I thought should be documented somewhere.
Lately I've been viewing more native PAL programming, and I'd begun to be irritated by what I took to be significant black level crushing, to the point where I could instantly tell whether a video was being played back at 50hz or not. At first I thought it just unfortunate stylistic choices, but it seemed to be happening far too often - so tonight I checked a particularly dark files on my PC, and sure enough black information was indeed being lost.
My first check was to make sure that the Kuro wasn't applying different picture settings depending on refresh rate, but it wasn't. Then I played the 25p file back at 60hz in WMP, and it looked fine. Turned off refresh rate switching in XBMC, and the file looked fine at 60hz. So, then I forced the desktop to 50hz, and noticed immediately that blacks were crushed - thanks to the Intel driver app, which has like a 10% transparent black background, where at 60hz I could see what was on the desktop behind it and at 50hz I couldn't.
Long story short, the "Use YCbCr" button in the driver app hadn't been selected. Why wouldn't I have had that selected for a television? Because there's absolutely no difference in the Kuro's color reproduction at 23/24/59/60hz whether this box is ticked or not - no crushing of blacks either way, because I suspect the television is adjusting to the incoming color space as appropriate. But, for some reason at 50hz and only 50hz, backs come out significantly crushed if you try to feed it full RGB, but not if you feed it component.
Anyways, just a minor tip I thought should be documented somewhere.
