I'm pretty new here to the xbmc community and I have my xbmc connected to my Samsung 55d8000. Sd streaming looks like crap on this tele. Wondering if there's a way to enhance or up convert the SD picture quality(video card , software, etc)?
(2013-03-22, 19:19)rjnolberto83 Wrote: [ -> ]I'm pretty new here to the xbmc community and I have my xbmc connected to my Samsung 55d8000. Sd streaming looks like crap on this tele. Wondering if there's a way to enhance or up convert the SD picture quality(video card , software, etc)?
It'll never look as good on that TV as it does on a 480i\p TV. Personally, the best algorithm I found for scaling is lancosz3 optimized. So try changing the playback defaults to that one. Another thing that can help on a TV like yours is lowering the backlight & brightness setting while increasing the contrast. This will help those blocks and artifacts not be as noticeable low-bit rate content. Turning the sharpness setting up slightly higher on this kind of content can also help in perceiving that the quality is better than what it is - the more you have to upscale - the softer the content will become - increasing the sharpness can sometimes counter-act that effect to make it seem like it's better quality content than it actually is.
Another thing you could try is setting the output resolution to the content's original and then letting the TV upscale it to 1080p. That's a pretty nice TV and it may have better scaling than XBMC.
Avoid scaling more than once. Don't do things like setting XBMC to 720p and letting the TV upscale to 1080p. That will just make it worse.
See if your TV has a noise reduction setting and crank it up a bit more - the more you crank it - the more you may need to increase the sharpness.
Disable any dynamic contrast options - these are not really made for such low, blocky content that doesn't have clean blacks or whites.
Maybe someone with more info can chime in..if you look on the net there's tons of tips and tricks out there for upscaling. If you're still unsatisfied you can install something like FFDSHOW and use an alternate player in XBMC.
If still unsatisfied -- I bought an EDTV (852x480p) CRT TV and that's personally what I use for primary viewing of my SD content. I spent years taping, recording, and purchasing all kinds of content air TV, catv, vhs, betamax, divx stuff--- and I just don't want to throw it all away...a lot of is rare and I'd never be able to find it again. So, I was in a similar situation and nothing worked as well.