[jtwiskowski]

Anyone know if one hooks up their Power Mac to a HDTV or HDTV LCD through a DVI interface if it acts like a progressive scan DVD player?

If I can use my Mac to play DVDs I am fine with that, as long as I know the output will equal that of a progressive scan DVD player. Anyone have experience with their DVI equipped Macs?

[tooki]

I can tell you that the Apple DVD Player software doesn't even de-interlace, much less perform reverse 3:2 pulldown, which is what makes a progressive-scan DVD player progressive-scan.

tooki

[CIA]

That's interesting. Is it really that hard to add that? Granted the video quality is nice on a moniter, I would love to see improvement. After watching that pixlet demo video I'm ready for higher quality.

[Eriamjh]

Originally posted by tooki:
I can tell you that the Apple DVD Player software doesn't even de-interlace, much less perform reverse 3:2 pulldown, which is what makes a progressive-scan DVD player progressive-scan.

tooki

That is why Apple DVD Player is a piece of crap.

[RayX]

The Apple DVD player does de-interlace. It has to. All software DVD players do, even VLC does.

Computer displays are progressive displays by nature, they do not display interlaced images like a standard television.

The video on a DVD is interlaced, all software DVD players de-interlace the video before displaying it.

The video quality of the DVD player in Panther is much improved over Jaguar. One reason for this seems to be it is able to better detect the correct de-interlace method to use, WEAVE mode for 'film' sources (sourced from 24fps progressive, eg movies) or BOB mode for 'video' sources (interlaced sources, such as television cameras, handheld video cameras, etc). If this does not happen correctly, you get that combing effect/scan lines around moving objects. This was a problem in Jaguar if you liked to watch DVDs of TV shows for example. DVD Player 4.0 is easily as good as something like WinDVD now, it may not have some of the bells and whistles, but the core features are there. The killer for me was S/PDIF support, 4.0 supports this beautifully now.


To answer the original question,
If you connect your Mac to a HDTV using the DVI port, the image will be progressive. However most HDTV's with a DVI port usually need support for HDCP (High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection), so it may not work. The other issue is whether or not you can match up the resolution with the HDTV (or at least get a 16x9 aspect resolution from the DVI port), just to avoid any weird scaling etc. I'm not sure if the DVI port will be able to detect and use (video card might not support it, etc) the native resolution of the HDTV if it is 16x9, can anyone shed some light on that?

Also, if you have a 5.1 system, be sure to hook up your Powermac using the optical port to your A/V Receiver. If not a G5, a usb->optical adaptor can be bought for something like $55 USD.

[RayX]

Originally posted by Eriamjh:
That is why Apple DVD Player is a piece of crap.

No.

[Eriamjh]

Removed.

[stevec999]

Actually the HDCP is enforced by the device playing the DVD. The TV will play an non HDCP signial. For example when I set my DVI DVD player to upconvert to 720P (native resolution for my TV) it checks to make sure the TV is HDCP compliant, if it is it sends the data, if not it will display a message telling you the the set is not compliant.

The only question is if the Mac video card will display 1280x720 (720P) or 1920x1080 (1080i).

Originally posted by RayX:

To answer the original question,
If you connect your Mac to a HDTV using the DVI port, the image will be progressive. However most HDTV's with a DVI port usually need support for HDCP (High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection), so it may not work. T

[RayX]

Originally posted by stevec999:
Actually the HDCP is enforced by the device playing the DVD. The TV will play an non HDCP signial. For example when I set my DVI DVD player to upconvert to 720P (native resolution for my TV) it checks to make sure the TV is HDCP compliant, if it is it sends the data, if not it will display a message telling you the the set is not compliant.

The only question is if the Mac video card will display 1280x720 (720P) or 1920x1080 (1080i).

Thanks for clarifying that.

[Cadaver]

Any DVD player on a personal computer that can output to a computer monitor is by definition a progressive-scan player. Computer monitors are progressive-scan displays.

Connect your PC to a large display with a DVI or RGB input (like a plasma or HDTV rear projection) and you have yourself a progressive-scan "home-theater."

What the Apple player (nor any PC players AFAIK) doesn't do is 3:2 pulldown correction. However, just about any quality hi-def display (plasma, RPTV) will do the 3:2 pulldown internally if the incoming signal is not already corrected.

I have a progressive scan DVD player and a hi-def plasma display (connected via component video cables). I can activate the 3:2 pulldown in the DVD player, or I can disable it in the DVD player and let the display do it. I find (with my particular equipment) that I get better results letting the DVD player do it than letting the plasma display do it - presumably the DVD has better 3:2 detection than the plasma does.

Now, the real issue is matching the Mac's output resolution to the displays. Most HDTVs will perform internal scaling, but in some cases this might produce visible artifacts. Sending the TV a 1024x768 image will very closely match the 720P resolution (720 horizontal lines). Some displays might produce a streched image, however, scaling the vertical resolution to the width of the display. You'll just have to try it and see if it does, and if you can compensate with the display modes on your HDTV. You might be able to compensate further with SwitchRes installed on the Mac.

A display with an HDCP-compliant DVI port should work with any unencrypted (non HDCP) signal, but not vice-versa (a standard DVI display wont show an HDCP-encrypted image).

[sibellc]

For those of us who are not lucky enough to own HDTVs with DVI input, ATI offers a DVI-component video adapter that it advertises as an accessory for the PC 9800 pro cards. Does anyone know if this will work with the Apple OEM card?

On a little bit of a de-interlacing tangent: if I used a device such as the Formac TV tuner pod, how does it handle de-interlacing? Is a 20" cinema display capable of displaying HDTV?

[tooki]

Originally posted by RayX:
The Apple DVD player does de-interlace. It has to. All software DVD players do, even VLC does.

If that's the case, then how come on some DVDs (the ones sourced from videotape, not film), on Apple's DVD player, you can see the scan lines? And yet in VLC, when you select the de-interlacing option, those scan lines go away?

Seems to me that Apple's DVD player doesn't de-interlace.

tooki

[OwlBoy]

Originally posted by tooki:
If that's the case, then how come on some DVDs (the ones sourced from videotape, not film), on Apple's DVD player, you can see the scan lines? And yet in VLC, when you select the de-interlacing option, those scan lines go away?

Seems to me that Apple's DVD player doesn't de-interlace.

tooki

are you on Panther? It does in Panther...

Also, not ALL video is interlaced on DVDs...

If it is a film source, (like a movie) then it is not interlaced if it is a good DVD.

Lots of supplements are shot in video, so they are interlaced, again Apple's DVD player de-interlaces now.

-Owl

[OwlBoy]

Proof:






So yes, since Computer monitors are progressive, not interlaced, and 99% of films on DVD are not interlaced, and Apple's DVD Player deinterlaces. DVI to HDTV should = progressive scan.

-Owl

[RayX]

Originally posted by tooki:
If that's the case, then how come on some DVDs (the ones sourced from videotape, not film), on Apple's DVD player, you can see the scan lines?

I explained that in my post...

[tooki]

I can assure you, I am seeing scan lines in the Panther DVD player. (Example: the "Boys" video on the Austin Powers 3 DVD. The scan lines are clearly evident in Panther's player, and disappear in VLC with deinterlacing activated.)

Yes, Panther's DVD player deals with them better than Jag's. But VLC still has superior de-interlacing, albeit at huge CPU cost.

tooki

P.S. I have screenshots to prove it, but for some reason my school's server is refusing FTP connections at the moment so I can't upload them.

P.P.S. It's weird that Apple DVD Player and VLC have different ideas about what "normal" size is... I wonder which one is more accurate, or if simply VLC is using the horizontal resolution as its base and stretching the vertical, while Apple's DVD player is taking the vertical as its base and shrinking the horizontal. (Pixels on a DVD are not square, so to display them on a square-pixeled display such as a Mac, some form of scaling must take place.)

[tooki]

Originally posted by OwlBoy:
Proof:
[images from above]

Umm, you proved nothing. Even in interlaced video, not all frames will exhibit it. You just proved that Apple's DVD player can show a frame with no apparent interlacing. It's also possible that the preceding and successive frames did show it.

(On the screenshot I took of VLC with "blend" de-interlacing turned on, I made sure to grab a frame where you could see VLC's blending.)

tooki

[tooki]

Originally posted by OwlBoy:
are you on Panther? It does in Panther...

Also, not ALL video is interlaced on DVDs...

If it is a film source, (like a movie) then it is not interlaced if it is a good DVD.

Lots of supplements are shot in video, so they are interlaced, again Apple's DVD player de-interlaces now.

I guess you didn't care to read carefully my post before yours, the one that says:

tooki wrote:
then how come on some DVDs (the ones sourced from videotape, not film), on Apple's DVD player, you can see the scan lines?

(And yes, I am running Panther. The interlacing is visible.)

tooki

[voodoo]

I read that OS X doesn't allow use of the graphics card to deinterlace. Makes deinterlacing a CPU hog on apps like VLC. I have no idea how effective Apple DVD player is deintarlacing (in panther) but I'm fairly sure it doesn't use hardware accelleration to achieve it.

[sideus]

Have to go with tooki on this one. Apple DVD Player isn't de-interlacing my Weird Al DVD.

[OwlBoy]

hmm, ok, I guess I must be seeing things then.

I had been watching my set of Monty Python's Flying circus DVDs, and while I was going through em I installed panther, and to my surprise it seemed to be de-interlacing the episodes...

and I know, prolly a bad example since it was originally PAL?

Dunno whats going on

Can you tell me of a few more examples that show interlacing for you? Like on a few popular DVDs? So I can see for my self, I don't wanna keep telling people it does de-interlacing if it don't.

-Owl

[tooki]

Here we go. These samples are from Britney Spears' "Boys" video on the NTSC Austin Powers 3 DVD (regrettably, I was given the fullscreen disc).

this is Panther's Apple DVD Player 4.0:



this is VLC 0.6.2 with de-interlacing deactivated:



this is VLC 0.6.2 with "blending" de-interlacing turned on:



tooki

[Eug Wanker]

I've read that DVD Player 4.0 does indeed de-interlace, but AFAIK, it's only with certain hardware, like the G5 Power Macs and latest PowerBooks. I can't prove it though, because I have neither a G5 Power Mac nor the latest PowerBook.

What hardware and OS is everyone running?

BTW, what are you using to take your screenshots?

[OwlBoy]

I have a rev A 12 inch powerbook... That would explain (IF ITS TRUE NEW MACS HAVE IT) why my Monty Python Set became deinterlaced when I upgraded to panther...

I am using "Screencapture" from the terminal.

-Owl

[Eug Wanker]

Originally posted by OwlBoy:
I have a rev A 12 inch powerbook... That would explain (IF ITS TRUE NEW MACS HAVE IT) why my Monty Python Set became deinterlaced when I upgraded to panther...

I'll have to try some of my Monty Python discs and some cartoon discs sometime, on my TiBook (which I'm sure does not do proper de-interlacing, even with Panther), and on my friend's G5.

Before I search thru all of them, which Monty Python discs are best for this? (It's been a while, and I was watching them on my Panasonic RP91, which does a semi-OK job of de-interlacing.)

[OwlBoy]

Originally posted by Eug Wanker:
I'll have to try some of my Monty Python discs and some cartoon discs sometime, on my TiBook (which I'm sure does not do proper de-interlacing, even with Panther), and on my friend's G5.

Before I search thru all of them, which Monty Python discs are best for this? (It's been a while, and I was watching them on my Panasonic RP91, which does a semi-OK job of de-interlacing.)

Well, the ones I am talking about are Flying Circus. Since that is a TV show. The films will not give results (though some supplements may)

-Owl

[Hydra]

Originally posted by Eug Wanker:
I've read that DVD Player 4.0 does indeed de-interlace, but AFAIK, it's only with certain hardware, like the G5 Power Macs and latest PowerBooks. I can't prove it though, because I have neither a G5 Power Mac nor the latest PowerBook.

What hardware and OS is everyone running?

BTW, what are you using to take your screenshots?

I agree, I have a dual G5 (2.0 model) and OEM Radeon 9800 and the Apple DVD player with Panther most definitely is de-interlacing but I think the player needs some work as the image exhibits some tearing here and there when large blocks of dark color move rapidly horizontally across the screen.

I first though my 20" CD LCD panel was the culprit but I have never seen the same in games and luckily the Matrix Reloaded DVD comes with an alternate OSX DVD player (called InterActual_Player) on the disc that does not exhibit artifacts and I hate to say it displays better overall color and smoothness than Apple's own DVD player. Go figure.

-Jerry C.

[voodoo]

Hm.

Do you know what REALLY ticks me off? I bought Conan the Barbarian Special Edition DVD - it is in Widescreen and with Schwarzenegger commentary, lots of extra stuff - like you'd expect a special edition to be.

It is ****ing INTERLACED!

WTF is up with that?? Gah. I really think there should be a warning on DVDs that says whether they are interlaced or normal.

[RayX]

Originally posted by voodoo:
Hm.

Do you know what REALLY ticks me off? I bought Conan the Barbarian Special Edition DVD - it is in Widescreen and with Schwarzenegger commentary, lots of extra stuff - like you'd expect a special edition to be.

It is ****ing INTERLACED!

WTF is up with that?? Gah. I really think there should be a warning on DVDs that says whether they are interlaced or normal.

Just thought I'd break it to you...ALL DVDs ARE INTERLACED.

The video on DVDs is interlaced to be displayed on normal television screens just like VHS.

(Ok there might be some odd ones, but you get the point)

Unless you meant something else?

[RayX]

This site should clear up everything being discussed in this thread. It is a very detailed read on progressive scan, deinterlacing methods, 3-2 (and 2-2) pulldown detection, etc:

http://www.hometheaterhifi.com/volum...e-10-2000.html

[RayX]

Originally posted by tooki:
Here we go. These samples are from Britney Spears' "Boys" video on the NTSC Austin Powers 3 DVD (regrettably, I was given the fullscreen disc).

(images removed)


tooki

I did some testing with WinDVD, which allows you to force the deinterlacing mode to BOB or WEAVE. When forcing WEAVE mode onto video sourced material (originally interlaced, eg TV cameras, usually DVD special features, etc) I had images similar to what you showed with Apple's DVD player. When forcing BOB or automatic mode, the image was much better, but still not as good as the film would look when de-interlaced. The video content still had that slight comb effect around movement, but it was barely noticeable when the correct mode was used. Also under normal viewing, eg. not sitting close to the screen, not pausing the image, or displayed on a CRT TV (which are inherently blurry which masks some of this, and also designed for interlaced video) - the artifacts were less noticeable again.

I think also depending on how well the video was encoded and put together will play a part as to how well the software can choose the correct mode and how well it will actually turn out.

3-2 and 2-2 pulldown come into effect here for progressive screens such as Plasma TVs to reduce the artifacts of de-interlacing video sources.

This site may answer your questions about this:

www.guidetohometheater.com/features/10/index5.html

(also the other URL I posted is a very good read)

[Eug Wanker]

Originally posted by RayX:
Just thought I'd break it to you...ALL DVDs ARE INTERLACED.

The video on DVDs is interlaced to be displayed on normal television screens just like VHS.

Just a note... My DVD player and TV are both progressive scan.

These are quite common these days.

[RayX]

Originally posted by Eug Wanker:
Just a note... My DVD player and TV are both progressive scan.

These are quite common these days.

That's right, but I was just making the point that the actual video stored on the DVD is interlaced. It is then up to the DVD player or the display to covert it to progressive scan.

(This reply is not really directed at you Eug, but others that might not know)

[stevec999]

What you are seeing here is called combing, it is a side effect of doing 3:2 pulldown on a video source image. This is also seen if the frame headers on the DVD are encoded wrong, there are some DVDs that one frame says its film and the next says it's video. This confuses the DVD player and causes this effect.


[QUOTE]Originally posted by tooki:
[B]Here we go. These samples are from Britney Spears' "Boys" video on the NTSC Austin Powers 3 DVD (regrettably, I was given the fullscreen disc).

[Eug]

Originally posted by RayX:
That's right, but I was just making the point that the actual video stored on the DVD is interlaced. It is then up to the DVD player or the display to covert it to progressive scan.

Well it seems from the various posts is that on some machines DVD Player 4.0 is not doing a very good job here, but on other machines it does seem to work fine, as is evidenced by Owl's screengrabs.

What I'm trying to determine is what machines will do it better. I've read that it's only recent Macs with recent video cards. Owl has a Rev. A 12" AluBook. ie. DVD Player 4.0's abilities in this matter seem to be directly dependent upon which video cards are being used - it's not purely a software issue.

I will confirm this the next time I visit my friend with a G5. I'll bring some of my Monty Python Flying Circus DVDs and some of my cartoon DVDs and compare a TiBook and older G3 iBook vs. his dual G5 Power Mac.

[voodoo]

Originally posted by RayX:

Unless you meant something else?

I think we must be misunderstanding eachother. How shall I put this?

In Conan you can see how 50% of the horizontal pixels detach themselves from the rest like in the interlaced screenshots above when there is fast movement to right or left.

In Roxanne (for instance) this does not happen.

Also Conana appears to be in 1/2 the resolution Roxanne is - making the picture slightly blurrier.

I am of course using my computer to watch this, not a TV.

[OwlBoy]

heh, yeah, not all DVD data is interlaced.

It is MPEG2 files, and just like many quicktime files, it can be progressive or interlaced...

Another DVD that pisses me off since it is interlaced, and it should not be, is Metropolis (The Anime)

-Owl

[tooki]

My screenshots were taken on a 1.25GHz 15" AlBook using Snapz Pro (paused DVD playback).

OwlBoy's screenshots prove nothing, since even on a disc that shows combing, not every frame will exhibit it.

tooki

[OwlBoy]

Originally posted by tooki:
My screenshots were taken on a 1.25GHz 15" AlBook using Snapz Pro (paused DVD playback).

OwlBoy's screenshots prove nothing, since even on a disc that shows combing, not every frame will exhibit it.

tooki

But those were frames in motion...

-Owl

[Eug]

Check out this thread about the issue.

[neilw]

Originally posted by voodoo:
I think we must be misunderstanding eachother. How shall I put this?

In Conan you can see how 50% of the horizontal pixels detach themselves from the rest like in the interlaced screenshots above when there is fast movement to right or left.

This is called combing and is a result of using the wrong de-interlacing algorithm. This is generally because the DVD is incorrectly flagged and the player has weak de-interlacing logic.

Essentially, the frames on the DVD are flagged to indicate which half-frames go together. In a perfect world, the DVD player reads the flags, assembles each frame correctly, and you do not comb.

In the real world, many DVDs have incorrect flags. If the DVD player follows them blindly (or, alternately, doesn't follow them at all), then you might have half of one frame combined with half of the next frame. This gives you the combing effect seen in the pictures above. Smart DVD players (which nowadays includes most hardware DVD players) do *not* blindly follow the flags, but also read the "cadence" of the frames and operate accordingly. Good DVD players nowadays rarely if ever comb.

There are also major differences in the way video (i.e., 60 fps (NTSC)) and film (i.e., 24 fps) sources are handled. There's a lot of different stuff to handle, and it's easy to imagine the player (in software or hardware) getting some of the cases wrong. That is why different disks will often behave differently.

The HomeTheaterHiFi link given above gives a lot of explanation of all this stuff. It's a good read.

Also Conana appears to be in 1/2 the resolution Roxanne is - making the picture slightly blurrier.

That's a common symptom of a video source being handled poorly.

[voodoo]

So the Apple DVD Player in 10.3 is ... crap? It doesn't interlace as well as it should (if at all - the jury isn't agreeing just yet) and handles the video source poorly.

Dang.

[voodoo]

Found it! This is what I'm probably experiencing with Conan:

"Flag-reading players have two major difficulties: they are often tripped up by errors in the MPEG stream, where the flags are not correct, and they drop to video mode if the encoding is non-standard, even on good film material. They generally have no way of doing 3-2 pulldown detection other than looking for the alternating "repeat_first_field" flag, so if it's missing, the film mode won't kick in, and you end up seeing the video-mode deinterlacing. This is watchable, but the main reason to get a progressive DVD player is to get film-mode deinterlacing. You can get video-mode deinterlacing from the deinterlacer in the TV. In general, we marked a test "fail" if the player went to video mode on material that was sourced from film."

IF the Apple DVD player is a flag-reading player.

[OwlBoy]

Originally posted by voodoo:
Found it! This is what I'm probably experiencing with Conan:

"Flag-reading players have two major difficulties: they are often tripped up by errors in the MPEG stream, where the flags are not correct, and they drop to video mode if the encoding is non-standard, even on good film material. They generally have no way of doing 3-2 pulldown detection other than looking for the alternating "repeat_first_field" flag, so if it's missing, the film mode won't kick in, and you end up seeing the video-mode deinterlacing. This is watchable, but the main reason to get a progressive DVD player is to get film-mode deinterlacing. You can get video-mode deinterlacing from the deinterlacer in the TV. In general, we marked a test "fail" if the player went to video mode on material that was sourced from film."

IF the Apple DVD player is a flag-reading player.

I was starting to suspect this... I know back in the early days of DVD ripping on the mac this was one of our problems.

-Owl

[OwlBoy]

Originally posted by OwlBoy:
I was starting to suspect this... I know back in the early days of DVD ripping on the mac this was one of our problems.

-Owl

Oy, I just popped in the Rahxephon disc I got from Netflix, and indeed, it is not de-interlacing all the time, for a bit it is good, then some frames show interlacing... I dunno anymore, now I am totally confused.

-Owl

[tooki]

Well clearly the quality of the source footage (be it video or DVD) and the DVD mastering makes a big difference. Apple's DVD player can't compensate for some defects, while VLC (at huge CPU cost) can do some heavy-duty de-interlacing to make it pretty.

tooki

[voodoo]

Originally posted by tooki:
Well clearly the quality of the source footage (be it video or DVD) and the DVD mastering makes a big difference. Apple's DVD player can't compensate for some defects, while VLC (at huge CPU cost) can do some heavy-duty de-interlacing to make it pretty.

tooki

Obviously we are talking about Film quality source. We wouldn't be very shocked if some TV eps come out interlaced on DVD. In fact we expect them to.

Film can usually be deinterlaced by the DVD player (whatever progressive player you have) but sometimes that process fails. It all depends on how the player reads the DVD media.

[RayX]

Some interesting information regarding mastering problems of PAL DVDs:

http://www.hifi-writer.com/he/dvds/interlace.htm

[KidRed]

Interesting discussion but where are all the 'big images' that sparked a warning?

[voodoo]

Dunno.

Methinks all we can hope for is a good update of Apple DVD player. Hm.