Posted by Goro on 10/26/05 14:13

Jordan wrote:
> "Edge enhancement drives me crazy. Macroblocking (granted, a problem
> of the Faroudja upconverting chip) is at least mildly irritaitng.
> Chroma Errors (on my Sony) are
> painful. Artifacts abound (with the setup properly calibrated, they
> are somewhat minimized, but still noticeable). "
>
> Hmmm... it sounds like you know what you're doing, but the #1 cause of
> edge enhancement problems is actually having the sharpness set too
> high.
>
> http://reviews.cnet.com/4520-6463_7-5085739-4.html
>
> "Sharpness: This adds artificial edges to objects, which sometimes
> helps with soft cable signals but almost always mars the already sharp
> image from a DVD. Reduce it to zero unless you detect visible softening
> along the edges of text; if you do, increase it until the edges appear
> sharp again. "
>
> - Jordan

I've adjusted my sets using Avia, which generally puts sharpness low,
but mentions that turning it all the way down also has negative
effects. I've tried turning it down further for some dvd viewing, but
even those beneficial effects have been minimal.

While turning sharpness down has helped on my 32" Sony Wega CRT (the
halos are still slightly noticeable but are less prominent), it hasn't
really helped much on my 50" Samsung DLP. There are still really
jarring times when the Edge Enhancement just jumps out, though, to be
fair, often when my friends are watching with me, they don't notice
until I point it out to them. THen they say things like, "Wow. It
must really suck to notice these things all the time."

Ditto with the macroblocking and the Chroma upsample error. Enough so
that I use my Sony DVD player on my CRT and am thinking about a new
Denon to replace my Oppo.

My main point is that DVDs are flawed. They look better than OTA NTSC
and VHS by a gigantic factor and so I think that people (in general)
are happy with DVD b/c it looks so good and overlook, or don't see, the
limitations.

Even now, I'm watching OTA HD and I'm struck with the digital
artifacting that's visible. I'm curious as to whether 1080p is going
to be enough of a leap and if (say) 2160p is just around the corner. I
recently read that the Samsung 1080p DLP sets are all wobulated and
that they handle 2pixels per mirro but that they are easily capable of
handling 4, so that it seems like doubling the res should be
straightforward (if not nec. "easy") for the next gen.

-goro-

[Back to original message]