Improving Xbox Netflix Streaming

Now that I have my new HDMI powered home theater system fully operational some of the flaws of Netflix streaming to the Xbox 360 have become very obvious. The Netflix streaming is designed around streaming content to a PC which means that Netflix simply assumes you're outputting sound through two lousy PC speakers. How does that kind of audio sound coming out 7 quality speakers and a sub? Like crap.

The other issue is the way Netflix adjusts your picture quality. They use a bar system between 1 and 4 bars that represents your network connection. 4 bars gets you HD, when available. This generally works great, but as soon as Netflix detects a slight change, even for a moment, the streaming is interrupted and you lose the HD stream. The change is very noticeable.

However, the picture quality is great with 4 bars.

Screwed (SD) viewed on my 1920x1200 laptop

I still Netflix streaming is absolutely freaking fantastic, but this is disappointing. The good news is Netflix claims better audio is in the works, but does not say when that will be available. Netflix technicians also have suggestions for the HD streaming.

They say that the cause for the interuption and downgrade is the buffer has run out and the network connection didn't pick back up at 5.5 MBps, so the buffer was filled with 2 or 3 bar streaming. Their suggestion is to pause your movie/show for around 10 minutes to let the buffer fill to it's maximum 10 minute stream and then watch it. Apparently contracts limit the buffer to 10 minutes to avoid piracy and this is why you may frequently run out of buffer while watching an HD movie.

I'll still watch just as much streaming video as I do now, but I won't use it for videos I want to see. I will continue to use it for those movies and shows I don't want to wait for or pay money to rent/buy.

Calibrating Your HDTV With a Calibration Disc

The other day I finally ordered a copy of Digital Video Essentials: HD Basics on Blu-Ray from Amazon. For $20 with shipping I figured I couldn't go wrong even if it turned out my TV was calibrated well without it.

I found the disc to be very educational, easy to use and quite helpful. In short, the Blu-Ray version of DVE is great.

With this disc it's up to you how you want to calibrate your display. You can choose to do it yourself with just the test patterns or you can watch a whole educational video that explains each test pattern, what it's meant to test, why, and how it all works. I chose the latter and learned a lot about my TV. I learned even more about my TV as I looked at each test pattern.

For instance, I learned my model of TV has a slight issue with displaying true colors, so post-calibration my TV does not quite display green as it should. I also learned that my TV uses the correct type of contrast control as per HD standards. Interesting stuff, if you're into that sort of thing.

The Blu-Ray version also offers some nifty features. The ability BD movies have to display a "pop-up" menu during playback was great for this. While setting Brightness and Contrast I was able to flip back and forth between test patterns by using the pop-up menu. Not to mention that every test pattern was displayed naitively in 1080p over HDMI to give me the best possible test patterns for my TV.

There is another section of test videos as well. You can watch them with or without commentary about their purpose and what you should see.

A nice bonus is the inclusion of color filters for accurate setting of tint and color. When I finished with the test patterns I had made a few minor adjustments and some changes to color temperature. The end result was a fantastic picture with accurate flesh tones and amazing detail.

I wrapped everything up by watching Spiderman 3 on Blu-Ray and found it very appealing. Combined with my surround sound system I felt that I had finally achieved a real home theater system. The purchase was definitely worth it.

For more information on test patterns, look here.

My new home theater setup now consists of:
Philips 42" PFL7422D/37 HDTV (1080p)
Sony STR-DG820 Receiver
Boston Acoustic Horizon MCS 100 5.1 Surround

I bought the Philips over a year ago at Sam's Club for $1,100 and picked up the receiver for a mere $190 on Amazon a couple of weeks ago. That was a 65% savings for a pre-Black Friday sale. The speaker set was an early Christmas gift, but it was bought from Amazon for $200 as a gold box deal of the day.

The sound is amazing and the PS3 pumps out full TrueHD/DTS-HD Master Audio sound with my Blu-Ray movies. So if you ever hear you can't get a nice sound system for around $400, just remember it's all about shopping smart.

Another great resource for questions is the HighDefForums:

More HD Calibration

So you read my posts about calibrating your HDTV, but you were too lazy to do it? Well, here's your solutions: TweakTV

TweakTV says they have a staff or volunteers that calibrate every model of TV they can get their hands on. Once they complete the calibration they add the model and settings to their database. On the website you can select your TV's brand and then model to view what they say is the best settings for your TV.

Pretty slick, but remember, every HDTV is a little different even among those of the same brand/model. If you use their settings you probably would only be off by a couple of digits, so it seems like a great information source.

Now, for those of you using a PlayStation 3 as their Blu-Ray player or who simply want to view their game cinematics in the best way possible, check out cnet's article here.

David Katzmaier gives a nice rundown of all of the PS3's BD/DVD and Display Settings menu options.

Why We Still Have Black Bars on Our HDTVs

Just a quick post, but a good one.

I found this awesome post in the HighDefForums. Check it out and you can see why stretching and full screen movies actually hurt your experience. Now you too can finally show friends and family why you let those black bars stay on your screen (at least I hope you do)>

Source

More Tips for Calibrating Your HDTV

After my last post about calibrating an HDTV for the best possible picture I did some more monkeying around with my own HDTV at home. After making a few tweaks and changing some options I have to say I am very pleased with my new picture. It was bittersweet victory knowing I've been viewing a sub-par picture for so long, but now I've rectified the situation.

The THX Optimization setup on the Monster's Inc. DVD was a great starting point, but it wasn't perfect. I decided to try changing the settings with still images. The first one I used was an outdoor scene at night in season 1 of Weeds. This scene was what originally brought the poor picture to my attention, so it seemed like a perfect starting point.

Originally, the whole scene looked washed out because the Contrast and Brightness were way too high. With so much black it became very, very noticeable. First, I tried the autoset feature on my TV and tried "Natural". It looked awful, it was still washed out and it was still fuzzy. Then I tried "Movie" and there was a clear improvement.

The difference was "Natural" set Contrast and Brightness to 100 and "Movie" set it to 85 and 50 respectively. It seemed clear that the problem with my blacks was the Brightness setting. Now I had to verify my whites by switching to a bright white/blue picture to check detail.

If Contrast is too high your fine details in white areas will vanish into the fuzzy brightness of the image, but if it's too low your whites will look grey/brown. So I loaded up Mass Effect, a video game for the Xbox 360. In the game I visited a snowy planet covered in ice and stood still.

The graphics looked great, but everything was very bright. I had always written it off as intentional, but the game's graphics are so carefully detailed I had a feeling that I would see some major differences once I finished tweaking my TV.

Sure enough, I lowered the Contrast down and started seeing fine details in tan-ish rocks and dirt showing through the snow. I continued to turn it down more and more until I hit 50 and I was amazed. The snow was covered in fine detailing. There were areas covered in ice that showed reflections and ripples, the snow was textured and the sun light effects were scaled back and looked fantastic.

My Contrast was so high that what had been intended to be small lighting effects had turned into vast areas of glare. The picture looked so much better I'm actually playing through the game again and it feels like I'm seeing it for the first time.

It is suggested Contrast never go above 50, but some LCD and plasmas can handle up to 100 without really hurting the picture too much. My picture was OK at 100, but that was definitely a brightly lit showroom setting not suited for my living room.

Color was another change I made. Previously I had kept it set to "Natural", but my research indicated "Natural" or "Default" was usually a poor setting because it washed out flesh tones in exchange for making colors pop more and appear more vivid to grab your eye in the showroom at the store. I changed my setting to "Warm" because, by default, "Warm" is usually the closest setting to 6,500K (the natural temperature for flesh tones).

The change was a great improvement over the old default setting. All of the actors and actresses in Weeds looked much more natural.

Finally, I read my TV manual and it actually had some advice tucked away in some footnote FAQs. My TV lets you "install" input connections as certain devices (i.e. my PS3 and Xbox 360 are "installed" as Game and my DVR is "installed" as HDDVR). I always thought this was for remembering what input was what, but the manual mentioned that the TV makes slight changes to the signal to optimize the picture.

My Xbox had been accidentally setup as a PC, so the TV was altering the picture as if it were receiving the signal from my desktop. By changing the it back to Game I actually saw a slight improvement.

The manual also suggested disabling "Noise Reduction" which seemed strange, but disabling it improved my picture even further. Since all of my equipment was connected to my TV with fairly short cables and I wasn't receiving any signals over the air I didn't have any need for Noise Reduction because I wasn't receiving any weak signals. However, it was set to Maximum and actually added some fuzz to the picture, but not anymore.

The setting assistant had originally set Dynamic Contrast to Maximum as well, but the manual suggested either be disabled or never raised above Medium for the best picture unless the enviorment calls for it (i.e. a very bright or dimly lit room). Of course, mine was set to Maximum, so I set it to Low.

I kept MPEG Artifact Reduction and HD Perfect Pixel Engine turned on. I steered clear of Vivid Color (and so should you). Now my TV is sporting an awesome picture and looks fantastic.

So, in short, know your TV's menus and features and do some testing with them. You might be surprised how much better your TV can be.

Tune Your HDTV's Display on the Cheap

Recently I started looking into buying an HDTV setup DVD. For around $15 or $20 you can get a DVD that walks you through setting the picture settings on your TV. Various still images are displayed for each setting allowing you to adjust until the image looks as it should.

The idea is that you aren't just eye-balling each setting while watching a DVD, but rather using images created specifically for tuning your TV.

It sure beats paying a technician to come out and set up your TV for you or, even worse, living with a poorly setup HDTV you spent over $1,000 on. However, I agree $20 + shipping for one of these DVDs is an unfortunate way to have to spend your money. There is a cheap solution.

Do you have kids or do you simply enjoy Pixar films? What about Lucasarts films?

Well, if you own a Lucasarts or Pixar film that was released on DVD sometime between the year 2000 and now you already have the sufficient tools for setting up your HDTV.

This is not the best option, but if you own Monsters Inc. or The Incredibles there is an option in the Setup menu (on the DVD) called the THX Optimizer.

The THX Optimizer runs you through a series of images to make sure your contrast, brightness, tint and color are set correctly and then it displays an image to test your TVs' scaling of 4:3 and 16:9 images. It caps it all off by playing a short 30 second clip from the movie to make sure it all looks good to you.

Some tips:

1. Check out this CNET article to learn abou the various settings and how you should change them: CNET
2. If you alter Brightness or Contrast after having already set one or the other; back track to verify the setting still looks good. These two settings are the most important to get right.
3. Let your TV warm-up to the optimal operating temperature before making changes. 30 minutes is more than enough for all TV types.
4. Do this. Proper settings make for an amazing difference. Get your money's worth.