Video Output Settings

[anap]

Please could someone tell me if the Video Output Settings have been corrected in the V6. i.e. Do they now work like they are described in the info screen or are they like the TiVo but with extra 2160 settings?

[Gmjh]

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@Ernie_C wrote:

Personally, @deans6571 , I concur.

Our observations suggest that our TVs and V6 have similar upscaling abilities.

For us, using only 2160P and 2160P passthru settings on V6 is the convenient solution - no swapping settings to watch the UHD broadcast channels.

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With the V6 box I kind of agree. But I think it's because the V6 isn't very good at showing 4k and I think it further compresses an already compressed Netflix stream. If I switch from HD to 4k on my nvidia shield the difference in quality is pretty big. I do think it makes a difference with upscaling from HD to 4k though as the V6 is nowhere near as good as my Sony tv. 

[shawty1984]

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@deans6571 wrote:

.....no doubt, somebody WILL bite my head off for saying this, but I don't really care (and I 100% know who this will be) as I am the person in front of the TV noticing the changes.

I was playing around with the V6 Video Output settings last night and I can 100% honestly state, that on my Samsung 50" 4K TV (MU6120 model number), I see zero differences in picture quality whether I have the V6 set to 2160 & 2160 Passthrough or 1080i and 2160 Passthrough or any other combination for that matter.

It may have differences for others, but certainly absolutely none for me....

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Doesn't that depend on what you are testing between what differences you will see? 

Watching football on Sky Sports which is native 1080i is more often than not going to look worse than watching football on BT Sports 4k which is native 4k for obvious reasons. 

Watching BT Sport 4k and messing about with the settings is going to yield little difference due to you starting with native 4k originally. All you're doing is either out putting the native 4k or downscalling and upscalling and still ending up with the native 4k. 

They are two totally different scenarios. The first one were 1080i is upscaled to 4k, you're actually upscaling to something it originally wasn't.

[deans6571]

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@shawty1984 wrote:

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@deans6571 wrote:

.....no doubt, somebody WILL bite my head off for saying this, but I don't really care (and I 100% know who this will be) as I am the person in front of the TV noticing the changes.

I was playing around with the V6 Video Output settings last night and I can 100% honestly state, that on my Samsung 50" 4K TV (MU6120 model number), I see zero differences in picture quality whether I have the V6 set to 2160 & 2160 Passthrough or 1080i and 2160 Passthrough or any other combination for that matter.

It may have differences for others, but certainly absolutely none for me....

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Doesn't that depend on what you are testing between what differences you will see? 

I was testing this whilst watching ITV HD (which I find has better picture quality than BBC ONE HD).

Watching football on Sky Sports which is native 1080i is more often than not going to look worse than watching football on BT Sports 4k which is native 4k for obvious reasons. 

Totally agree with this - BT Sports UHD is indeed a much better quality picture than Sky Sports HD. Not so much when comparing a supposedly UHD film on Netflix vs an HD film on another channel though.

Watching BT Sport 4k and messing about with the settings is going to yield little difference due to you starting with native 4k originally. All you're doing is either out putting the native 4k or downscalling and upscalling and still ending up with the native 4k. 

They are two totally different scenarios. The first one were 1080i is upscaled to 4k, you're actually upscaling to something it originally wasn't.

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...see points above in blue..

[Roger_Gooner]

If by 4K you are referring only to the resolution of 3840×2160 then you are right. But framerate can also matter: depending on the source, framerates vary as Netflix delivers 23.976fps (annoyingly called 24fps) and 59.970 (annoyingly called 60fps) and BT Sport delivers 50fps. As the V6's pass-through options apply only to 24/25/30fps and as 2160p means 2160p50, any other framerates such as 59.970fps are converted to 50fps whether you like it or not.

[deans6571]

Ok, so just done some further testing on the Settings.....

As per my post above, when watching HD content on MY SPECIFIC TV, I see absolutely no differences no matter which combination of Video Output Settings I choose. 

However, when watching UHD content (tested this on BT Sports UHD and also VM’s UHD channel on channel 999), there is a clear and better difference when selecting 2160 and 2160 Passthrough over any other combination......

For my TV, these are the optimal settings. 

[Ernie_C]

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@Roger_Gooner wrote:

If by 4K you are referring only to the resolution of 3840×2160 then you are right. But framerate can also matter: depending on the source, framerates vary as Netflix delivers 23.976fps (annoyingly called 24fps) and 59.970 (annoyingly called 60fps) and BT Sport delivers 50fps. As the V6's pass-through options apply only to 24/25/30fps and as 2160p means 2160p50, any other framerates such as 59.970fps are converted to 50fps whether you like it or not.

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While your explanation seems knowledgeable, I’m not sure I can agree from my own experience.

When I choose a Netflix asset in UHD, even HDR, my TV reports 24/25/30 Hz is being output, meaning, if I understand correctly, that V6 MUST be using the passthru setting and not converting to 50 Hz, as you suggest.

[Roger_Gooner]

Your V6 is working as expected as you have pass-through selected; if you didn't Netflix content such as 2160p23.976 would be converted to 2160p50p.

[Ernie_C]

Sorry, I must have misinterpreted your statement:

“As the V6's pass-through options apply only to 24/25/30fps and as 2160p means 2160p50, any other framerates such as 59.970fps are converted to 50fps whether you like it or not.”

I thought that meant that all Netflix assets would be converted to 50 Hz because they weren’t exactly 24/25/30 Hz, even if you selected the passthru option.

[Roger_Gooner]

It's an issue which has been raised for years, namely that there is no way to make the TiVo or V6 to pass through everything for the TV to scale. As pass through is only partly implemented it's no wonder that there is confusion.

[button_sw]

I've been so disappointed with the video quality of the V6 Box since I upgraded a couple of years ago, I was convinced that the original Tivo box has better video output quality and I've now done some back to back testing with both.

My TV is a Panasonic EZ952 OLED which has been professionally calibrated so there is no doubt about the quality of it or picture settings

I swapped the V6 for the original Tivo which was in the spare living room and set it to the same setting which is 1080i pass-through which is what the V6 was set to (I don't use 4k on the V6 or any of the apps as I use the TV's Smart Apps)

The original Tivo does indeed produce a better picture than the V6, the picture is cleaner with less fizzing/smudging that the V6 . The fact that the difference was noticeable made me wonder whether the V6 is actually passing through the 1080i stream untouched, was the V6 performing some kind of processing even though it shouldn't be. I swapped the boxes again and the V6 did not look as good, there is definitely some softening/smudging of the image, a real lack of definition and a noisier picture. 

I have recently purchased a DVDO iScan mini video scaler and enhancer to try and improve the picture from Virgin more as I've found out that OLED's crave a progressive signal to produce the best possible up-scaling and I wanted to de-interlace the 1080i signal to 1080p and then let the TV upscale the progressive image like it would with a Blu-Ray. When I tried this combination with the original Tivo I was gobsmacked how improved the picture is with the iScan mini de-interlacing the video from 1080i to 1080p, the step up in perceived quality is tremendous and I'm very happy.

I then tried the DVDO iScan mini with the V6 box and had all sorts of issues, it would not detect the 1080i signal at all when plugged into the scaler and I had all sorts of problems getting it to play ball. After a lot of head scratching I figured out that I had to set the V6 box to 720p video output only to even get a signal. I could then change it to 1080i on the V6 but when doing the same combination and setting the iScan to de-interlace the 1080i video to 1080p it looked much poorer compared to the Tivo,

I'm now convinced that the V6 is performing processing of some kind no matter what video output you choose, it's a really poor piece of hardware in my opinion. I'm now using the original Tivo box very happily, I know it's slow but I can live with that as most of my viewing I use the Smart Apps on my TV.

I put the V6 in the spare room and hooked it up to a Kuro 500A Plasma no doubt and even with that epic TV the V6 box looks average at best, it softens and smudges the picture I'm sure.

I obviously have no proof that the V6 won't pass through a 1080i signal unprocessed but I can see with my own eyes that there is something going on.

I just thought I would share my findings