Vudu first impressions

[calseeor]

Howdy all,
Well - finally after almost a week of trying to find a way to get Vudu on my network, the Wife and I were able to settle in and watch a couple of movies last night.

Over all, we are both very happy with the device and service and look forward to all the movies we will be watching in the future. Kudos to the Vudu team for such a cool product.

Our tv is a 50" panasonic Plasma (I believe we can only do 720 (or is that 740?). We have the Vudu hooked up with the HDMI cable. We have the sound sent from the TV via a digital audio cable to our sound system.

We watched an SD and an HD movie to compare them and here is what we found:

SD (One Missed call) - decent quality in most aspects except for darker scenes. When there is darkness that is not a solid black, we got a lot of banding (is that the right word?). Basically, we would see very pixelated areas when colors transitioned between lighter and darker. That banding reminded me of the early days of video on CD for computers. Annoying and distracting, but the movie was still enjoyable. Audio was rocking. Nice and clear. The movie streamed instantly and without the slightest bit of buffering.

HD (3:10 to Yuma) - amazing visuals (except for the darker areas as mentioned above in SD - I had the same issue here). I could see the pores on Russel Crowes face, it was so clearon the bright scenes. The audio was fantastic very clear. The movie streamed instantly and perfectly.

The banding I am assuming is due to our tv not being 1080? Or is due to the contrast ratio between light and dark?

I also tried a TV show. That seemed to need to buffer for some reason?

[redwein]

Re: Vudu first impressions

The banding I am assuming is due to our tv not being 1080? Or is due to the contrast ratio between light and dark?

I'm glad you got hooked up. What you are describing is what I see as well. I believe it is compression artifacts that tend to favor the high detail images over the low detail ones. I think this is a good thing overall because I am most interested in detail when there is detail to be interested in. That's not to say it wouldnt be better if it didn't happen. I just assume that we would have to give up the instant playback to get it, perhaps waiting significant amounts of time to watch a movie.

[HeadHodge]

Re: Vudu first impressions

The banding I am assuming is due to our tv not being 1080? Or is due to the contrast ratio between light and dark?

Glad you're up and running. Can you tell us what your network configuration looks like now?

I've spent a fair amount of time trying to understand the video aspects of quality. And though I don't claim to come close to being an expert, I've concluded that video quality can be boiled down to three basic components:

1) The quality of the content provided to VUDU for encoding is a big factor

2) The encodiing process is also a big factor

3) The quality of the display is also a big factor

When it comes to the display I've concluded that the two main factors for banding with both plasma and lcd displays is their abilility to turn on and off pixels on the screen. If the pixels can't be flipped on or off fast enough, this causes smearing. Also plasma and lcd display cannot totally turn off the pixels making it impossible to create a true black color.

They measure the ability to flip pixels with response time and the ability to create black with contrast ratio. The best I have been able to find so far is a 40ms response time with 50,000:1 contrast ratio.

The other factor I've been able to determine is what the display does with the content. VUDU supposedly ships the movie to you in 1080/24p. So unless your display supports that format, some sort of conversion needs to take place. The most common conversion is called 3:2 pull downs. This conversion will contribute to the introduction of video artifacts along with the compression being used.

If you go to Sony's site you'll find a new type of display called a Bio-LCD display. It's very new stuff and it's claim to fame is that the pixels can be totally turned off for a true pure black, to give you an outstanding constrast ratio.

The only control that VUDU has over this whole process is the encoding they do to ship you the content, and their negotiations with content providers to get them to supply VUDU with better quality content.

That's why in my signature I keep begging every day that: "I Want More Bits in My Bucket!!!"

[calseeor]

Re: Vudu first impressions

Glad you're up and running. Can you tell us what your network configuration looks like now?

I have 2 network jacks in my wall in my upstairs computer room and 2 in my downstairs living room. So now I just plug a network cable from my router into the jack upstairs and plug another network cable from the downstairs jack to the vudo. I had them put a second jack in instead of only 1, so that if when I try to add a router (I cant think of the right word - not router - not splitter -gah! Brain cramp - a thingie so I can plug multiple network cables into it and it into my single jack) and it fails for some reason, I still have the ability to add another device because I have a beta box coming for another digital movie streaming device (but not for mainstream movies like Vudu - its not competition for Vudu) and I wanted to be 100% sure I could plug it in when it arrives this week.

Very nice write-up about the video quality, by the way.

Redwein - that's it - artifacts. That was what I was trying to say!! Thanks. It's a bit distracting at first especially when there are large segments of dark areas, but all in all - I am happy with what I see. If I like a movie enough to want to own it, I'll get the DVD and won't see the artifacts anymore.

[HeadHodge]

Re: Vudu first impressions

so that if when I try to add a router (I cant think of the right word - not router - not splitter -gah! Brain cramp - a thingie so I can plug multiple network cables into it.

My guess is that you mean a switch or a hub.

Thanks for your feedback.

Regards

[calseeor]

Re: Vudu first impressions

My guess is that you mean a switch or a hub.

That's it! Switch. hub!

[aaronwt]

Re: Vudu first impressions

An Ethernet switch. I haven't used an Ethernet Hub at home in 10 years. Do they even still sell Ethernet Hubs? well if they do make sure you get an Ethernet Switch instead of an Ethernet Hub.

[RonV]

Re: Vudu first impressions

I still use hubs for network monitoring. Most consumer/small business switches don't support port spanning so if you need a promiscuous probe into network traffic you need a hub. SNORT network intrusion monitoring also uses hubs.

[aaronwt]

Re: Vudu first impressions

I still use hubs for network monitoring. Most consumer/small business switches don't support port spanning so if you need a promiscuous probe into network traffic you need a hub. SNORT network intrusion monitoring also uses hubs.

So do the Ethernet hubs work differently now? It used to be that each port wasn't dynamic, like switches, and access the full bandwidth in and out as needed.
I'm using nine Giagbit switches(seven 5 port, two 8 port) at home, plus the switch in my Gigabit router.

[RonV]

Re: Vudu first impressions

So do the Ethernet hubs work differently now? It used to be that each port wasn't dynamic, like switches, and access the full bandwidth in and out as needed.
I'm using nine Giagbit switches(seven 5 port, two 8 port) at home, plus the switch in my Gigabit router.

Nope hubs still behave the same. In a hub all ports are visible and too much traffic will generate a collision. Usually you can't do full duplex either since hubs are CSMA/CD. Full duplex will generate a buch of collisions.

I'll plug the probe card into one port. The device under analsys in another and then then uplink to a switch. Then the probe appliations such as WireShark or SNORT just watches the traffic and records it.

[NA9D]

Re: Vudu first impressions

Back on topic here:

The banding you see on the dark scenes is fairly normal for digital content. I used to see it all the time on DishNetwork. The issue is that dark scenes have very subtle color shading that is very hard to both quantize and reproduce. Bright scenes are easy as there is a vast difference between the shades and the contrast tends to be more dramatic.

As to Plasmas being able to turn a pixel completely off - I was under the impression they could. At least that's what I was told when I was researching which technology (Plasma or LCD) to buy. Plasmas definitely have better color depth than LCD and display dark colors a lot better. The converse of that is they will also show up flaws in the source material more as well.

I don't think 3:2 pull down introduces banding artifacts. It introduces other things that most people never can notice.

Finally, you should be aware that even BluRay discs can have substantial banding and macroblocking issues. I was in at BestBuy a week or two ago and happened to look at a BluRay system that was showing a concert. Guesss what - dark scenes from the concert showed banding and blocking! Yeah, it's still a better pic than Vudu (we never claim to be as good) but the banding is there. Most of the demo footage you see in stores on BR boxes is always very high contrast bright scenes which always look stellar.

[HeadHodge]

Re: Vudu first impressions

As to Plasmas being able to turn a pixel completely off - I was under the impression they could.

I've read that Plasma is better than LCD to do that, and win overall in the contrast ratio race. But I've never read that it could do black totally. Please go to the Sony and read their description of the BIO-LED display, and let me know what you think.

I use to own a plasma but tossed it for a LCD because they are so much brighter in lighted rooms. I also own a DLP 1080p projector, but it has the same problem, you can't watch it unless the room is totally dark.

I'm pretty sure I've read somewhere that BluRay movies use compression, but not really sure about that. So the question is: Is there a such thing as true 1080p from end to end??

[kikar]

Re: Vudu first impressions

I'm pretty sure I've read somewhere that BluRay movies use compression, but not really sure about that. So the question is: Is there a such thing as true 1080p from end to end??

Blu-ray uses commpression (MPEG2, MPEG4, AVC, and VC-1) as uncompressed video would be too big to fit on anything but a hard drive. 1080p is nothing more than lines of resolution ( the simple answer ) so technically Vudu is true 1080p.

[HeadHodge]

Re: Vudu first impressions

Blu-ray uses commpression (MPEG2, MPEG4, AVC, and VC-1) as uncompressed video would be too big to fit on anything but a hard drive. 1080p is nothing more than lines of resolution ( the simple answer ) so technically Vudu is true 1080p.

Oh, right you are.... I stand corrected, thanks.

I think my real question was more like is there anything available that provides "lossless" 1080p resolution from end to end, whether it uses compression or not??

My experience has always been that compression meant a technique to remove redundent information to save space or bandwidth, but the inverse of the compression (de-compression??) always resulted in an exact copy of the original.

Now days it seems the definition of compression has morphed into meaning the removal of bits from the input to save space or bandwidth with an acceptable loss in quality of the original at the output.

[kikar]

Re: Vudu first impressions

Oh, right you are.... I stand corrected, thanks.

I think my real question was more like is there anything available that provides "lossless" 1080p resolution from end to end, whether it uses compression or not??

My experience has always been that compression meant a technique to remove redundent information to save space or bandwidth, but the inverse of the compression (de-compression??) always resulted in an exact copy of the original.

Now days it seems the definition of compression has morphed into meaning the removal of bits from the input to save space or bandwidth with an acceptable loss in quality of the original at the output.

You are right about today's compression but I think great strides are being made with AVC and VC-1 to get as close to the original source as possible. A lot of video compression seems to be taking cues from the sound world where DD, DD+, and DTS are compressed but never decompressed to the original source. Now if only video can continue following sound's lead as DD has given us TrueHD and DTS has given us DTS-HD MA ( both sound Amazing ).