Comparing Swedish HD television and yours Premier, particular the Humax 1000C box

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pelle2004
Neuling

#1 erstellt: 15. Jan 2008, 22:02

Hi,

Have been reading some of your threads and I'm interested to know how you experience the HD cable transmission in Germany. As I understand, Premier, one of your operators, uses same setup box as ComHem, our operator here in Sweden. It's called Humax CXHD-1000C in Sweden and called PR-HD 1000C at your end. We only have one supplier but I think you also have Phillips

What I'm interested to know is if you experience same kind of problem that we have. We have a lot of color banding problems, particular in the background where shading takes place. There's a wild discussion going on between the user how this should be fixed. Most of the discussion is focused on the Humax box.

What I'm very interested to know is following related to your HD channels:

If you also have color banding problems.
If there is a difference between Humax and other setup boxes.
If Premier has been able to improve the quality.

We mostly use the HDMI connection.

/BR
Pelle Svensson

Aresta
Moderator

#2 erstellt: 16. Jan 2008, 10:02

Hi,

Yes, as far as I know there are currently two Premiere-certified cable HD-receiver available on the german market.

1. Humax PR-HD1000C
2. Philips DCR 9000/02 HDTV

There are a lot of users which are also claiming here about problems in dark colored movie scenes. They say that all particular details are lost and you can only see black parts. From my personal experience this effect is depending on the television itself as with the one I own I do not that problem. More or less confirmed speculation stating that it depends on the non standard HDMI specification / connector of the Box itself. As far as I know there is work around using the v-format buttom on the remote control several times back to 1080i output to solve the problem - but as I said, do not have that issue.

Also some claiming about moire-effects in non HD television which also effects my television.

As this problem obviously only effects the Humax Box there is no improvement from Premiere available and expected.

From all what I read also the Philips-Box is not free of problems, some users reporting software instabilites etc. May be a Philips owner is able to say a little more about it.

Regards,
Aresta

pelle2004
Neuling

#3 erstellt: 16. Jan 2008, 22:53

Hi,

We also had problems with dark colored movie scenes ('Black Crunch') until the latest version of the software CHTCCX 1.00.10. Latest software has an option for HDMI color space, Full RGB space 0-255, Limited RGB space 16-235 and YPBPR space 4:4:4. Previous software caused dark details to be totally black and same for light got totally white.

But we still have problems with what is called 'color banding'. That is when there is larger area, as example a dark colored wall with light from above, shading then appears with only a few colored bands, you can easily see 4 to maybe 15 bands. It looks terribly.

It is very interesting to know if you also has this and if there is any difference between Phillips and Humax.

/Pelle

Aresta
Moderator

#4 erstellt: 17. Jan 2008, 12:36

Hi Pelle,

I think we are talking about the same effect what I see especially in the news where sometimes the speaker has just a "blue" (or what color ever) backround. I call it "moire-effect" as I remember from old computer monitors the moire effect correction. Whenever I adjusted it to low or high I had those "semi-circles" of color gradiation within one tincture starting from an edge of the screen.

Nevertheless I have never ever seen it in real HDTV braodcasted in 1080i - I know it only from SD-TV (576i).

As far as I know the Philips do not have that issue but others... so it is caused by the receiver but not from the signal quality.

The German software version for the cable box is currently 1.00.22 but I do not remember any HDMI color range adjustments are possible.

Kind regards,
Aresta

pelle2004
Neuling

#5 erstellt: 17. Jan 2008, 21:20

Hi Aresta

It's not so easy to explain something in words always. I found some links which shows the color banding.

The left picture at this link

http://upload.wikime...anding_example01.png
The 3'e picture, SVT, from the top

http://www.minhembio.com/frhape/99087/

I forgot to tell how the color space is changed in my previous post. It's done in a some what weird way, press done V-Format in 5 seconds change the color space.
Thanks for the info about Phillips. Nice to here because then the cable company's transmision is not the problem and it can be fixed by the setup box.

/Thanks
Pelle