help? poor quality HD video and DVD playback after win7 upgrade

dbrowne9212

getting very poor quality HD video and DVD playback in fullscreen mode after a windows7 upgrade

the picture is far from crystal clear and is quite blocky and pixelated.

machine is a sony Vaio FW with 16:9 aspect ratio screen
graphics card is ATI radeon HD 3470

i've updated the ati drivers but no change.

the display is listed as a generic PnP monitor? is this an issue?

also... the sony site has some intel graphics accelerator software listed as originally installed on the PC and give a download link to a windows 7 upgrade for this software but it wont install saying "the computer does not meet the requirments for this software"

and.. for some reason the refresh rate is stuck at 59hz (which isnt a major problem but just seems weird and a bit too coincidental)

any thoughts i'm at my wits end here?!

kind regards,

danny.

old_aussie

Hi,

possibly the ATI video card, they're like London buses, big, red and have bad drivers

dbrowne9212

tried reinstalling the drivers, rolling them back, updating, and used driver cleaner too.

really at a loss at this stage.

at one point when i had totally removed the ati drivers and rebooted windows did go off and find drivers itself and install them saying they were for a VGA monitor so maybe there is some issue there?!

What resolution is the screen? If you are playing dvd's on a high res screen they will look awful. Remember dvd is 720 x5**. What "hd files" are you playing? What res are they? Are they xvid hd or .mkv,s? If they are .mkv's installing ffdshow or coreavc are recommended decoders.

dbrowne9212

Right, ok. might be getting to the bottom of it now.

Apparently its a full 1080p HD screen (new computer to me you see)

1600x900px

i dont really understand this stuff. if thats the case then why do dvds play so crisp and smooth on hd tvs?

...i downloaded HD wmv files from here to test (1080p) and they are no better than the dvds.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/musicandvideo/hdvideo/contentshowcase.aspx

examples below;

dvd cap is from finding nemo, hd wmv cap (dolphin) downloaded from microsoft above...

http://dannybrowne.com/storage/sample1.png

http://dannybrowne.com/storage/sample2.png

Overheal

could your computer play 1080p at 1600x900 resolution before the upgrade?

dbrowne9212

dbrowne9212 wrote: »

Right, ok. might be getting to the bottom of it now.

Apparently its a full 1080p HD screen (new computer to me you see)

1600x900px

i dont really understand this stuff. if thats the case then why do dvds play so crisp and smooth on hd tvs?

...i downloaded HD wmv files from here to test (1080p) and they are no better than the dvds.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/musicandvideo/hdvideo/contentshowcase.aspx

examples below;

dvd cap is from finding nemo, hd wmv cap (dolphin) downloaded from microsoft above...

http://dannybrowne.com/storage/sample1.png

http://dannybrowne.com/storage/sample2.png

Ok, 1600x900 is not 1080p. Sony advertise there laptops as 1080p when in fact they refer to the hdmi port on the laptop as opposed to the screen.

Dvds will definetely look bad on a 1600x900 screen though. The reason dvds may look "better" on a hd tv is becasue of the viewing distance from a tv as opposed to a laptop screen.

If the wmv hd files look bad then please provide: Actual screen running resolution, Player used to play .wmv, Codec used to decode the wmv and the graphics driver installed.
If the sony driver for the card wont install, go to the ati website and get the latest driver from there.
If driver doesnt fix playback, download media player classic and ffdshow and play the .wmv in MPC and report back.

dbrowne9212

ok will do thanks.

cherryghost

i had HD playback problems from a Windows 7 upgrade. You upgraded from Vista to Windows 7? or clean instal of windows 7? I done the upgrade, was getting terrible performance. Ended up doing a clean install, did the trick

Burgo

Control Panel>Power Options>Change Plan Settings>High Performance
in the advanced power settings change the "multimedia settings>when playing video" to optimize video quality.

Effluo

It might also be worth a go to try driversweeper from guru3d.
I know you've tried a different one, but this is really great it's specificly for graphics.

My refresh rate is also at 59hrz too for some reason?? On W7

dbrowne9212

Ok, 1600x900 is not 1080p. Sony advertise there laptops as 1080p when in fact they refer to the hdmi port on the laptop as opposed to the screen.

Dvds will definetely look bad on a 1600x900 screen though. The reason dvds may look "better" on a hd tv is becasue of the viewing distance from a tv as opposed to a laptop screen.

thanks guys.

i think alot of this stems from not really understanding the whole hd thing (or what some claim to be HD)

one question though. i've downloaded a demo reel thats is a 1080p wmv file from the linkn i listed above. (it's the dolphins one)

at 50% of it's normal size which about half fills the screen it's crystal clear but at 100% it becomes a bit grainy. is that just because im so close to the screen (which makes sense now you say it). i havent got a HD tv and havent really ever bothered with HD video until now and i guess i was just expecting it to be absolutely immaculate quality even close up (like a high res photo almost or something).

Effluo

dbrowne9212 wrote: »

one question though. i've downloaded a demo reel thats is a 1080p wmv file from the linkn i listed above. (it's the dolphins one)

What makes you think it's 1080?

dbrowne9212

Effluo wrote: »

What makes you think it's 1080?

well, it says it's 1080p beside the download link and the dimensions of the video i downloaded are 1440x1080? i realise that a video file can technically fit these dimensions and still not be "HD" depending on how it was encoded but seeing as how i got the video from a microsoft site that provides demos of HD wmv content i guessed it must be (for want of a better term) true 1080p. no?

i've also watched the video in VLC and downloaded and watched some quicktime HD stuff from the apple site and see no difference... but as i say, maybe i was expecting too much (although for all the hype about the format, if that is the case then the whole world has gone mad