Best Video Card for 7MC with Blu-ray

[Chasseur]

Thanks for the details, Aaron.

I have the GT 430 and it’s working very well with live and recorded tv in WMC. However, for bluray playback via TMT, it could be better.

You almost convinced me to buy a 6570 until I read about the recorded tv issues.

[Aaron Ledger]

If you shop somewhere with a liberal return policy, you might want to give it a try to see how well it works for you. I am very sensitive to judder, but not everyone is. I still find that with the content I watch that has the telecine switching (mostly shows recorded from AMC) that the 6570 is not horrible. What I find is that in certain sequences of motion when the telecine switch occurs is that there may be a slight jump as if there was a frame drop or repeat event. It’s not ideal, but for me, the other pros outweigh the cons.

[phoneguyinpgh]

I used both the 430GT and a 6570.  The switching issues are there for the 6570, but the effects are not nearly as bad as with a 4550 that I previously had.  A 6570 would be a very good investment.

The 430GT however, did not have the switching issues the 4550 did, but it’s SD performance was terrible.  All drivers were up to date etc., but the image was unacceptable.  I upgraded to a 6570 and all was well.

Just recently I completely re-built both my HTPCs.  I used AMD A4-3400 and SSD for the OS.  Performance for the past month has been more than good for live TV, recorded TV, HD and SD material.  No issues thus far.

[Chasseur]

I never seen the switching issue and I’m wondering how bothering it is with the 6570? How often do you see it? If the issue is visible during a recorded show, do you see it during all the show?

[Aaron Ledger]

The telecine switching is part of the originally broadcast program so you see it in recordings as well as live TV. Depending on the content and channel, it may never have switching, the switching may occur fairly infrequently or it may occur frequently. If the switching is occurring in the content, you may or may not always notice the switch depending on the type of motion at the time the switch occurred.

How much you would be bothered by this behavior depends on your sensitivity to judder and what the actual content is that you are watching.

[phoneguyinpgh]

The switching issue, for me, cause the brightness of the image to flash.  Mikinho explained that it’s an incompatability between the MS MPEG decoder and the MPEG encoder the network or cable company is using.  I only observed it on certain networks or certain shows and it could be quite anoying.

You can acctually see it by pressing “411” then “info” on a media center remote.  This brings up details pages for the stream you’re viewing (live or recorded).  If you keep pressing your right navigation button untill you get to the last page of the details, at the bottom will be the frame rate.  If it is bouncing between 59 and 29, that is the switching we are talking about.  I can see it switching even now with my new systems but it doesn’t manifest itself as the brightness flashing I had with the 4550 cards.  I do sometimes notice some minor hiccups with the A4-3400 but nothing is nearly as bad as it was.

[Aaron Ledger]

The strobing you describe is the most annoying potential artifact of the telecine switching (WMC debug info shows you the switch between telecine modes as 29(soft) and 59(hard)). If you configure the nominal range registry setting for WMC, the strobing artifact should be eliminated. Disabling dynamic contrast feature in the Intel, NVIDIA or AMD drivers should also alleviate this artifact.

In case you haven’t used it before: Add the key in Regedit: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREDebugehPresenter.dll and add the DWORD NominalRange.

Value of 1 = 0-255 RGB; 2 = 16-235

The judder created by the issue is another matter and unfortunately, there is no easy workaround at this time. While the transmissions are legal, I don’t believe there is really any gain in switching telecine modes in the manner that it is done in the source video. It is difficult to get traction with the content originators unless people start complaining en masse.

[Chasseur]

If the problem is not visible on a GT 430, that means Nvidia is able to correct the problem. It also means ATI/AMD should be able to correct it also.

[Aaron Ledger]

It is true that the hardware vendors could optimize their designs in the future to respond better to this situation they are being presented. The best solution would be for content originators to alter the transmissions so that they are all soft-telecined for film-based content because it would result in the ideal picture quality.

[phoneguyinpgh]

A hardware fix would prolly be the best.  I did the registry fix you mentioned Aaron, it had minnimal effect.  I still had flashing only on certain broadcasts.  That was a motivation for me to rebuild both of my systems.  I haven’t seen any flahsing and much less judder with the A4-3400.  That is a very very good CPU/GPU (or APU) for a dedicated HTPC that isn’t going to be used for any hi powered computer work. 

[Chasseur]

How does the 6570 perform with TMT5? Is the auto-refresh rate switch working? (auto switch to 24p)

[Chasseur]

Here’s a big comparision of both cards: http://www.anandtech.com/print/4380

[sivart321]

I have both a GT430 and the integrated HD 4000 on a new Ivy Bridge desktop board.  I have noticed that the HD 4000 is clipping everything below ~5% above video black.   Has anyone seen reviews comparing the HD 4000 to the GT 430 and the ATI 6570?  I can definitely say I notice the issues mentioned above regarding the GT 430 and am curious if trying the ATI card might make things better, but have no idea if it is better than the integrated HD 4000.  Right now with the clipping black, I am not too thrilled with the HD 4000, but it otherwise seems okay minus the poor refresh rate performance.  

[Chasseur]

With the GT430, I sometimes get micro stuttering watching TV in media center. When I disable “Use inverse telecine” in the nvidia control panel, the stuttering is gone. However, not sure it’s the best setting when watching other content…

[Aaron Ledger]

Most likely what you are encountering is the telecine switching in content, you’d need to check to be sure. IVTC utilizes the soft telecine content so that at least there will not be dirty frames (this is what happens with hard telecine) though you will still have uneven cadence of 24p content if played back to display at 59Hz.

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