Help! most of my blu-ray titles look very grainy

[Lsalas76]

Ok I have a 61" Samsung 1080p DLP TV ( HL-S6167W) and I have a ps3( had it since December). I own the Prestige, Happy Feet, Planet Earth, Enter the Dragon and the Departed. Most of them look extremely grainy, even PE. The only one that looks great is Happy Feet. Btw, I do have my PS3 connected via sony HDMI cable. I have rented The Pursuit of Happyness, Kingdom of Heaven, and Rock Balboa from Netflix and those all looked very grainy and bad too. Although Kindom of Heaven did look some what decent.

I also have dish network HD and the PQ on most of the HD channels looks great. The Dish Network reciever only supports 1080i. I don't know if the problem lies with my ps3 or my TV. My ps3 games look good so I assuming it might be my TV since I bought it open box from Sam's club

How would I know if I have to replace my lamp or mirros and or color wheel on my TV?

thanks in advance for any help

[Zaphod]

I don't know about yours in general, but out of all the DLP's I have ever looked at, not many of them impressed me as far as the PQ goes, even when displaying Blu-ray demos.

[POOPonYOU]

I have the same problem as you do. The PQ on most of the movies I watch is very grainy. Hopefully there is someone on these forums who can tell us how to fine tune our DLPs.

[Spatula City]

Replace your tv with a sony.

[Filterlab]

A good start is to reduce the sharpness control on your TV and BD player.

It's a fine balance between clarity and grain, but with a little tweaking it could help.

Although it's generally best to avoid picture noise reduction settings, the lowest setting may help if your TV has that option.

With the size of your TV, you're simply going to see EVERYTHING in extra large.

[dakota81]

The grain is in the source movie, it's not the tv set, the ps3, or the connections between them. Unfortunately there's little that can be done, except listen to the videophiles proclaim that studios have the duty to keep the image as close to the theatrical release as possible, therefore all the grain must stay.

Rocky Balboa was the worst movie I've seen for grain, most others are not bad. Check out Crank and you'll really see what blu-ray can do for a movie - though fair warning Crank's plot is not suited for everyone. Or Casino Royale was a fantastic picture without grain being a distraction. I haven't watched yet, but I hear Black Hawk Down is another with an absolutely fantastic picture.

Blu-ray has been out for not even a year, I fully expect the quality of encodings to improve a lot over the next few years.

btw, my tv is a Sammy HL-S5679W.

[NutsAboutPS3]

Give me grain over a processed image any day. The first Blu-ray movie I've been disappointed in the quality of is Hollywoodland - almost no grain, but a really poor viewing experience, looked very processed and artificial, and had compression artifacts such as dancing macroblocks in darker smooth areas. I'd much rather have the fine random grain noise.

[paul0908]

i had he same problem on my samsung tv but i found when i changed my picture mode on the tv to 'movie' it was alot better it can also look very grainy if your sitting to close to your tv

[Lsalas76]

thanks for all your replies.

paul0908: I can't change my TV to Film mode, since that would only be applicable with A/V cable or via componets. I think it automatically sets itself to film mode when connecting an HDMI cable.

Maybe I am sitting too close. How far should your TV generally be from where you are sitting?

Thing is I don't have much space in my room or in any other place in my house for that matter yet.

[POOPonYOU]

I think you should be sitting 1 1/2 x # of inches of your screen. So your tv is 61 inches which means you should be sitting about 7 1/2 feet from your screen. But I may be wrong.

[paul0908]

i can still change my tv picure mode with hdmi, saying that with my old hdtv if i remember right i couldnt on that one so maybe its only on some sets this can be done, even so i did have the same problem, with both my ps3 and my samsung blu-ray player so your not alone,

[Greenmatiz2]

That's a rear-projection model? If so, I've always found rear-projection TVs to do funky things with contrast on stuff like grain, making it stick out more. I haven't really looked at any of them for a good year or more, though.

[Josh]

The images on film are made up of tiny dots, which are usually refered to as grain. Grain is an inherent part of film. You can compare to video (like Direct TV or Crank - which was shot in video).

[Coltboy]

I understand your pain with the grainyness. for a few months before i bought a blu-ray player and a TV, i was looking to see what was the best combination. Cost was the big factor, but my budies got involved wth my desision making process so i ended up buying a moderately expensive setup. Really more than i wanted to spend.........But my opinion is that blu-ray/TV look very well on LCD's............ high priced LCD's unfortunately mine happens to be a bravia 46'' BX2.

I listened to many people on this subject of which is better, there are good and bad about each technology, so i just picked a side and went with it. my friends told me wait to see who would win the DVD war. again i chose my side and hopefully it will win.

[Coltboy]

Also i have the guardian Blu-ray. i cannot play the movie in enchanced mode. i don;t know why. the player is a sony BPS-1 thank you

[buckshot]

I didn't see if anyone else mentioned your ps3 settings. do you have it set to the highest resolution of your tv under the video settings? I have a samsung 56'' dlp and I have only been let down by sleepy hollow, until I was told that it was supposed to be horribly grainy.

I don't believe it has to do with your projection tv. the one I have looks amazing. I just had some people over who watched casino royal and were blown away.

the cables aren't running by anything that would cause interference are they? are the cables high quality? they don't need to be name brand (monster = rip off) but better than the thin uninsulated cables with low quality connectors.

just some ideas. KOH, crank, BHD, and CR are some of the best titles i've seen.

[Rustmonsteru]

Originally Posted by POOPonYOU

I think you should be sitting 1 1/2 x # of inches of your screen. So your tv is 61 inches which means you should be sitting about 7 1/2 feet from your screen. But I may be wrong.

1.5x the diagonal = minimum viewing distance not ideal viewing distance. I definately would'nt sit that close (7.5') to a 61" display but everyone has different preferences.

You could play with the contrast or even better get a home theatre calibration disc if you haven't already but at 61" you've supersized all the pixels so grain is inevitable. I would'nt blame your equipment. What used to be invisible has now been made visible that's all.

[Ascended_Saiyan]

Originally Posted by dakota81

Blu-ray has been out for not even a year, I fully expect the quality of encodings to improve a lot over the next few years.

I don't understand that statement. If encodes are now transparent to the master film, how can someone think it can get better than the original film it was shot on?

And as Josh basically said, film IS grain. Grain IS film. Anything else is NOT transparent to the master film. It would be something else. Maybe some people are just saying they want all future movies to be shot only with HD cameras. Plus, they would not like to see the movie as the director intended us to see it.

[dakota81]

Originally Posted by paul0908

i had he same problem on my samsung tv but i found when i changed my picture mode on the tv to 'movie' it was alot better it can also look very grainy if your sitting to close to your tv

Movie mode is different from film mode. The Samsungs can choose between dynamic, standard, movie, and custom picture modes.

Originally Posted by Ascended_Saiyan

I don't understand that statement. If encodes are now transparent to the master film, how can someone think it can get better than the original film it was shot on?

And as Josh basically said, film IS grain. Grain IS film. Anything else is NOT transparent to the master film. It would be something else. Maybe some people are just saying they want all future movies to be shot only with HD cameras. Plus, they would not like to see the movie as the director intended us to see it.

There are many ways it can improve. They can better tweak all the settings during the encoding process, or improve on the encoding process as a whole. They can start using 50gb more wisely and effectively. Maybe they'll even find a good balance to reduce grain and keep the clarity. Or improve on the process of transferring film to a digital form. Take your pick on what could be improved upon in the coming years.

As for grain & director's intentions, the director intended us to see the movie on the big theatrical screen. Well I'm not, I'm watching it on a much smaller dlp set, and lots of grain looks really, really bad.

[Jaren613]

Originally Posted by lsalas76

Ok I have a 61" Samsung 1080p DLP TV ( HL-S6167W) and I have a ps3( had it since December). I own the Prestige, Happy Feet, Planet Earth, Enter the Dragon and the Departed. Most of them look extremely grainy, even PE. The only one that looks great is Happy Feet. Btw, I do have my PS3 connected via sony HDMI cable. I have rented The Pursuit of Happyness, Kingdom of Heaven, and Rock Balboa from Netflix and those all looked very grainy and bad too. Although Kindom of Heaven did look some what decent.

I also have dish network HD and the PQ on most of the HD channels looks great. The Dish Network reciever only supports 1080i. I don't know if the problem lies with my ps3 or my TV. My ps3 games look good so I assuming it might be my TV since I bought it open box from Sam's club

How would I know if I have to replace my lamp or mirros and or color wheel on my TV?

thanks in advance for any help

I do know for a fact (owning that exact same TV) that Samsung's line of DLPs have a naturally higher thatn normal setting for sharpness. This isn't really grain, but it can give the appearance of grain when viewing 1080p quality movies.

Anyway, I went in and manually adjusted my sharpness to that of normal TV settings, things will look softer to you at first (because you're used to the overly sharp images) but it will look good after you adjust. That fixed my "grain" issues. Again, I have that exact seup pretty much, and I would say from my experience it is how Samsung sets their sharpness on this particular line of 1080p DLPs.