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

[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.

[GoombaJebboMT]

Originally Posted by 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.

I am having the same issue, but I don't think it is just DLP's. I have a 62" JVC HD-ILA, and it is an LCoS. Overall, I love the TV it has given me no issues whatsoever. The worst movie if any I have ever watched on mine through my PS3, and on Blu-Ray was 300. Now I know you have to take into account there is a resident graininess throughout the movie for cinematic purposes, but with the movie 300 it was REALLY noticeable. Yesterday, I was watching Body of Lies, and during the desert scenes it was noticeable. Am I just being too anal or is this an issue that can be fixed by some setting I have neglected to do?

[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.

[Forresttheman]

Try Sitting Farther Back From The Tv

[Lsalas76]

Well although I do have bad eye sight I'm pretty sure its not my vision. My brother has a 61" samsung TV thats 1080i(mine is 1080p) and his hd channels look good and the hd movies look really good.

[(((LEWIS)))]

Originally Posted by lsalas76

Well although I do have bad eye sight I'm pretty sure its not my vision. My brother has a 61" samsung TV thats 1080i(mine is 1080p) and his hd channels look good and the hd movies look really good.

how old is your TV? most TVs need at least 100+ hours watching time before the image starts looking its best... if you've had it months and can tell a clear difference when watching Blu-rays on someone elses set-up then i would say your TV is duff, it might just be a one off if others have the same and say the picture is awesome so try and get a replacement

[Knight-Errant]

I do see lots of natural grain on my film discs, but none on HD footage.

[blindedcoon]

I also have a sammy tv dlp(5087w) 50` and when set to "movie mode, this tv kicks major a$$! Iv`e only noticed grain on a few movies, but like i said, in movie mode there is none that iv`e seen. also i too looked for tv`s for 2 months, and every time i came back to dlp`s! lcd`s too pricey, same pic quality, plasma still has the "old grid" inside tv just like crt! and they also "burn in"(they say that has been remedied, but for the money, i`d rather not chance it) also i had my tv calibrated and it made a difference. hope this helps

[Lsalas76]

thanks for all your help everyone. I've tried most if not all your suggestions but my blu-ray movies still look horrible almost dvd like. Sometimes parts of movies can look good and then seconds later they get very "blurry". I just rented Crank and was not impressed with the PQ on that either and supposedly is has one of the best PQ out there.

Also, my brother let me use the HD-drive for the xbox and I put in Superman Returns and also Batman Begins and compared them to their dvd counter parts and seriously couldn't tell much of a difference between them either.

For the most part my HD channels look good but sometimes the channels get very blurry too. It seems that Planet Earth might even look better on HD Discovery than on my Blu-ray discs. Also I must say that when I'm watching the NBA on TNT HD, it looks absolutely horrible.

I don't know maybe I'm just a noob, or crazy or something. I haven't compared much standard dvds to their HD or blu-ray counterparts only the two mentioned above. What are some of the major differences someone is supposed to notice when comparing standard dvds to HD and Blu-rays?

thanks for helping this noob out again

[Ascended_Saiyan]

In this case, you are not dealing with grain. I think you are dealing with a HDTV issue (maybe a focus uniformity issue mixed with something else). Crank was shot with HD cameras (not film...no grain). It is very sharp...not blurry.

I'm not trying to be a smart a$$ but if your HDTV turns out not to be the problem...it might be your vision that's off. You have already eliminated the player by trying Blu-ray, HD DVD and HD programming. You have eliminated the cables because the Xbox 360 uses component and you probably used HDMI for the PS3. Nothing is really left but your TV or your eye sight.

[WriteSimply]

Originally Posted by lsalas76

I just rented Crank and was not impressed with the PQ on that either and supposedly is has one of the best PQ out there.

I've not watched Crank all the way through but I've watched a few scenes on a Sony Pearl at 100" and it looks amazing. So if you can't see that it is sharp and full of detail, well...

Do this. Rent Crank on DVD and BD. Play the DVD on your DVD player and the BD on your BD player. Try to sync it. Then switch between the two.


fuad

[Deciazulado]

Originally Posted by lsalas76

help

First, this reminds me of what happened when Laserdiscs went popular in the VHS era: people found them noisy as hell and then newer Laserdisc players came witth a button that "fixed" the problem: a "softness" button.
An anti-sharpness button.

Remember if your TV is set-up/designed to make a low resolution 480i picture look sharp, it's probably gonna overpump the high frequencies of higher resolution signals. 1080p has 8x 480i. Imagine adjusting a high end 30kHz tweeter to sound crisp and sharp with a muffled Dolby mistracking portable cassete recording. Then putting a electronica SA-CD or DVD-Audio with sinths and horns blasting w/o adjusting the treble.

If this is the case,

Originally Posted by Jaren613

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.

Originally Posted by 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.

Yup. Start with all auto gizmos off and reduce the sharpness setting to a minimum. Then get a good BD and turn the sharpness all the way down from your sitting position and slowly bring it up till the image looks in focus. And not keep making it sharper than sharp. (NOT hyper sharpie with hair strands looking like glass shards you know!)

Originally Posted by dakota81

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

As I said turn the autogizmos off and go from there, and that incudes selecting the standard, (or custom picture mode?) setting that gives you a FLAT setting, not enhanced. (It can have different names so try to find out which one is it)

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.

Well I watch movies at about 2PH which is aproximately 1x # of diagonal TV inches for 16:9 images and 3/4 x # for 2.39 movies (For our friend here that would be like sitting at 5 feet for The Wild and 4 feet for Casino Royale) so I should have twice the grain problem and I don't. I have all sharpness enhancements and boostings off, just giving me the pixels 1:1 straight/flat.