anyone know what causes black banding?

[JarettS]

i have a (piece of crap) Magnavox NB500MG9 going HDMI through a pretty high quality HDMI switcher box to a (pretty old) Toshiba HDMI 27" CRT HD 1080p TV. i get these random weird shadowy looking black bands, usually horizontal bands across the screen and usually occur during low light scenes or light to dark scenes. i read some stuff on black banding and didnt get too much help in my travels through google and blu-ray forums. some people say that it is an incompatibility with the equipment and usually cannot be corrected. others say its outdated firmware.

i know i have crap equipment and i know im reaching here uh, but wondering if anyone here can maybe give me some advice or help me put the finger on it before i throw the Crapnavox out the f**king window!!!

[callas01]

did I just hear something crash?

Sorry I am no help here.

[JarettS]

no problem. im just a little frustrated. magnavox support is done by a company called funai who obviously doesnt check their email. i think funai means "pass the buck" in japanese, or maybe "stupid american". well, actually it makes perfect sense because if i put out a crappy BD player, i certainly wouldnt want to be handling the complaints. i gotta give it to magnavox, good strategy guys.

[Trix]

Originally Posted by JarettS

i get these random weird shadowy looking black bands, usually horizontal bands across the screen and usually occur during low light scenes or light to dark scenes.

Are these "bands" scrolling from the bottom of your display up to the top, and looping over and over? If you turn the tv on, with no picture, just a black screen, do you see them even more then?

[bageleaterkkjji]

take it back 2 wallymart

[JarettS]

Originally Posted by Trix

Are these "bands" scrolling from the bottom of your display up to the top, and looping over and over? If you turn the tv on, with no picture, just a black screen, do you see them even more then?

no, the bands are totally random. they dont go from bottom to top. they are kinda translucent and random thickness. they move fast or slow randomly over the screen. it doesnt happen on dvd, just BD.

i also, just tried turning the tv on with no pic and there are no bands.

right now im gonna try changing cables and connecting directly into the tv bypassing the switcher box to see if that fixes it. ive tried changing all the settings back and forth in both the BD player menus and the TV menus, including anything to do with black level or color settings to no avail. cable tv works fine and i use a hdmi cable box. i also plug my computer into the tv with a dvi to hdmi cable also which works fine as well. im totally stumped.

[Trix]

I'm stumped as well then. I thought it may have sounded like a ground loop, which I'm also trying to deal with, but it appears we have ruled that out. Sorry I can't help!

[gearyt]

1st try the switcher, then the player if you have a friend that has one to loan.. you are going in the right direction

[JarettS]

thank you guys for your help. im gonna do some more testing tonight and post tomorrow about what i found. once again, thanks. this site is great. im glad i found it. ive learned so much about the format in just a few days reading on this site. this is going to be a permanent bookmark for me.

cheers

[JarettS]

i tried bypassing the switcher box and no improvement. i also switched cables, no improvement either.

im starting to think that its an incompatibility with the player and tv. im thinking firmware related. thats awesome cause magnafunaivox isnt gonna upgrade the firmware. so i guess this POS player is goin back on ebay where it came from.

pinching a penny on bluray equip lesson learned...

[Hammie]

Can you try the player on another TV (friend's or family's)? If the player looks fine on another TV then you know it is something to do with your setup. Also, are your cables Category 2 HDMI 1.3 compliant? Or maybe your TV is not 1.3 compliant and this is where the color levels are being clipped.

I had a 34" Toshiba CRT and noticed the same thing before moving to my LCD. Same PS3 player. Same cables. Same settings. Nothing changed but the picture quality. Maybe it is a Toshiba thing?

Good luck.

[JarettS]

Originally Posted by louhamilton

Can you try the player on another TV (friend's or family's)? If the player looks fine on another TV then you know it is something to do with your setup. Also, are your cables Category 2 HDMI 1.3 compliant? Or maybe your TV is not 1.3 compliant and this is where the color levels are being clipped.

I had a 34" Toshiba CRT and noticed the same thing before moving to my LCD. Same PS3 player. Same cables. Same settings. Nothing changed but the picture quality. Maybe it is a Toshiba thing?

Good luck.

wow, thats some great info. that sounds like a definite possibility. my landlord has a 50" HD DLP that i can try it with. i was trying my hardest to blame it on magnavox but maybe its the toshiba tv.

also, i thought about cabling but i cant remember which cable i bought from where and i cant find anything written on the cable to tell if they are cat 2 1.3 cables or not. is it usually written on the cable? if it isnt, im gonna have a hard time remembering which one i bought from where.

my tv is a toshiba MW26G71. im gonna look and see if i can figure out if its 1.3 or not.

[DavePS3]

If you're using a CRT, chances are you can only get 1080i at the MOST into it. You cannot run 720p into a CRT... the yoke runs too hot so if the CRT is not capable of running 1080i, yopu'd have to downconvert everything to 480i or 480p. I don't think it's your cables at all. Change your scan rate and use whatever cables normally go into your CRT (Component etc...). If you can hook up a regular DVD player to the CRT and it displays a movie perfectly... the CRT is doing what it was meant to do. You may be asking the CRT to do more than it's capable of.

[DavePS3]

By CRT, I mean A tube television, not a CRT projector.

[DavePS3]

There is no 27" CRT tube television in the world that does 1080p.

[andyman1970]

It's the Toshiba TV rebelling against the Blu-ray player for kicking HD DVD @$$...

I know that was a bad joke and this is serious. Just couldn't resist.

[JarettS]

the toshiba is a 27" crt and it states that the supported resolutions are 1080i, 480p, 480i, and 720p (i even double checked it for the above poster and it indeed says 720p is supported)

the bd player is set to 1080i also.

i have a hd cable box and it outputs 1080i fine all the time. no problems and picture is perfect when watching HDTV. the problem happens when the bluray player is used and only on BD movies. DVD movies play fine and picture is perfect.

im leaning towards the earlier poster who had the same problem and said that basically, the toshiba tv might just not like the magnavox. i agree that it might be a scan rate issue as well because it doesnt happen on dvd or hdtv, just bd.

haha, HDDVD R.I.P.! hey, but didnt HDDVD have a theoretical 50GB maximum which was much higher, like double that of BD? that did impress me when i heard it, lots of possibilities there. i think mega-giant sony just killed toshiba on the marketing wars on that one.

[DavePS3]

If it's a widescreen 27", it'll do 1080i but not 720p or 1080p. It can't. The set will downconvert the signal. Supporting a resolution and actually scanning at that rate are two very different things. Sony tried that marketing ploy at one point too. Scan at 480i or 480p and see if you still get the banding.

[JarettS]

awesome idea dave, i will try to play bd at 480i/p when i get home. thats a great test to try. damn, i want to get outa here but i have to finish this job-related-work-crap first...sigh.

also, thanks for that info dan (and everyone else of course!). i didnt know about the 720p thing, good to know.

[andyman1970]

Originally Posted by JarettS

haha, HDDVD R.I.P.! hey, but didnt HDDVD have a theoretical 50GB maximum which was much higher, like double that of BD? that did impress me when i heard it, lots of possibilities there. i think mega-giant sony just killed toshiba on the marketing wars on that one.

Well, I'm not sure, but I do know that Blu-ray has an actual 50GB maximum, not theoretical. That's like the difference between real dollars and theoretical dollars. Everyone knows real is better. Also, I believe Blu-ray is trying to expand it's maximum storage to 100GB or more.