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More on DVD Player blurriness under Mac OS X 10.3.6
Yesterday we reported a problem with DVD playback under Mac OS X 10.3.6 where the video image is blurred severely both vertically and horizontally.
When this specific problem manifests, it only occurs under Mac OS X 10.3.6. In other words, a system that exhibits this problem under Mac OS X 10.3.6 will not exhibit it when booted from a Mac OS X 10.3.5 startup volume, despite presence of the same video card.
Since Mac OS X 10.3.6 does include modifications to DVD Player, it logically follows that this issue is restricted to the specific incremental update.
Today we've received some confirmation for the problem, as well as a few additional details.
One reader writes "Just installed a ATI 9800 into a 1.25 DP running 10.3.6. It is exhibiting this blurring. I can not described as much detail related to this problem, however the DVD I played after install of the card was not all that good of a picture. I have not used the DVD that much, but I have used it, and the picture used to be flawless, at least to these old eyes, 62 and still using Mac's"
MacFixIt reader Michele writes "I'm having the same problem in a iBook G4. [...] I thought it was an issue with the fact I had low RAM (256 MB)."
Another adds "I am glad it's not just me! I too burned 2 DVD's and playback was awful, worse than poor VHS!"
Finally, Jagtar writes "Running Apple 23" Cinema Display calibrated with Basic Colour 2.5 and Gretag Macbeth i1 Monitor. I was very surprised to see such poor woolly replay using Apple's DVD Player(latest updates) and my brother says the DVD's playback great on his domestic DVD player."
So far, the issue does not seem to be relegated to any brand or model of video card.
If you're experiencing a similar problem, please drop us a line at late-breakers@macfixit.com.
Resources
Versions.
iMac G4 800 mhz 1gb ram
I've noticed what MAY be related -- that with thousands of colors, some images are not properly interlaced.
Example: jpeg animations viewed with Firefox, for example the jackhammering icon at the top of www.boingboing.net
In that example -- only with "thousands of colors" but not with "millions of colors" -- instead of a single image, you see two half-there side by side images made up of alternating lines and white space.
I wonder if the DVD player is similarly mis-aligning the lines that should be interlaced?
Curious what color settings are involved here anyhow, whether that makes a difference.
as every OS release, perfect!
eMac G4 800Mhz 768mb RAM - Superdrive, GeForceMX2
to my untrained eyes it appears that they added a deinterlacing algorythm.
player. What the hell is so hard about getting it to work correctly?
The problem does not affect VLC playback. That remains as clear as ever. I don't believe this is a color depth issue. What I see is a loss of spatial resolution. On Avia PRO resolution tests, the every other pixel strips used to check pixel mapping no longer show individual pixels either vertically or horizontally. Instead those strips become a strip of uniform gray. Previous to 10.3.6, DVD Player would resolve those pixels. There were the expected non-monotonic spacing issues that would be expected due to scaling, but at least those details were visible.
Appreciate your point about Apple DVD player - it seems they are unable to get decent blacks (as VLC and the old OS9 versions did). There is the problem of "combing" (horizontal stripes in fast moving scenes)that seems to be eliminated by the various video options under VLC. Apple is paramount on good displays and images - why do they make such a mess of DVD playback. Maybe they should get some help from Videolan!
RRT
'combing' would be due to the image being interlaced, which is an artefact of
old TV design and should have disappeared along with NTSC's 29.97 fps.
It's theoretically possible to play the image at half the vertical resolution, but
double the framerate (and if 'combing' occurs, this is effectively what the
signal is sending). It's very annoying in the video capture of games (but
unavoidable unless you vsync to 25 Hz, which is a stupid thing to do since
then your gameplay tends to suffer).
nothing else. No software hacks to the system. Just an updated 10.3.6
machine.
Mark N,.
observed that their graphic card performance has been downscaled
significantly with 10.3.6, which seems to be connected to the freeze bug
which was caused by some OpenGL synchronization problem. I can imagine
MPEG decompression and scaling for larger screens is done for a large part by
the graphic card.
The performance on my 23" ACD is not acceptable. Especially with darker
scenes, DVD playback is one big MPEG artifact.
Haven't tried VLC, very crashy.
Marc
- by euro1 December 15, 2004 7:24 AM PST
- No problems, same as before.
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(12 Comments)G4/933 1.25Gb GeForce 4 MX