MPEG Compression Artifacts (aka "Picture Quality Issues")

I can't stomach watching the Broncos / Browns game on NFL Network HD - the signal breaks up with small, rectangualar "compression artifacts" every 10 seconds, or every time there's a sudden movement (like the camera panning to follow the football).
This is what Comcast HD was like, and this is why I switched.
Verizon FIOS HD Picture Quality has gone down the tubes -- very much contrary to the claims of the advertising.

Glenn,
Well, I disagree, so I guess we will just have to agree to disagree.
There are going to be occasional glitches in anything, be it the TV or my car or my house or travel or elections or even my darling wife of 45 years...I have had FiOS TV for 3+ years, and over that time I have very rarely seen pixellation on any channels. I agree, tonight there is some on NFLNet, but I have had the new channels for several weeks now and this is the first time that I can remember anything more than one or two times in maybe 30 minutes. I don't see this as anything more than an unusual occurance that will probably happen again some time in the future, hopefully a long time in the future; I certainly don't see it as a trend, at least until I see it happening regularly.
Just curious, have you reported this to the FSC? I hope you and others have, otherwise Verizon may not even realize there is a problem.
Here is a link to a dslreports.com thread discussing this same issue: http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r21388668-HD-Thr-Nite-Football-on-NFLNET-HD-Pixelating
I guess TV is not just that important to me to worry about a little pixellation. I watch a lot of TV now as I am retired and have some health problems, but gee, it really is only TV.
Justin
Verizon FiOS TV, Internet, and phone
IMG 1.6.0, Build 06.89
Keller, TX
Message Edited by Justin on 11-06-2008 10:21 PM

Similar Messages

ATV Picture quality issue

Hello,
my ATV is connected to a Philips 47PFL8404H via HDMI and I have problems with the picture quality. While all my movies are looking perfect on my 30'' Cinema Display, they look "drowned" on the TV. The Contrast is fine, but at dark movie scenes every detail get lost in the black.
Working on the contrast, and/or Brightness at the TV dosn't help.
Any suggestions?

Try Settings>Video and adjust HDMI options - there's a light and dark output option amongst other things.
Chance of you getting identical output on the 2 devices are remote as there are so many parameters at play, and potentially differing gamma treatment of monitor and TV.

IDVD bitrate compression and poor picture quality

Folks,
I have been reading some of the postings and agree that blockiness is a problem with bigger movie files >70 min. So, if I do not like IDVD, what other DVD editing programs are out there than can incorporate imovie HD files?
Regards,
"picky about the picture"

jzdcbland,
So, if I do not like IDVD, what other DVD editing programs are out there than can incorporate imovie HD files?
"picky about the picture"
iDVD is a great program for what it is - basically producing 'home movie' DVDs.
If you are really "picky about the picture" , you can buy Apple's DVD Studio Pro - now part of Apple's Final Cut Studio for US $1299 - and work with the many compression options featured in Apple's Compressor application. Some people prefer the MPG-2 encoding done by BitVice ( BitVice at http://www.innobits.se/ for US $297 (US $149 for the Lite version)) to Apple's Compressor.
So the chances are good that for an expenditure of about US $1600 you can improve your results. I suppose if you can tolerate much simplier menus, you could buy Roxio's Toast Titanium 7 (about US $80) and use BitVice as the encoding program instead of the encoder in Toast.
It's easy to be 'picky' ... all it takes is money.
PS - I'm hoping that Apple will bring out a lite version of DVD SP for people who want more options - who knows what will happen if enough people request such an application.

N97 Picture quality (colour issue)

Hi, when i take pictures with the camera on the N97 the picture quality seems to be getting worse. There seems to be a lack of colour in any of my pictures now, like if you went into photoshop and reduced the colour, thats the outcome im getting now from every picture no matter how bright my surroundings are. Is anyone else experiencing this problem? I tried to upload a pic as an attachment, but after clicking several times on the add attachments link, it failed to work. Typical NOKIA

Welcome Craig
I'm wondering if the process of compressing the video for the DVD may be pulling out a dying pixel
Dead pixels occur in LCD Displays eventually (as on a laptop / computer display or the LCD screen of a camcorder) and not actually located on the software required to generate mpeg2. Might be a hardware related issue but very unlikely that it relates to software exclusively.
Hope this Helps.

Interlace problem or compression artifact?

Premiere 6.5
XP sp2
Quad-core 266
4 Gb RAM
7200 rpm SATA HDD for video projects
I am working on a volunteer project for a local museum wherein some old VHS tapes need to be digitized. The final video (probably MPEG-2) will be accessible from research computers at the museum. File size is not a big issue, but preserving as much quality (such as it is) from the 10+ year old VHS (not SVHS) tapes is essential.
So I feed the analog output from my tape deck to my Sony TVR310 camcorder for A/D conversion, then capture from there to my PC via firewire. I have tried capturing via the software that came with my Edius (a.k.a. Canopus) card, and also directly into Premiere. Same thing happens both times.
On the exported video (AVI, MPG1, MPG2) I see these wavy edges on the left and right sides of high-contrast areas. See the guy's hat in the attached image (if it ever gets outa the queu). Does this look like a compression artifact? Or is it an interlace problem? I do not see this effect when I watch the original video on my TV.
Note that Premiere reports the average data rate for the 720x480 @ 29.97 fps clip as 3600 kb/s. So when I export to MPEG I set the data rate at 5000 kb/s.
When I process and export the video in Premiere, I have "no fields" selected everywhere, and for the actual export I have selected the "de-interlace" option. Since this is for viewing on computers only, I figured that was the correct thing to do.
Edited: I should also mention that I do not see this effect in the monitor window when I scrub the clip on the timeline.
Dan Heim

The first time I tried with the capture settings reset to LFF, and then tried to export (as uncompressed AVI), specifying "no fields" in the "keyframe and rendering" dialog box, and selecting "deinterlace" in the "special processing" dialog box, I still got those artifacts.
THEN ... after searching the help file for "deinterlace" and reading all the linked pages, I tried right-clicking on the clip on the timeline, went to "video options" / "field options" and selected "always deinterlace." Had to re-render on the timeline. Then, after exporting same as before, the artifacts were finally gone.
So you were correct about it being an interlacing issue. Thanks for the insight! GSpot now reports the exported video as 29.97 frames and 0 fields.
Here's a puzzle though ... I tried the same thing with the original clip (the one captured as progressive instead of LFF) and it smoothed out as well. Perhaps Premiere is smart enough to recognize what it's getting for input, and ignores stupid commands? Whatever, this means I can use my original footage and not have to recapture 1.5 hours of video.
Dan Heim

Color Correction + DVD/MPEG Compression Produced Noise

I recently color corrected a 3-hour rock concert using FCP and a broadcast monitor. When played from the timeline the concert looks great however after outputting, MPEG compression and authoring a DVD there's video noise over the image. Almost snow like but different. I'd post a screengrab but I can't seem to take one in DVD Player. Any advice?

That's exactly right Jonathan, you need to add the 2:3 pulldown, and I can tell you all why. (I read the post from Max Average, but I'm not commenting that separately)
The DVD specification simply does not support video marked as 23.98 fps (which is how Apple wants to call it) or even 23.976 fps (which is what MPEG-2 calls it). This means that for NTSC DVDs you can only use MPEG-2 video files which are marked as 29.97 fps. This is true whether your encoder (like Compressor) is letting you be aware of it or not. There is no "native 23.98 frame rate" on a DVD and the right way of making the decoder believe it is 29.97 instead, is to use 2:3 pulldown. Any other method would just be wasting bandwidth/bitrate or picture quality, depending on which way you want to look at it.
The 2:3 pulldown process, as specified by MPEG-2, is a way for the encoder of describing to the decoder which of its already decoded fields it should be repeating (displaying once more) and when. These field repetitions are designed to increase the interlaced displayed frame rate from 23.976 to 29.97. This "new" frame rate must be explicitely written into the .m2v stream, to be accepted by a DVD authoring tool, e.g., DVD SP.
I am sure many of you may wonder why it is called "pulldown" when in fact the frame rate seems to be going "up" from 24 to 30, as I did myself back in the nineties;-)
The way to wrap ones head around that, is to think about what whould happen if you just mapped 24 FPS film frames onto the NTSC TV standard which has to display frames at nearly 30 fps on a TV. Of course the movie would run 25% FASTER on a TV than it did at the cinema/picture theatre. In that perspective, the solution had to be to SLOW DOWN (pulldown) the presentation speed on a TV. The engineers of that time (this was long before color TV was even invented)
were faced with a need for film (Hollywood movies) to be translated for TV broadcasts). Of course they could not change the 30 fps used for TV broadcasts (29.97 fps came much later when colors were added;-), so they had to come up with a scheme which made each film frame seem to last 25% longer on the TV screen, than it would have otherwise. "Pulling down" the display frequency from, the physical 30 fps to match the experienced 24 fps was accomplished by letting every other frame be displayed for 50% longer on the TV. On average that is of course 25% longer (slower) which was the goal.
I may be monitoring this thread for further comments.
BTW, BitVice 1.7 runs surprisingly well under Rosetta.
Roger Andersson / Innobits AB, Makers of BitVice MPEG-2 Encoder for Mac
http://www.innobits.com/
As per Apple Discussions Terms of Service:
"I may receive some form of compensation, financial or otherwise, from my recommendation or link."

Compression artifacts on long form video

I have created three 1:45 min. videos on iMovie (multi-cam event shot on professional DVCAM camcorders (Sony DSR-390). When I burned to i-DVD5.1, I was disappointed with the image quality. The movies look great but there are very noticeable compression artifacts against dark backgrounds (the black area "swim" with pixel blocks) on the DVD At first, iDVD required me to use a dual-layer disc which I did and then was able on a second (seperate encode) try to use a standard single layer. The first pass, I used "best performance" preference. The second, I used "best quality." Both deliver slightly different but similarly disappointing results.
One question is: does iDVD 5.1 automatically compress in proportion to the file size/running length? The other is: is there any other tricks that can reduce the compression artifacts without having to go into more professional solutions (Compressor/DVDPro).
I have succesfully burned other long form programs but not quite this long. The most notable quality issues in previous projects were moving pixels blocks showed up on fades ins.
Any thoughts will be greatly appreciated.
Powerbook G4 167MHZ Mac OS X (10.4.5)

Hi DP,
welcome to this forum
iDVD is a consumer tool, so convenience is No1, and the main user gruop is the average "Daddy films son in the zoo" moviemaker... as me!
the specs allow up to 120min, but that pushes as said before iDVD to its limits: iDVD uses a "simple" audio codec (=huge files) and a very high bitrate with projects below 60min (8kB/Sec), that drops (dramatically) when doing longer projects.
switching "performance/quality" is to be translated with VBR/CBR...
you have two (and a half) options:
create two disks
spend $$$$ for DVDSP
all free otpions I do know (ffmpeg) don't allow setting manually bitrates for specific scenes...
silly workaround:
you could add some slight "blurr" on that specific, low key/dark scene, that reduces artifacts too... but ... well, blurrs the scene ..

Compression Artifacts in Whites!

I have a lot of movies exported from FCP as DV50 NTSC 23.98P with intentionally blown out whites. When working with the clips is FCP at "Super-White", everything is fine. But when I drop the clips into iDVD to compress, ALL of the blown out whites have grey vertical bands running through them! It looks horrible.
I've tried compressing using both the High Quality and Professional Quality settings and I get the same result. This is not a problem using iDVD 5 with the same clips. What I am doing wrong? How do I get rid of these HORRIBLE compression artifacts???

I remember seeing the effect you describe with MiniDV material years ago. But I'm not working with MiniDV, nor have I had this issue with previous versions of iDVD.
The material I'm working with was shot on HDCAM, cut in 1080P DVCPROHD, and downconverted to DVCPRO50. The DVCPRO50 version is the version that I am compressing with iDVD. And like I said, I've been doing this workflow in iDVD 5, with the same clips for the last year and have NEVER experienced a single issue with image quality or compression artifacting. So I'm confused as to what is causing it now in the newer vesion of iDVD. Software is supposed to get better with each new release, right???

Logging old VHS/Beta tapes to FCP. Best route for picture quality?

Logging old broadcasts recorded on VHS. Most look very good for the time from, some have slight "ghosting" and other carious imperfections. I am using one of the best VCRs and Beta Machines ever made in Sony Super VHS and Super Betas. Both have S-Video outputs. Logging with Formac Studio and I also have a Canopus ADVC-100. Shall I go this route because the picture quality won't get any better? Or any other suggestions? Thanks.

I have an AJA IO, which is an older capture device, and have done quite a few jobs like you are describing. The IO (or another high-quality capture device) allows you to input S-VHS, or another analog signal, such as YUV component video, which many beta decks have, and capture the material to an uncompressed 8- or 10-bit QT, thereby preserving the maximum quality possible. Converting to DV compresses the footage, which can't be undone later down the pipeline, so if you are planning to output to another compressed format, such as MPEG-2 for DVD, you will compress it yet again and lose even more quality. I guess it all depends on the deliverables you need.
-van

Canon Vixia HFM40 video quality issues in Premiere Elements 10

Hi,
I am trying to edit video from a Canon Vixia HFM40 camcorder in Adobe Premiere Elements 10 on a Mac, but the video playback and the exported video has quality issues. Playback is not smooth when there is a lot of movement in the picture. It looks similar to interlacing issues, but there are no horizontal lines when the video is paused. Any ideas on how to solve that would be be much appreciated.
Here are the specs:
Video Format (Canon's XFP mode):
- AVCDH MPEG-4 AVC/H.264
- Resolution: 1,920 x 1080
- Bitrate: 17 Mbps
- Frame rate: 60i or 30p (problem occurs in both instances)
- File extension: MTS
Workstation:
- Fall 2010 27" iMac, quad core 2.93 GHz Intel Core i7
- Mac OS X Lion 10.7.2
- 12 GB RAM
- Adobe Premiere Elements 10.0
Project Preset: AVCHD Full HD 1080i 30 (several other presets had the same result).
Thanks.
Ralph

OK, I've been doing some more research and I think I found the problem. The choppy picture is due to Premiere Elements and VLCs inability to properly de-interlace the 60i video. It gets played back in 30p, which does not create horizontal lines, but it is a lot more choppy than the native 60i, especially when there is a lot of movement in the picture.
I verified this theory by installing the latest VLC beta (from http://nightlies.videolan.org/) and playing back my source MTS file with De-Interlacing set to "On" and De-Interlacing Mode set to "yadif (2x)". Those settings did not work with the current official relase of VLC (1.1.12). The 1.2 VLC beta is not fully functional yet and I am not getting consistent results, but when I play that video several times, then after about 3 or 4 tries it plays back perfectly smooth, just like it is when playing back the native file from the camcorder connected to the HDTV via HDMI.
That also works with video exported from Premiere Elements 10 with preset AVCHD M2T - H264 1920 x 1080i 30.
The video is still choppy when played back in Premiere, but that does not really matter, since the output file produced by Premiere can be played back with VLC (assuming that the final build of VLC 1.2 can handle the files correctly).
-> Hunt: thank you again for your help.
Ralph

IPad 2 Video playback Quality Issue (Low Contrast and grayish black)

Does anyone notice that the video playback quality is really bad on the iPad 2? If you try to play any video (youtube, apple trailer, your own converted video) on the iPad 2, any black images will turn grayish... Just put your iPhone, iPod touch, or even the older iPad next to it, then you will notice a BIG difference. The color is similar to what happened when you set the gamma incorrectly on a display.
Also, you will notice this more if you change the orientation of the device, the contrast will be corrected for a fraction of a second.
I've tried this on other iPad 2 and they all share the same problem. I tried to talk to the Apple Genius Bar and they refused to give me a proper answer on this, instead simply claiming that is just the way it is... I wanted to refund this but I've passed the 14 days rule and also I got it from a authorized retailer and so Apple just won't take it back.
I believe it can be fixed by software... Any idea? or I shall throw it away T_T

I'm on the phone with apple support right now. I work at a post production house, and we/our clients keep having this issue - everything looks great on screen and on the ipad 1, and theres a huge gamma shift on the ipad 2. they need to fix this ASAP. like Jls21 already said, a lot of us use ipads for work purposes - unacceptable!
this thread ( https://discussions.apple.com/message/15100980#15100980 ) seems to blame the h.264 codec/compression settings…? does anyone know of another codec that prevents this gamma shift on the ipad 2?
this is from the tech specs page:
Video formats supported: H.264 video up to 720p, 30 frames per second, Main Profile level 3.1 with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps, 48kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats; MPEG-4 video, up to 2.5 Mbps, 640 by 480 pixels, 30 frames per second, Simple Profile with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps per channel, 48kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats; Motion JPEG (M-JPEG) up to 35 Mbps, 1280 by 720 pixels, 30 frames per second, audio in ulaw, PCM stereo audio in .avi file format
is there anything that jumps out to anyone regarding workarounds for this issue?
we've used both Compressor and MPEG Streamclip - there's no quality difference between them, in case anyone is trying that.
okay so, i was transferred to a senior technical rep and he looked it up - apparently apple is getting a bunch of complaints about this issue and they've submitted it to their developers. the more people that call and complain, the higher up on the priority list it goes to be fixed in a software update. there is no workaround known, and it's a standard issue across all ipad 2's.

Print quality issues

Hello
We are having print quality issue when printing PDF's to our Canon iR C2880/C3380 UFR II. This was the most recent print driver from canons website which was download about 6 weeks ago. version 2.9. At one time we were having other pring quality issues and we changed from the post script driver to the ufr ii which solved the problem at the time.
This past saturday we upgrade the operating systems on the systems in question and they are now running windows 7 64 bit with service pack 1 installed. image 1 is the orignal pdf that was printed with a 3rd party pdf printer(PDF Xchange view version 2.5) image 2 is the same document that was printed using acrobat reader 10.1.2
the options for the print were pretty much identical between the program. Print as image was not selected. 1 thing to note with the acrobat when print as image was selected there was a slight improvement in the print quality.
Any help would greatly be appreciated.
image 1
image2

Hi, nd a warm welcome to the forums!
Off the bat, it looks like maybe bad RAM/ROM in the Printer, or corrupt Font.
Can you have another Computer jook to it and print for a test?
Can you try Printing from Adobe Reader...
http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html
Can you in Preview, Save As a picture format for a test?

Mid 2009 13" MBP iSight camera bad picture quality in photo booth

My daughter's stock mid 2009 13" MBP 2.26 ghz intel core two duo has a problem with the isight camera. The isight camera is built in to the screen. The isight camera works some of the time flawlessly and other times it comes out real grainy and with small colored pixels all over the screen like colored static (about 20% to 30% of the photo booth screen is affected but the rest of the screen outside of the photo booth app is unaffected). She only uses it in photo booth but we've tried the iChat app and the same thing happens there too, once she couldn't get the MBP to connect to the isight camera (it just showed a black photo booth screen), so she closed the lid of her MBP and reopened it and it worked. All of the software and firmware is up to date and we've tried resetting the PRAM and the SMC, it didn't do anything to fix the problem. It seems like there's a wire loose in the computer from the screen to the computer base, only because I can move the screen back and forth and the picture quality changes, the amount of static on the picture will move, go away or get worse. I had the screen changed in early 2010 (January or February) (the MBP was about 5 or 6 months old then) at the apple store under warranty due to dirt under the screen's glass (manufacturing defect). The photo booth picture static problem comes and goes, but here lately it comes more than it goes. The screen in general is in good shape and doesn't have any detectable problems with it, it has a good picture and no dead pixels, the problem seems to be only isolated to the isight camera. Can some one help with this problem? How long of a warranty is given on the warranty repairs (like the screen change they did in early 2010)? If apple does a repair on it and finds a wire that has rubbed the insulation off of it on a hinge causing a short and the isight problem, as a result of a sloppy repair from the first warranty repair, will they cover it under warranty again even if it's been over a year since they changed the screen? Also how honest will apple be if they do find out it is a problem caused from the first screen replacement, will they own up to their mistake? If I don't agree with apple's repair decision, can I get a second opinion from an outside source, third party, and if it's diagnosis different than apple's and can be proven, can I still get apple to do and pay for the repairs and labor if it turns out to be their fault from the first warranty screen replacement?
The reason why I'm asking is, I took my wife's white macbook in about a year ago for the famous cracked top cover replacement (under warranty) and when I got the computer back, the isight camera didn't work, so I gave it back, they took it apart a look at it and said there was nothing wrong with it and gave it back, then the screen wouldn't come on so after 4 hours at the Apple store they decided to send it to Austin, TX. for repairs (I'm in Ft. Worth TX.). Apple in Austin said it needed a new main board. They said the old one had water damage to it. We never had water anywhere near the computer, not even in the same room. It was working fine when we took it in, we took it in just to get the plastic top case, that cracks all of the time, replaced under warranty. And then they wanted us to pay for an $800 main board because some how while they were doing the top cover replacement it got water damaged. I argued with them and they finally gave me a one-time offer of them paying for half of the repair and labor or if I disagreed or left the store I would have to pay the whole amount if I chose to have the repairs done. So I ended up having to pay $467 for a year old macbook main board that was water damaged in their possession during their repairs. I like Apple and their products but I am worried about giving my daughter's MBP over to them for repairs because of this incident, it's an honesty issue with how honest they will be with what they find because they won't give back the old parts for analysis by a third party to verify their diagnosis.
Thanks for any info and advice anyone can give.

Hi,
As a personal note I find long posts like this hard to read if they are not broken up in to paragraphs.
As I say it is a personal thing.
I can give you some information about the camera and laptops over the past few years.
Basically in early Laptops of the MacBook Pro and MacBook range the cable did tend to fray at the point where it passed through the hinge. It did take a well used laptop that had the lid open and closed frequently to cause this. (your 2009 model might just be in that group - I have no firm dates or models I am afraid)
Later models have this rerouted so that this does not happen.
However the cable has then tended to get pulled from the camera end and become loose.
This On Line Self fix site has pages about some models (The one I have linked to may not be yours)
I have linked in to later pictures in the sequence but there are navigation points to work back to the start.
Note:- they use pretty specifc specialest tools as well in these pics.
Doing this would certail Void any Warranty you have left.
From Posts mainly in the iChat and the iSight areas I have gathered that it seems common for Apple to replace the Screen as a whole rather than fiddle with getting solely at the camera.
Apple has this article on Trouble Shooting an iSight
Basically it says try several apps then try logging in on another Mac User account to see if it is App based or User based or in fact System wide.
If System wide then resetting the SMC/PMU is the only suggested fix. (Which I did read you had done)
In addition to that I would add that testing should be done in different lighting conditions.
Lighting in the evening or dark that is good enough to read buy is not always good enough for the camera or is not illuminating the right areas.
Some people have reported that Starting the computer in Safe Mode (then Rebooting afterwards) seems to help. (it clears out some caches and starts up with reduced extensions)
As to actual Repairs and any Warranty that may still be in place I cannot say.
I can say that when people post about problems with repairs a certain stores someone else will tend to post that their experience was different.
You seem to report two different experiences with the two computers yourself.
10:24 PM Thursday; July 14, 2011
Please, if posting Logs, do not post any Log info after the line "Binary Images for iChat"
 G4/1GhzDual MDD (Leopard 10.5.8)
 MacBookPro 2Gb( 10.6.8)
 Mac OS X (10.6.7),
"Limit the Logs to the Bits above Binary Images."  No, Seriously

Quality Issues

Hey -
So I have iMovie 09 and then found out it has really crappy quality issues. So I came to iMovie 06 to start working with stuff. I decided to try putting in 4 photos and sharing them with iDVD to test it out. I haven't actually burned them but the preview of iDVD and in iMovie makes the photos look a lot more crappy than they actually are. I'm able to make those photos full screen 1440x900 without really having pixelated features. Yet, iDVD when it's just taking up a minimal amount of the screen has all the pictures pixelated (along with iMovie)
I have iMovie set to the highest quality, iDVD set to professional quality, rendered all the pictures in iMovie before exporting, and have the frame rate at 30 fps.
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

"rendered all the pictures in iMovie before exporting"
That's likely the problem. iMovie does a terrible job of rendering. So, if you use the share function, ignore the prompt that asks if you want iMovie to render, and instead chose to proceed anyway without rendering. iDVD then will render your photos and it does a much better job of it.
Also, the previews in iMovie and iDVD are low res. The burned project should be much sharper.
Rather than using the share function, I find it best to simply save and close the iMovie project, and then drag the iMovie icon (the one with the star on it) into the edge of the window of your iDVD project main menu, being careful not to put into a drop zone. The movie or slideshow will then import right in to iDVD.

Quality issues with VGA port on Type 2504 docking station

Hi,
I see quality issues on the VGA output of the Type 2504 docking station with a T61. The monitor image is blurred, not much, but enough to be irritating. When I compare the DVI output with the VGA output on two equal NEC MultiSync LCD 2170NX monitors it is a clear difference. If I connect the LCD monitor to the VGA output of the T61 itself, the picture is clean. I have tried both monitors with different cables in different configurations and also adjusted monitors manually, and my conclusion is that it must be the VGA output of the 2504 that generates the un-sharpness. I have got several 2504 docking stations from the IT department to test and all attempts show the same unsharp picture on the LCD connected to the VGA port of any 2504. Recently a colleague got a new laptop and docking station. He also used DVI and VGA on the old setup and had no visible difference between the two monitors. His new setup is a different T but his new dock is also a 2504. Now he has clear difference between his monitors. He also tried several 2540 docks and cables but the difference is still present.
The unsharpness is not immediately present when just looking at a dual head setup. But after a while it becomes tiresome to look at text, specially black on white, on the monitor connected to the VGA port. There is a slight shadow on the right side of all letters. When looking at non-aliased fonts, they look as if aliased on the VGA connected monitor. Already aliased fonts tend to "smear" and I have the unpleasant feeling that my eyes are not focusing correctly.
My question is: Is there a different VGA DAC on the docking station, or are the analog signals just wired through from the laptop VGA DAC? Older IBM docks do not have this problem, we have a lot of them at work in dual head configuration with DVI + VGA to compare, and we only see this problem with the 2504.

VGA is an analogue signal... so it can be affected by the quality of DAC chip used by the GPU associated electronics, the quality of connectors on the vga out and dock (that is why good analgoue audio equipment use gold plated stuffs) and the quality of copper wire and shiedling used in the cable (i.e. Low Oxygen Content Copper wire).
The above is general description for all people to use <---- so please don't feel offended if i repeat something that is already said.
There is NO conversion electronics on the dock per se, they are just passthrough, so no conversion.
I guess the problem lies with improper shielding somewhere. I have the same problem with my T61/60 and dock and my T40,41,42,43 on five different docks.
So i have ended up using lenovo usb2dvi converter on T61 and have two dvi output and bypassed the vga altogether.
Regards,
Jin Li
May this year, be the year of 'DO'!
I am a volunteer, and not a paid staff of Lenovo or Microsoft

MPEG Compression Artifacts (aka "Picture Quality Issues")

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