Help Video Artifacts?

[PKayy]

I heard that the GNex has video playback issues/artifacts/blue aliasing? Can someone explain what that is and how bad of a problem it is? I'm going to be watching a decent amount of videos off my Gnex and I need to know if I should be deterred from getting the phone if this really is a serious problem. I'm probably picking it up soon but I need to know.

 

[stenzor]

There's a considerable amount of noise during really dark scenes with lots of blacks and noticeable artifacting in the black colours. Other than that the video is beautiful. This is my experience with mx video player and mostly 2gb 720p mkvs. I don't know about the stock player.

 

[dhworph]

It is also affected by how the video is compressed. Higher quality videos often look better --- in addition to the fact that they are higher quality, there may also be less color alteration which allows the GNex screen to not mess up the blacks so much. I think it has not so much to do with the video being high resolution, but how the colors are compressed and coded. There are lots of threads here discussing it with many video and picture examples --- its not just video, where you can see the artifacts, just take a completely black photo (compressed jpg) and look at it in the gallery app in a dark room, then load it onto a different device with a different kind of screen technology --- of course with an uncompressed jpg or png you don't see the artifacts.

 

[zebug]

I watch movies almost daily while I ride the bus (streamed from netflix). In most situations, day time lighting without a dark scene, it is crystal clear and looks oh so sexy. It's when the scene changes to a dark area that the blacks look a little blotchy but I only notice it, personally, when I'm looking for it. If I'm into the movie I miss the "artifacts" every time.

Some people's eyes catch more stuff than others, it doesn't bother me one bit but it will some others. Go to a store, surf some youtube HD videos and see what you see.

 

[hlsilver]

It's not only videos, for example I took a picture on my GNex a few weeks ago and uploaded up to Facebook. The picture quality was TERRIBLE on both the phone itself in gallery and even worse on Facebook. Looked at it from the computer and it was fine. You can check out a thread with more info here.

 

[PKayy]

Thanks everyone. The problem doesn't seem too serious/not fixable via OTA update. Picked up the Nexus today.

 

[stenzor]

Yeah I don't think it's serious at all.. In fact, someone even commented today on how amazing they thought the quality of video was (i was watching Lost)

 

[biffsmash]

I've found that the worse movies are the youtube apple trailer ones. The blacks on apple trailer videos arent true black and thus exhibit a small amount of issues in the black backgrounds, but nothing on the awe inspiring scale some people are trying to portray.

Even on the worst videos I can't really see it.

 

[dhworph]

I've found that I can reproduce most of the problems on my laptop in VLC by messing with the settings brightness, contrast, gamma, saturation. Watching video on the GNex really "saturates" the whole image forcing things to be displayed which are not really displayed otherwise.

For example, in an Iron Man Two test scene (from another thread here), every detail on the rooftop was visible on the GNex on a bright setting, but on my laptop, almost nothing was visible.

So this makes me believe that it is at least in part a software issue with how the screen is calibrated in the OS (but maybe in the hardware too?). However, it is also a hardware issue, because it may be that these "messed up" settings are needed to make the screen look good in general --- to get those "popping" colors and bright display. And this is a common issue on amoled type screens, apparently... which is why I think this letting of settings/calibration is needed to make the screen look good on other types of content.

Here are some threads discussing this:

http://androidforums.com/verizon-ga...ifacts-black-areas-during-video-playback.html <--- this thread has lots of test videos and pictures...

http://androidforums.com/samsung-ga...ing-effect-nexus-other-hd-amoled-screens.html

http://androidforums.com/samsung-ga...-does-your-black-screen-really-look-like.html

http://androidforums.com/samsung-ga...e-dpi-samoled.html?highlight=screen+artifacts