My old Pace Twin box was getting unreliable, so I replaced it with a 9300T, largely on the basis of good reports on it's picture quality.

First reaction is that the Humax may be more capable than the Pace, but the usability is not 5 years better, it's better in places, worse in others (the Guide shows a lot fewer channels for example).

Anyway on to the main point- The picture quality is not good at all. Over RGB SCART the Humax picture is more contrasty and saturated than the Pace. Over HDMI it's even more extreme. Solid colours (especially red) are so overcooked they "block" into solid oversaturated patches with no visible detail, and skin tones range from pale magenta to deep orange without ever passing through a shade that looks it might have ever graced a living human being.

The problem is there are no picture controls for the HDMI output on the Humax at all!

My Samsung LE40N TV has been quite carefully set up (from my S-Video DVD player) using Digital Video Essentials (DVE). The Pace box on SCART produced a good picture with a decent range of contrast and balanced colour.

The TV unfortunately doesn't give me separate picture controls for each input, so to make the Humax look halfway decent I am going to have to back off the contrast and saturation so far my DVDs will all look as if they are drawn in pastels.

Sadly it looks as if Humax have fallen foul of the "Dixons Demo Effect". I.e. they want to make sure a casual customer sees RGB SCART as "obviously" better than composite, and HDMI as "obviously" better than SCART, so they ramp up the saturation and contrast on the latter interfaces to progressively more unreasonable levels.

Has anyone raised this with Humax, and is there any likelihod of getting some Picture Qaulity controls on the box?, because at this rate returning the Humax for something else (I don't know what) would be a lot cheaper than replacing my 3 year old TV just to get per-input picture controls.

Are you sure you haven't still got the TV on the picture settings for your old box.

The Humax is renowned for its excellent and detailed picture. I have a old pace and in comparison the Humax is far better, but picture settings are quite different for both.

Please correct me if I'm wrong but I thought the whole point of HDMI link was that there is no analogue in the path. The picture as sent on the HDMI is the same as received. There is no scope for changing the colour balance. The only degredation from camera to receiver is the compression algorithm and that's the same whatever receiver is used. Where the colour balance gets changed is in the display device where the picture gets converted to analogue (in the DtoA converter) driving the screen.
Obviously the picture gets converted to analogue for the SCART output but not for the HDMI. This is also why there is no volume control for the sound on the HDMI output.

Now that's an interesting point. If it's truly the case that the Freeview box just decodes and decompresses the digital data from the source and NEVER does any post processing or filtering.

I must admit the picture from the 9300T via HDMI is fairly similar to the Samsung's internal Freeview tuner (which is rarely used), so maybe this indicates that it's the TVs S-Video input (or my DVD player) that is seriously under-saturated. If true this might cost me a new DVD player and a ton of time re-setting everything up from scratch... :-{

Now, this raises a new question.

If I wanted to set up my TV with the ideal settings for the signal coming on over HDMI from the 9300, where would I get the required test patterns from?

In an ideal world there would be a "service" Freeview channel that transmitted colour bars and contrast patterns, that could be recorded ad played back for setup purposes.

Without this, what are people out there using?

There is at least a test card and some other service stuff, do a search on here.

Will do, cheers.

It's not quite true that the 9300 does no post-processing on the video, it does some noise reduction, and certainly scaling if the 720 output is chosen, but it does not do anything in the important areas of brightness, contrast, and colour balance; this quite rightly left flat for adjusting on the target device.

I guess I'm "lucky", I do have separate adjustments for each input on my TV.

I started off with my BluRay player on HDMI1, and used this calibration disk.

I then copied these calibration settings for the HDMI input on my Humax Foxsat HDR, and then tweaked them by eye using the BBC HD test card found in the Preview Loop.

There are instructions here for calibrating using the Test Card.

I then copied these settings to my AV1 Scart input, and again tweaked them by eye using the BBC Test Card. After quite some time, the settings ended up a fair bit different on the HDMI (HD), and Scart (SD) inputs, on the same box.

I then copied these settings to my AV2 Scart input, connected to my 9300T, got up the BBC SD Test Card, and again tweaked as necessary. I can't remember how I got the BBC SD Test Card on Freeview, it involved some trick sequence of buttons, and switching away from 301 or 302, and back again. If you do a search on here, or in the Freeview Forum, I'm sure you'll find it.

As a result, I have a fantastic balanced picture, not overblown or "in your face" at all, on all my boxes. I've even had people ask if they were watching HD on my 9300T !! Although, when I show them good quality HD on the Foxsat, or BluRay, then they know the difference.

One other thing to say, do trust your own eyes, don't rely on other people's settings; the No. 1 eyeball does a good job given the right calibration tools.

HTH.

Rgds.


Les.

SD test card.

1. Tune to the BBCi channel (currently ch. 105)
2. When the BBCi background appears, press Yellow (within 30 secs)
3. Tune away to a different channel
4. Tune back to the BBCi channel (currently ch. 105)
5. When the BBCi background appears, press Green (within 30 secs)
6. Press Green to select the test card.

Les, you're a star.

This should be made a "sticky".

Rgds.

Les.

I have it has a Word document same as my "world famous manual tuning instructions".

Heheh, I thought you'd like that

Rgds.

Les.

Sorry to drag this back (Only 1 month) But are there any further thoughts on this topic from anyone else?

I'm very close to returning my new 9300t due to the extraordinarily dark and contrasty picture. My TV is a Panasonic TX-42G10B and for the past 9 months I've been using it's internal freesat tuner for all my viewing. The picture is well balanced and performs very well with the internal SD source.

The result from the Humax is much less satisfying, I've tweaked my settings as best I can but in order to achieve normal detail levels in the darker areas of the image I have to use a far too high brightness setting which washes out the picture and obviously is completely unsatisfactory. I've tried both the output resolutions on the Humax box but it has no effect on this particular issue. The image is more naturally balanced from the SCART but the included cheap cable is causing a strobing artefact in the background of the image which probably would be resolved by a better shielded cable. Unfortunately I have been unable to test this hypothesis as I do not own any and do not intend to buy one as all my devices are HDMI.

I've tried alternative HDMI cables and re-routing the Humax to bypass my AV receiver but again the issue seems to be unrelated to any other variables. Does anyone else suffer this problem?

Hi, firstly regarding the SCART. The included SCART is of poor quality and you will get interference from TVs which send the picture from the TV to the device (for video usage). Changing the AV1/AV2 out to AV3 (assuming not used) may help - see p32 of your manual.
Alternatively a good quality SCART cable will fix.

I have the previous years TH42PZ85 which I had no end of problems getting the picture right on all sources. I found that it is best to have individual settings for each input source. Unfortunately it is not obvious how this can be done ! This is done in Picture mode by changing "Viewing Mode" to be different for each source. You can then set and retain different settings for "Normal", "Cinema", "Eco" etc.

I have my 9300 connected by HDMI to my Sony TV (KDL40V3000) and I'm quite happy with the picture quality (720p). It is better than the Scart connection. However there is another problem with this set up whereby I am unable to control the sound volume with the Humax remote control - I have to revert to the TV remote which I find very annoying. Is this normal for a HDMI connection or can I get round it by some setup adjustment with either the 9300 or the TV or both?

I apologise if this is 'off topic'.

It's not off topic because your query is answered in Post 3 above.............:yawn: