Windows 7 Poor video quality

Ok, so, an update is in order I guess

Turning off Aero didn't affect anything at all; I'm assuming you just do this by selecting a "basic" color scheme, right? Cause that's what I did and it didn't make any discernible difference. However, my problem doesn't seem to be quite the same. It is extremely noticeable in all video playback, whether full screen or not. The one "benefit" of sorts is.. I can set slingbox to stream at much lower resolutions than the "HD-like" 1280x540 that it typically uses: the picture is just as bad at that resolution as it is at 640x240, and even lowering it to 320x240 only produces a barely detectable increase in pixelation. If I put it in full screen, it is of course slightly more overt since the blocks are even larger, but it's EXTREMELY evident even in windowed native-res views. Streaming from SD sources is equally degraded, looks like a moving mosaic.

A little more background I missed, these problems occur on a completely fresh install of Windows 7; I wiped the Vista HD completely before installing. I have since re-installed Vista on a separate partition, and at first on installation Vista seemed to be having the same pixelation issues, though not quite as bad. This was an illusion, however, because updating drivers and DirectX fixed it 100%, whereas on Win7 those things have no effect on the problem. I can take screenshots of identical frames in each OS in the same program, and literally, if you apply a "pixelation" filter at greater than minimum strength to the Vista screenshots, they STILL look better than the Win7 shots. I don't know what it's doing, but it's freakin' weird.

new nvidia driver came out for 64 going to try it to day hope it works better.

I have the exact same problem as described earlier in this thread. I am using x64 RC and ati hd3870. Tried the same W7 on my laptop, and the video is excellent there. Can't believe what's causing this problem.

Have now tried to install the new display drivers released this monday (17/8-09).. but still the same grainy videos. I'm about to give up, have tried everything now.

So.. i'm still in XP

new nvidia driver didnt change any thing :/

still have to run with out aero

Maybe Solution

Hello people,
I had the same problem - poor quality from my TV Card.
I use MSI DigiVOX mini II and TotalMedia for viewing.
I have Windows 7 Professional x64 from MSDNAA. (not beta)

My solution to the problem is to "disable desktop composition" in compatibility options of the shortcut to TotalMedia.
It worked for me.

I hope this helps

Darn.

That didn't work on whatever my problem is, either.
Don't know if it has anything to do with it, but slingplayer automatically uses.. VMR 9 rendering I think it is.. whatever it's called, it is not a configurable setting, so, knowing that that's the piece of windows that is broken wouldn't really help much anyway.

Hi,

i have same problem as some users mention here. I instaled w7 just yesterday, but this poor video quality driving me crazy. I have w7 32bit, latest nvidia drivers ( 9600GT) and I'm using Link Removed. Only solution i found is use Media Player Classic and change Output for EVR(Vista/.net3) and it looks ok now, i think.

Also u can use Overlay Mixer but, everytime when u play something, w7 theme changed for default.

Hope this help somebody ;-)

Hello all.
I just registered on these forums due to the same problem encountered here. I wish it was under different circumstances.

I consider posting screen shots useless since the grainy pictures posted here reflect the exact problem that I've met on different systems. It cannot be a hardware issue since on XP video files behave flawlessly. It may, however be a problem with Directx (mostly) or the graphics drivers. It must be mentioned that this issue occurs not only on Windows 7 but in Vista as well.

Trying different setups and versions for the graphics cards did not change in any way the situation.
The fact is that the low picture quality doesn't stick with low res videos but with hd ones too. Selecting Direct X video output within VLC removes the grains, however the HD quality I consider a little less than the image seen on XP.
For the rest of the file formats the situation remains the same.

Hmm, that's weird

Like I said, I have now set up to dual boot Vista (64-bit ultimate version), and after updating the drivers, it quits giving the weird cross-hatch pattern. It's weird that you can't solve it in Vista either, because otherwise it seems like the exact same thing.

I have found with a couple of other programs that actually allow changes to the rendering method that using overlay display does produce a better output but disable aero while it's active, and that both VMR7 and VMR9 are affected. I also have a laptop which is running the same version, Win 7 Professional x64, and although it has an NVIDIA graphics card (9800M GS), it shows the EXACT same output problems, so I am now positive it's not a hardware or driver issue. Still have had zero luck finding any explanation, solution, or even an indication that anyone other than this thread is aware of a problem, though..

Video playback issues

Im running a 2.8 pentium singlecore with a 6800xt nvidia, with 1 gig of ram with the windows 7 drivers off nvidias site, and i have tried several different sets of codecs, however i still get video issues, and i know its none of my videos because they all run fine on my xp drive. I tried the vista driver and still same issue, turned off Aero still same issue tried different programs, wmp,winamp,vlc. Give me some help if ya can.

Dx11

Hi all,

just signed up as i too was having this problem, but, after changing my VLC 1.0.2 to open GL mode it made quite a distinct difference.. no longer are the edged of every clolour blurred ect..

But i skimmed through this topic and didnt see it anywhere, has it got something to do with win7 running on DX11 and so far AFAIK the ATI 5000 series are the only GFX cards that support DX11. Maybe downgrade to DX10 would fix the problem?

Drew.

Tiny new clue

One of the few programs that displays well on my computer is a VirtualDub 1.9.3 x64 build, which is only marginally helpful since it's not really meant to be used as a player, just an editor. I have just noticed, though, that it too looks like crap whenever it is a background window, like right now since my web browser is open above it. I don't know what rendering that program uses, nor how being a non-active window affects those things. I did test that this is the same whether using the full aero effects or "windows classic" with no graphical enhancement over win2k.

DX11 should be completely backwards-compatible with DX10, that is, each new version adds features/commands, but usually responds to 100% of the commands which worked in the previous version, so that seems an unlikely culprit.. I haven't tested it, though, since the potential of it working is so small versus the huge hassle of rolling back software MS doesn't intend to be uninstallable.

Oops, strike that

I do know something about how it renders now: I found enabled settings "Use DirectX for display panes," "Use DirectX overlay surfaces," "Use Direct3D," and "Disable accelerated display when inactive." Sure enough, unchecking the "Disable accelerated display.." box altered its behavior so that it did not start looking like all the other crappy programs when other windows were in front. So that was why; it quit using DirectX/Direct3D. That clarifies that DirectX doesn't need to be updated; programs that are using it display correctly. The problem may be with the programs, in that case, much like games that won't run if you have DX10/DX11 installed because they do not return "DirectX 9" as their version, even though they are supersets of DX9.

VLC Output Default to Open GL.

Took some screenshots of Default Output versus OPEN GL Output.

Thanks to this thread i was able to make a little bit better notice of improvement by changing vlc to opengl.

I think it still could be little bit better, noticed My Legit Lord of the Rings dvd set is fuzzy.

SS's of some text based.
First SS : VLC Default Output Shot One.
Second SS : VLC Default Output Shot Two.
Third SS : VLC OpenGL Output Shot One.
Fourth SS : VLC Open GL Output Shot Two.

I am also having poor video quality using window 7 I've tested several videos on several players like VLC winamp etc but it the lowest quality I ever faced however win xp has the best quality when I play the same video, I have latest nvidia driver Installed ...............................................................................

I am also having poor video quality using window 7 I've tested several videos on several players like VLC winamp etc but it's the lowest quality I ever faced however win xp has the best quality when I play the same video, I have latest nvidia driver Installed. lool is that window 7 they advertised It's stressful I am starting to thinking like I would reinstall xp if there in no solution for it yet..........

Ok guys. I specially made an account to this site hoping i can help some of you guys who have this frustrating problem to fix it.
I have spent the last 3 days searching forums like these to fix the pixelated problem and the bad quality problem and didn't find the answer.

Since today i fixed it on my own and i really hope the guys that try this get it fixed as well. Maybe the things i did sound a bit weird but the quality is fine now and have no problems at all.

Here is what i did after frustrating 3 days

1: Went to My computer-Right click-Device manager- Dispay Adapters and uninstalled my video card
2: restarted the computer
3: Installed nvidia video drivers. Didn't matter which ones, but preferably the latest ones
4: uninstalled all other players which had codecs attached to them ( bs.player). Also uninstalled all separate codecs on my pc
5: Installed xvid codec from here Download the XviD Codec - XviD Movies and also installed Ac3 filter
6: Installed VlC media player 1.0 and set the video rendering to DirectX
6: restarted again

IOt works like a charm. Also if you try this let the aero enabled VLC will take him out when a move starts

I had this configuration 1 week ago aswell. But suddently something changed after 1 month of good quality videos and i started having pixelated videos, weird but true. I have no idea how it got to that but i fixed mine this way

I know it sounds simple just installing VLC and some simple codecs but this did it for me

I hope this helps some of you

cheers

It is related to the video card driver from microsoft

Just want to share my experience.

I am running Win 7 in Bootcamp and I use the drivers included on the OS X disk. No problem at all.

A white flag appeared in my task bar asking me to update my video driver. So I followed the instructions and downloaded the latest driver from microsoft, and after restart i am getting this problem, which led me to this thread.

I know it was the video driver since that was the only thing changed. So I rolled back to the old driver and the good video quality was back again! (It is not a codec problem, since even Real player rmvb play back is affected)

I think there's something wrong with the win 7 video driver from Microsoft.
I'll just stick to my old driver for now.

Btw, I have a NVIDIA 8600m GT.

Hi

So here's my experience i still have this problem
i instaled the driver from nvidia the one from windows 7 an i had this problem with video quality i firstly tought about that the problem comes from not finding the right codec i tested some codec's that i tought i woud work with but nothing so i uninstaled the Nvidia driver for windows 7 restarted my computer and the i instaled my previous driver from Win XP that i used befor windows 7 the xp driver instaled smothly i restarted the pc but when it loged on i noticed the tranceparency desapheard and evrithing was solyd i don't know wat it's called exactly "aero" i think it hase bin disabled so i tried playing a video file mkv, mpeg4 and ewerithing worked just like on Win XP so i start thinking that the real problem is with the Nvidia driver not with the video codecs please read my post and post some sugestions thx

Same issues

I have the same issues with Windows 7. The video consists out of blocks!
In my scenario, it happens in Classic Media Player (CCCP codec pack), not in WMP. Also, I have exactly the same terrible blocky video quality in my WinTV program! (Hauppauge). I know WinTV uses VMR/Overlay. I can set the preferences of WinTV to either use VMR7, VMR9 or overlay. In all cases, it doesn't make a difference.

I have a Nvidia (7300Go) card in my laptop, and updated the drivers, using the latest from the website laptopvideo2go.
I hope someone figures out where these problems come from.

Thanks!