HQV Benchmark Blu-ray, DVD and HD DVD
Maybe you've wondered why some of your DVDs don't look as good as others? Or why Blu-ray Hollywood movies appear to have more detail than concerts or documentaries? HQV Benchmark has a testing regimen to help you figure all of that out!
HQV Benchmark is produced by Silicon Optix, a leading developer of video processing technology. If you are new to the terms video processing and scaling, then a great foundational start is our own Video Dictionary on HD Library, Scaler. The HQV Benchmark series of discs have received a lot of press and a lot of players have failed to pass many of its tests.
Let's take a look at what each of these tests are, what their purpose is and what it actually means to your overall experience. Testing, Scoring, Education The test material concentrates mostly on deinterlacing and scaling. Silicon Optix provides a downloadable PDF file of the test regimen which includes how to score each test along with detailed explanations.
While the guide provides comparison images, the resolution is not high enough for many of the tests to assist you in fully appreciating what to look for. HQV Benchmark DVD Testing and Scoring Guide HQV Benchmark Blu-ray and HD DVD Testing and Scoring Guide Many of the DVD test results and all of the Blu-ray and HD DVD test results rely on perception requiring proper calibration of the display for valid results and is noted by in the title.
Neither disc provides a full suite of calibration test patterns. Digital Video Essentials is recommended and available in Blu-ray and DVD. There is also an HD DVD and DVD combo available while supplies last. If your system has been ISF calibrated, you are ready for testing. If the auto aspect does not provide a manual feature then you are stuck with 4:3, which will not be correct for some of the 16:9 tests.
The introduction and test material does not provide reference imaging quality for showing off the DVD format at its best. I recommend testing in both 16:9 and 4:3 aspects. Above the middle is a resolution response test for both luminance and chroma. Going left to right they are numbered as 4, 3, 2 and 1 with 1 representing 720 pixels horizontally.
The catch is that this is a 4:4:4 encoded pattern which means the chroma has the same response as luminance. The chroma response in block 1 serves no purpose since it cannot be properly reproduced so disregard those results. This pattern is part and parcel of confirming proper calibration prior to testing. This material will never have the response one would expect or can get viewing properly captured and mastered DVD video.
Page 10 of the guide compares two images that hardly look different for a test score high of 10 and 0, and in this case resembles reasonable expectations for this test. MPEG NR targets compression noise, is processed differently and should not be used for this test. A series of 12 still images are provided and most target the blue color channel. Two of those images never showed any noise and one was marginal.
These images are great examples of a noisy analog cable service or a satellite cable set top box delivered via channel 3 or 4 to your TV. This test is all about the NTSC broadcast television system, analog cable, analog RF tuners and the RF noise that can easily come from them. While having little to do with players, they are useful for DVD recorders and broadcast NTSC.
For high fidelity with DVD, NR on your DVD player should be turned off. For recorders this feature may make some or all of your noisy channels more palatable but in most cases the setting will also apply to DVDs, in which case it should be turned off. Look through or ignore the noise and recognize the detail that is present.
Now turn on NR on the player and see how much noise is removed along with any loss in detail. You can also reverse the test, turn the NR off on the player and turn it on for your TV if available. Some NR circuits offer different range levels in which case test all of them and determine which setting provides the best balance of detail versus noise suppression.
While an NR circuit can successfully navigate the prior noise test of still images, the addition of motion will show any artifacts created by the process and may help identify what kind of NR the video processor is using. Follow the same procedure for testing as previously described, following the guide for evaluation. The roller coaster is also a convenient test for LCD pixel speed provided you turn off NR on the player and display.
This is the most brutal part of the testing regimen that few players or displays will pass. This is also delivered in the form of end credits at the end of a TV show. This applies far more to broadcast TV and your display rather than players.
HQV Benchmark DVD on Your Player Just because a player fails some or all of these tests does not mean it will generate the same errors when playing a Hollywood movie on your player, nor would passing some of these tests qualify as high fidelity performance.
None of the tests even relate to how the vast majority of movies are captured, processed and mastered for DVD along with how your player is designed to reproduce them. Missing from this disc is the same test material processed and mastered just like Hollywood does. Without such a reference point the person doing the evaluation may have unrealistic expectations of how well the test material should perform. While it can be argued on the surface that some of these tests should apply to a player, as a reviewer I find myself in a catch 22.
Test material from Avia, Video Essentials, Sound and Vision, Digital Video Essentials and nearly all popular movies look decent to fantastic although that same player fails all or some of the HQV Benchmark material. How can that be? And as reviewer, how do I report a passing or failing grade? The key is understanding why an inexpensive DVD player can get decent results with no-name video processing.
This is achieved during mastering by including progressive flags in the data directly from the mastering studio telling the video processor in the player how to take the interlaced fields and put them together for a proper 480p presentation.
This is an extremely intelligent way to deliver a high fidelity performance envelope on the cheap!
With a native 480p 16:9 display, typically CRT only, and a properly designed 480p player, you are in videophile nirvana due to this free ride but this is an HDTV world and most displays these days require the 480p free ride gets scaled to one of the HD scan rates, 720p, 1080i or 1080p.
Proper deinterlacing is the crux and scaling is far easier so this free ride can provide decent to high quality performance beyond 480p depending on the design goals! The HQV Benchmark DVD technical twist is that the material is encoded as raw 480i, no progressive flags for dumb scaling, leaving the player entirely on its own to figure out how to deinterlace the content.
The bottom line is that the vast majority of players are going to fail many of the tests that relate to DVD content. While the movie is bound to have these progressive flags, that may not be the case for special features.
This has improved over the years, but for a movie buff and or DVD collector much of a library is going to contain such content. On top of that, many a collection will have 4:3 letterboxed releases along with the oddball cadences that come with low volume or low budget productions, cult classics, anime and TV shows on DVD.
Some folks desire a player or external scaler that can get the most out of such content. HQV Benchmark is exactly what the doctor ordered for reviewers and videophiles alike who are looking for a simple straight forward battery of tests to quickly determine performance with such content.
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