Peter Nears - Retraction: XBox Extender Video Quality

[James Fee]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.thenears.com/index.php?p=88' target='_blank'>http://www.thenears.com/index.php?p=88</a><br /><br /></div><i>"After several weeks of use, I need to make a correction to the XBox vs HP Extender article that I published awhile ago. In that article, I claimed that the XBox Extender had only slightly worse video quality than the HP Extender. After having experienced the playback of much more video since the publishing of that article, I have uncovered two rather major flaws in playback quality."</i><br /><br />A very interesting revision. Peter Nears <a href="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=7527">compared the HP and XP MCE Extenders</a> a couple weeks ago and determined that they were just about equal. Digital Media thoughts member <b>wilbert</b> commented that he thought the XBox extender didn't look as good as it should. Well now Peter Nears seems to think so too. The fear according to Peter is that the problem could be with the hardware, not the software, rendering the XBox MCE Extender lame. Too bad because it seemed like a great product.

[Felix Torres]

In follow-up comments attached to the first article he clarifies that his XBOX was connected via S-video rather than component.
That might explain some of the color purity failings.
The blotchiness he describes might be the result of a too-aggressive compression setting on creating the files. Given the relatively low-power of the XBOX cpu (by current standards) it should be no surprise that it is out-performed by a hardware-based dedicated extended.
The trick here is to think of the chess-playing dog... ;-)
(Its not how well it plays, but that it does it at all...)

In other words, the XBOX extender kit is likely best suited for those that already have the XBOX and want a cheap way to hook it up to the MCE, rather than being a one-for-one replacement for dedicated extenders. And, of course, those more interest in audio streaming than video.
Audio-only digital receivers still cost way more than the extender kit, after all...

Like all bleeding edge tech: Caveat Emptor! ;-)

[James Fee]

Yea, I know... But the XBox seemed like the perfect extender and may very well do so in the future, but for now it isn't an optimal solution.

[Jason Dunn]

Interesting! I've noticed something similar - with Law &amp; Order in fact - but I wasn't sure if it was just some dark episodes. I tweaked the brightness/contrast on my TV and they now look ok. But since I've never done any true A/B tests for quality, I can't say for sure one way or another.

[Jason Dunn]

The blotchiness he describes might be the result of a too-aggressive compression setting on creating the files. Given the relatively low-power of the XBOX cpu (by current standards) it should be no surprise that it is out-performed by a hardware-based dedicated extended.

I'm not sure about that...the Xbox isn't streaming a specially encoded version of the file, it's streaming the same file. Unless there's some sort of real-time re-encoding that goes on with the Xbox...!? Hrm...I'll have to check into that.

[Felix Torres]

I'm not thinking that the XBOX gets a specially-encoded version of the video stream; just that the compression used as a default may be a wee-bit too aggressive for a 700MHz PIII with 64 Mb of shared RAM for code and video buffers.
(That has been my concern all along and I haven't been able to find any clear specs on the maximum resolution/data rates that the extenders--XBOX or dedicated--can readily decode. The best I've found is an HP recommendation to use square pixels for best results.)

What Nears didn't make clear is if the artifacting is during live video only or whether it shows up in static-file playback.
Cause I think with static files you have a choice of encoding rates, no?

The Windows Media encoder certainly allows for almost endless variability...

[pnear]

What Nears didn't make clear is if the artifacting is during live video only or whether it shows up in static-file playback.
Cause I think with static files you have a choice of encoding rates, no?

The Windows Media encoder certainly allows for almost endless variability...

The artifacting I notice is during playback of recorded TV files at "best" encoding setting. These same files look fine on the HP Extender, but not so hot on the XBox.

I still place the XBox in the "better than the PC SVideo output by not as good as the HP extender" category.

Cheers,
Pete

[Felix Torres]

Well, that answers that! 8)

[Schade]

The artifacting I notice is during playback of recorded TV files at "best" encoding setting. These same files look fine on the HP Extender, but not so hot on the XBox.

I still place the XBox in the "better than the PC SVideo output by not as good as the HP extender" category.

Cheers,
Pete

Thanks Peter, for this clarification. (And for the original review! It was what convinced my wife we needed to get an extender.) I was planning on getting an xbox extender after your initial review, but your retraction gave me pause. Think I'll still stick with the Xbox, because we wouldn't mind having an Xbox anyway.

Just curious where your S-Video was coming from in the PC? Mine's currently using a GeForce 6800, and the quality is excellent for our general TV viewing purposes. If the Xbox is better than that, well...

The reason we were switching from the PC to extender for TV viewing, BTW, is because even though it comes very close, I can't quite get dual monitors working with Media Center on the TV and Half-Life 2 or World of Warcraft on the 20" widescreen LCD. It's very very close, just doesn't quite cut it. Figure with the extender, everything should work out fine. Media Center and regular PC usage - web, word processing, finances, etc. - actually work really well together as long as you don't want to do anything on Media Center other than adjust volume or pause, rewind, and fast forward the playback.

Anyway, thanks for your review, retraction, and clarification!

[pnear]

Just curious where your S-Video was coming from in the PC? Mine's currently using a GeForce 6800, and the quality is excellent for our general TV viewing purposes. If the Xbox is better than that, well...

The reason we were switching from the PC to extender for TV viewing, BTW, is because even though it comes very close, I can't quite get dual monitors working with Media Center on the TV and Half-Life 2 or World of Warcraft on the 20" widescreen LCD. It's very very close, just doesn't quite cut it. Figure with the extender, everything should work out fine. Media Center and regular PC usage - web, word processing, finances, etc. - actually work really well together as long as you don't want to do anything on Media Center other than adjust volume or pause, rewind, and fast forward the playback.


I was using the S-video out on an ATI Radeon 9800 (and earlier on an nVidia GF4MX). The ATI output quality is terrible, with diagonal interlacing lines through the entire picture. I've never been able to get any S-Video output to scale the video quite properly, but have been very pleased with the dedicated NTSC only output on the extenders.

I like extenders for the same reason you do - the ability to conduct multiple sessions. We actually have 2 extenders and the 1 SVideo out powering the TVs in our household, which means I can be watching something on the downstairs home theater, my daughter can watch Blues Clues in the bedroom, and we can listen to music in the kitchen all at the same time. Very cool!

That multi-session approach is something that I don't know if any of the competition can offer. In Canada, the PVR competition is pretty limited anyways so MCE easily blows them away.

(In case you're wondering, I periodically check to see what referrals come into the weblog and follow them back. That's how I stumbled on this thread).

Pete

[Jason Dunn]

(In case you're wondering, I periodically check to see what referrals come into the weblog and follow them back. That's how I stumbled on this thread).

Welcome to the site - feel free to stick around. :-)

[jeffd]

It also might be the HP extender doing post procesing filtering, like a deblocker or smoother that tone down the artifacts (which is what the blocks are). The Xbox cpu prolly dosnt have much cpu left for such filtering.

I could care less about WMC. I've built a small form pc (based on nforce 1 board, no expansion cards so a nice small heigh) and I just play the HDTV encoded shows you can get one the net. ;) Combined with ffdshow filters, its flawless. ^^

[Wilbert]

I thought I better throw my thoughts into this ring, even if I was on the short bus when this thread started! :lol:

First, I am using the Xbox extender with component output into my TV. So that is as BEST as you can get from the Xbox.

Here are some interesting observations that I have found, and I would like other comments on this.

1) Live TV is just "ok", not good but ok. The black areas do have a lot of color blending issues and facial colors can look faded or to red.

2) Recorded TV is the same as Live from MCE on the extender in terms of quality.

3) This is the interesting part, if I take the pre canned videos that come with MCE and play then back on the MCX they look AWSOME! 8O

So why would the canned videos look great and live TV looks like crap?

There are SO many different variables it is hard to point to cause. I would like to know how MCE is streaming the video to the extender and maybe someone knows the answer to that. Is it using MPEG or something else and if it is MPEG what is the data rate, I think I read it was around 6.5MBs

I am going to be trying a new CATV card, PVR 500MCE, in my system in the next few weeks to see if it is the card.

[pnear]

So why would the canned videos look great and live TV looks like crap?

There are SO many different variables it is hard to point to cause. I would like to know how MCE is streaming the video to the extender and maybe someone knows the answer to that. Is it using MPEG or something else and if it is MPEG what is the data rate, I think I read it was around 6.5MBs

I am going to be trying a new CATV card, PVR 500MCE, in my system in the next few weeks to see if it is the card.

The newer Hauppauge cards have better video quality than older cards, so you may see some improvement. My tests were done using the Hauppauge Roslyn and USB2 cards, which are newer gen cards. The data rate is high, but it's realtime encoding so not necessarily as great as it could be. Basically, I would guess that the canned video is a higher-quality nonrealtime encode.

The new ATI card is what I would call "bleeding edge" as far as video quality improvements, would be interesting to try that one to see how good it can get.

Careful with the PVR-500, while it is dual tuner it doesn't support dual set-top-boxes.

Pete

[Wilbert]

Careful with the PVR-500, while it is dual tuner it doesn't support dual set-top-boxes.

Pete

Yea, we just have the basic cable here so the dual tuner is not a problem.

I would have to agree with you on the canned videos, the fact that they would be encoded at a higher bit rate would explain this. BUT, the fact that they can look good on the Xbox IMO rules the Xbox out as being the problem with the "bad" live TV. Thoughts?

[pnear]

I would have to agree with you on the canned videos, the fact that they would be encoded at a higher bit rate would explain this. BUT, the fact that they can look good on the Xbox IMO rules the Xbox out as being the problem with the "bad" live TV. Thoughts?

Bitrate's not so much the issue as compression quality is. You can only get so much compression quality in real-time. My guess is that the quality of the live tv file is worse than the canned video. The HP seems to do a better job at dealing with lower-quality video whereas the canned one is pretty much perfect.