Thinkpads Forum

Hi,

I'm a Thinkpad x230 owner, and I have a question.

I've been watching some movies off the internet, but I noticed that even HD movies in 720p and 1080p are grainy and fuzzy at best.
I can also see a lot of pixels almost all the time, especially in the black colored areas of a scene.
But then when I watch HD videos on Youtube, it looks OK.

Is this because of the quality of the movies that I'm downloading? or is it because of the native 1366x768 resolution?
FYI, I have quite a bit of DVD rips and they all look fuzzy and pixelated. Even those videos which are supposed to be HD don't look like it all.

Please help me figure this out, thanks!

I don't know for sure, but a couple of things come to mind.

First, film converted to HD video will naturally look grainy compared to native HD video, because you will be able to see the film grain.

Second, isn't most (all?) "HD quality" video for on-line distribution highly compressed? You may be seeing compression artifacts. What format are the grainy movies packaged in?

To isolate the issue, use a quality source of videos, like DVD (direct) or even netflix. I have no issues with grainy/fuzziness with DVD (no conversions, straight) or netflix on the X230. Check for latest drivers (shouldnt be an issue, but the newest intel GPU drivers seem a set up compared to the official lenovo ones on system update).

Neil wrote:I don't know for sure, but a couple of things come to mind.

First, film converted to HD video will naturally look grainy compared to native HD video, because you will be able to see the film grain.

Second, isn't most (all?) "HD quality" video for on-line distribution highly compressed? You may be seeing compression artifacts. What format are the grainy movies packaged in?

The movies are in AVI, MKV and MP4 format.

Many of these movies have a viewing resolution of 720 x 400 or lower like 500 x 360. At least that's what Windows 7 tells me based upon the file information (ie Fram Width & Frame Height).

Perhaps they are compression artifacts, I was not aware of this detail. Can you please explain this further?

Thanks.

Well the typical Blu-Ray movie will be 15-25GB in size, and the same movie compressed to mp4 (for example) will probably be 650-700MB. That's a tremendous amount of missing data! It's a real wonder that compressed formats look as good as they do.

Maybe you want to try some different software. I use Media Player Classic and watch 1080p Blu-ray rips. They look excellent.

Do the same videos look better or the same on another computer?

Does your X230 have the IPS screen or the regular screen?