Poor video playback on 9400m

I tried playing a dvd for the first time (in PowerDVD and Media Player). It's extremely blocky and generally looks like crap. When using it in Hybrid SLI though, the video looks fine. The integrated card should be more than capable of upconverting a DVD so that it doesn't look so horrible. Notice the lip of the counter and see how much blockier it looks in the first picture than the second. Is there a setting somewhere I'm missing?

 

I have exactly the same issue. It almost looks like an interlacing problem. Haven't found a solution yet but it's bloody annoying. It's not just DVDs, it happens with any video playback in any media player.

 

have you tried VLC, or install codecs?

or disable vsync?

 

Yeah it even happens in VLC so I suspect it's a problem at driver or hardware level

 

In a decent player such as
http://mpc-hc.sourceforge.net/

you can select the different output renderes:
. EVR (best in Vista),
. VMR9 (best for XP),
. VMR7 and
. oldschool Overlay.

Each uses a different method for upscaling the image. And indeed how that upscaling is implemented is the responsibility of the graphics driver and it's hardware.

I'd try switching between those. In case of Vista and EVR Custom you can select the resizing function: Nearest Neighbor (choppy), Bilinear, Bilinear (Pixelshader), Bicubic, ...

Selecting EVR Custom Preseter / Resizer Bilinear should result in a non choppy display. If it doesn't you can try any other. If you get to Overlay it will disable Aero during playback, but in general Overlay will always give you non-choppy display. It's the oldest scaling technique available and has always worked correctly.

 

I changed to Dox drivers and the problem is fixed. I'll probably go back to the Dell drivers because the two games I've been playing recently (Halo 2, and Oblivion) stutter pretty bad with the Dox drivers and just switch to "high performance" to watch movies. I'll probably post something in the Dell forums so maybe they'll fix it in the next GPU driver release.

 

I've just noticed something really weird about this. The driver doesn't switch between GPUs when a video is playing. Instead the green tray icon displays an exclamation mark. This is normal for the drivers.

But try this. Play a video in "power save" or "balanced" and while it's playing click "high performance". You'll notice that the interlacing disappears immediately though the GPU switch hasn't actually happened.

The drivers are definitely broken. I wonder how long we will have to wait for a fix.

 

I wonder if it happens on the non-sli notebooks. Anyone with just the 9400m want to verify you have Dell's newest drivers and try a dvd and then chime in?

 

Since the dox drivers don't solve your gaming issues: If I'm correct the Dell drivers are on version 179.82.

The generic nVidia drivers suggested for the 9400M are more recent. Just listing Vista 64-Bit drivers here - you might want to try some of those:

v186.03 WHQL June 09, 2009
http://www.nvidia.com/object/geforce_notebook_winvista64_186.03_whql.html

v185.85 WHQL May 07, 2009
http://www.nvidia.com/object/geforce_notebook_winvista64_185.85_whql.html

 

I've tried Nvidia's drivers, they won't install. My guess is that Nvidia hasn't made them 9500M GE (9400M G + 9200M GS) compatible.

 

So what's the best way to make Dell aware of this? Will tech support actually consider any suggestion that lots of people are experiencing this issue?

 

I posted in Dell's forums yesterday, so far no one has replied. http://en.community.dell.com/forums/t/19280490.aspx
I figure the more people that respond the more attention it'll get.

 

The dell support (community) forum is a joke. Only users read it. No developers or support staff.

What may be more efficient : File a bugreport through Dell's Web page. Don't only link to this thread. But do it like: "See this picture <here> and compare it to this one over <here>."

They will get back to you and either say that they are aware of this issue and it will be fixed. Or they don't know about this issue. In this case they will try to replicate it. Once that is done, the fix won't take long. And while you do it - ask why you can't install the latest generic nvidia drivers.