I’m using the Vero 4K for a week now and I am very impressed by the capabilities of this little device.
I ran into one critical issue, though: watching SD (720x576) as well as 720p content with a Vero 4K (at 3480x2160) on a Samsung SUHD TV looks much less crisp compared to using the TV or a RPi3@1920x1080 for upscaling. It’s not just a minor difference, and as I’m using OSMC with TVHeadend to watch live TV it’s really annoying.
Is there a way to optimize upscaling on the Vero? Or a way to output content at its original resolution so the upscaling would be done by the TV?
It can come down to preference and the content you are playing really, but I suspect you are seeing the upscaled images as too ‘soft’.
Some TV scalers are better than others. It sounds like your TV has a good scaler, so you can stick with that. You should be able to set Kodi’s output resolution to 1080p. The resolution should only then get switched to 2160p iff you play 4K content.
Thanks, Sam - I followed your advice and run the Vero at 1080p, 4K content is indeed switched to 2160p when “adjust refresh rate” is enabled. SD TV content looks still softer compared to being scaled by the Samsung, but better than on the RPi - deinterlacing of the Vero is clearly superior to the RPi.
Is there any way the Vero 4K adds some sharpening to the 1080p output? Or to output 576i/720p at original resolution? Guess SD/720p would still benefit from this.
I also tried setting the Vero 4K to 720p, but when it then switches to 2160p for 4K content the picture is truncated at all sides. Can this be changed?
I very much appreciate all the work done on Kodi, OSMC and the Vero!
Hi everyone, in the meantime I extensively used the Vero 4K and am most of the time really happy with this great piece of hardware and OSMC running on it - well done, Sam and team!
Upscaling quality of SD material still remains a pain point, though. Output of the Vero (@1080p) appears visibly softer and often more “muddy” compared to the RPi3 we are used to - to an extent impacting the WAF considerably.
Is there any way to optimize the settings to come closer to the appearance of the RPi? There seems to be a connection to the way the SD material is de-interlaced. On the Pi, the deinterlaced picture appears less smooth if seen from close distance, but this seems to improve the perceived quality from the regular viewing distance. Can hardware-deinterlacing be turned off to test whether this effect would be the same on the Vero 4K?
I’m sorry to hear the picture quality isn’t meeting your and yours expectations when playing SD content. I’ve had a couple of mentions about this, so it’s something I’d like to look in to and see if we can improve.
What would be good is if we could ascertain for you whether the problem is caused by the deinterlacer or the upscaler. Do you see the same problems if you play a 480p version of Big Buck Bunny on Pi and Vero 4K? This clip might not be the best way to assess this: but it’s a royalty free one and is encoded progressively.
I don’t think it’s an issue with the deinterlacer. The SoC’s deinterlacer is very good (motion adaptive). Easiest way to confirm this: disable ‘amcodec’ in System -> Settings. This will force the clip to be decoded by ffmpeg. If it still doesn’t meet your expectations, then I don’t think that’s the issue.
Does (temporarily) setting the GUI to 480p / 576p / the content’s resolution look better? I’m considering adding an option (and support) for resolution switching on the fly; as some TVs are doing better upscaling than the device (but not all).
I have a standalone upscaler that is does a very good job and would like to experiment but I don’t have an option to set the output to 576p on the vero 4k. I can’t find out how to force resolutions like on the pi. Any ideas why this might be missing?
