Poor JPEG performance (quality and speed)

WD Legacy Products WD TV Live Hub Discussions
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I’ve been using the HUB for about three months now and I will admit that I’ve been fairly disappointed with its image rendering performance.  Specifically two things bug me…

1) Image Quality: High-res jpegs display poorly with many jagged edges (poor anti-aliasing).  They look acceptable from over 20’ away, but the moment you get closer you really see the edges start to break down.

  1. Performance: When navigating between photos it takes 3-5 seconds for an image to render (load) on screen.  This is especially annoying as the lag leads you wonder if the HUB received your command from the remote.   I really expected much better performance given the images are stored locally on the HUB’s internal HDD. 

I will admit that I am probably pushing the limits of the HUB’s abilities as most of the images I am attempting to view are 10-18 megapixels in size, but  I guess I am just a bit surprised by this as my old xBox 360, which is now broken, handled these with ease even when the images were accessed over the home network.

Perhaps I am simply expecting too much, but I guess I would just like to know if anyone else has experienced the same issues.

I realize that producing lower-res versions of the images tailored for the HUB would probably help, but I don’t see this as a practical solution.

1 Like
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It seems to be a well known bug. If you select your displays native rez, for example, 1080p 60 Hz, & view your pics, they look good, but if you view any other media files that require scaling to that rez, then the photo rez drops & you get the jaggies & poor image quality.

Its bad enough that the jpeg rez is limited to 2048x2048, but the fact they still can’t get the photo scaling right is a joke.

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I’ve not seen any jagged-edged JPGs on the latest firmware (2.03.24) but it was an issue in prior ones…

I SERIOUSLY doubt your XBOX rendered a 18mpixel image in less than 3 seconds over a network.

My 6-core linux workstation takes about 2 seconds for a big picture like that to load and draw…  

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the 2048x2048 limit is only a published specification.   It appears to work just fine for any image I’ve tried…

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Thank you both for the info.

I believe I am running the latest FW, unluess something been released in the last 3 days that I don’t know about.

With regards to my xBox performance… doubt away… All I can say is that in four years of using it to view many thousands of pictures through Win Media Center, I never found performance to be an issue over my wired network.  If I wanted to go to the next image, I hit the button and it displayed quickly with no significant delay.  The HUB is an entirely different story, you click a button and wait… and wait… and wait… and wait… and wait. 

Now I will add that on the xBox it did take time for the media library to load and previews to generate (again in Media Center), but the navigation between photos was never really an issue for me so I never timed it.

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You’re not alone!

I also find that picture quality isn’t very good on the hub when wieving photos, watching a video however produce great quality.

I did an experiment with 5 selected pictures (12 megapixel):

On the Hub connected with hdmi - Pictures taken in bright daylight looks ok, but it doesn’t handle dark areas very good, there seems to be a vague purple shining through.

On a cheap noname dvd player connected with hdmi - The same pictures seems to be a bit more clear, still problems in dark areas, but not as intense as with the hub. 

On a computer connected to my tv with vga, pictures look very good, much better than the hub, close to no problems in dark areas.

Denver dvb-c tuner connected with hdmi - Picture quality is very good, it handles dark areas very well.

On my Sony blueray player connected with hdmi - Picture quality is superb and beats the hub on every aspect, close to no problems with dark areas.

My JVC Lcd tv is hd-ready, so it doesn’t support 1080p, but it has a great picture quality.

I’ve tried almost every possible setting in the hub that my tv supports, but it doesn’t really make much difference, viewing photos on the hub is not horrible, but it could be a lot better if you ask me.

And yes I am running the latest firmware version

I do find the loading speed of pictures acceptable, but the quality isn’t particulary good, all my other devices that are able to show pictures do a lot better job at it. 

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I have always had this problem as well though I think WD struggle to replicate this issue. Are these photos streamed from a NAS or from the internal HD. If NAS, are you accessing via media server?

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JetJockey,

I agree the Hub is way too slow compared t omy older laptop using Media Player… It takes six seconds for the Live TV HUB to advance to the next picture after pessing the remote button

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This is wrong -  picture change is pretty instant. You have a network issue or there are issues with your pics or even HD. Lets have more details. Are you streaming from a NAS or the hib internal storage?  What size are your pics?

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kosh2 wrote:

This is wrong -  picture change is pretty instant. You have a network issue or there are issues with your pics or even HD. Lets have more details. Are you streaming from a NAS or the hib internal storage?  What size are your pics?

 

 

Not sure if you are asking me (the OP) or someone else, but all my photos are store on the HUB’s HDD.  My largest images are in the 7-10 MB range, but it happen on smaller files as well. 

I experience no perfomance issues with any other content (i.e. videos).

I could probably live with the slow performance, but the image quality issue is really starting to bug me.  I know it’s going to be hard to truly show what I am seeing, but here is a shot of the screen taken with my phone from a distance of about 12" away.  The stripes on the airplane are pefectly smooth on the original jpeg.  I know 12" is a completely unrealistic viewing distance, but this image is so jagged that I it looks lousy from any distance.  Yuk!!!

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No it as the comment from the other person about six seconds. Lookin gat your post 3-4 seconds for a 10+MB seems normal for this machine. Yes, not as smooth as a PC.

As for jaggies, this is a known problem as already said above.  If you view them from a NAS media server they are fine however.

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OP: While 18 mega pixel JPGs are not supported, we are looking into the scaling issue at an algorithym level to investigate where this issue may be caused.  A fix of this nature would have to be included in a firmware update.

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Thanks Brandon.

I did some experimenting today…  I rendered two different sets of same photos as JPEGs with different dimensions and copied them to different folders on the HUBs HDD.

Scenario 1 - 2000px Max Long Edge  (max 4 mp) - Photos edges still jagged (no change IQ), but performance was slightly better at 2-3 seconds per image (approx 600KB each).

Scenario 2 - 720px Max Vertical Dimension (to match 720p TV res) - Photos still jagged (no change in IQ), and performance was same as test above with each photo taking 2-3 seconds to render.  At a height of 720 px each image was less that 300KB.

In summary, when cutting the resolution by 80% (and file size 95%) rendering performance between photos was reduced (improved) by 50%, but the image quality remained unchanged.

Now for the peculiar part… I also played with the scaling settings a bit and when I set it to “actual size” my 720px high images from scenario 2 above displayed at about 60% of the size of my TV screen, with a large black border all the way around the image.  I the verified that I have the HUB set up for 720p at 60Hz via a component connection.  I may be totally off base here, but if I try to display an image that is 720px high on a 720p set, with scaling set to actual size, shouldn’t it more or less fill the screen?   It almost appeared as though even though all my settings and image were 720, the hub was scaling it for 1080p.  Confused?

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Brandon:

Not sure if you saw my post, but I can replicate the scaling issue fairly easily…my display device is 1080p. The HUB is set to 1080p 60Hz. After a reset if I view JPEGS they display correctly. However, if I then view any other media such as a DVD that requires scaling from its native rez to 1080p the JPEG scaling craps out & the jaggies appear, and will not display correctly until after a reset.

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Karnis wrote:

Brandon:

Not sure if you saw my post, but I can replicate the scaling issue fairly easily…my display device is 1080p. The HUB is set to 1080p 60Hz. After a reset if I view JPEGS they display correctly. However, if I then view any other media such as a DVD that requires scaling from its native rez to 1080p the JPEG scaling craps out & the jaggies appear, and will not display correctly until after a reset.

Thanks for the feedback. We are investigating this issue, and our development team is working on isolating the problem, though at this point there would not be an estimated time as to getting this specific issue resolved.  As mentioned above, such a fix would have to be included in a future firmware release.

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Just bought the device. JPEG quality is terrible with latest firmware. This long nown issue is still not fixed.

Disappointeeeed.   :cry:

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An update…

During my experimentation I ended with a library issue and decided the best way to resolve that issue was to restore the device to factory defaults.  I had some problems doing so ( see here), and in the end I used the reset button on the bottom.

After the reset I was surprised to see that my JPEG quality had improved.  I then verified that the photo setting was set to “Fit to Screen” as it had been before.

So what changed?  I don’t know, but could it have something to do with the library having to be rebuilt after the reset?

Here’s another photo of the image I posted earlier, and you can see that the jagged edges are much reduced.

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Just got my machine…I’m not amused by the poor Jpeg quality. Please get this sorted.

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Hi,

just to let you know that I experienced the exact same thing. If I plug in the WD TV Live Hub, JPEGs are displayed fine. If I watch a DVD in ISO format and then go back to look at the same picture, then the quality is bad. If I unplug and plug again the WD TV Live Hub, then JPEGs are displayed fine again. That would be great to patch that bug soon in a future firmware.

Regards,

David.

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@Guy_K

I have a WDTV Live (not Hub) and I see exactly the same issue with very poor Photo quality rendering : jagged edges and overall.

Most of my photos are in the 3mp to 10mp range, and TV is a FullHD 1080p.

In my case rendering was quite good as long as I was on 1.02.21 firmware. Few days ago I upgraded to 1.04.22_V (plenty of new interesting features btw) and now Photo rendering is even worse than described in this thread it seems :frowning:

Can you confirm if the Live has the same known issue and if a fixed firmware will also be delivered ?

Thanks!