Topic: Theater View Font Issues (Read 7041 times)

raym · « **on:** October 06, 2006, 05:45:33 am »

Ok, I've been complaining for a while now about the problems I've been experiencing with MC12 Theater View fonts. The letters are basically blocky and jaggered and it's not a problem I've ever had with previous versions. I've given various examples in recent build threads but the picture below takes the cake! This is how Theater View appears after recently installing it on my laptop. Not only are the letters jaggered but the buttons appear mis-aligned!

Now, this is the third PC I've tried and all exhibit the same problem (in varying degrees). This is by far the worse though.

Here's hoping that something can be done coz this just looks terrible.

Thanks.

System Info:
Media Center Registered 12.0.87 -- C:\Program Files\J River\Media Center 12\

Microsoft Windows XP Workstation 5.1 Service Pack 2 (Build 2600)
Intel Unknown 413 MHz MMX / Memory: Total - 1047 MB, Free - 576 MB

Internet Explorer: 6.0.2900.2180 / ComCtl32.dll: 5.82.2900 / Shlwapi.dll: 6.0.2900 / Shell32.dll: 6.0.2900 / wnaspi32.dll: N/A
Ripping / Drive G: Mode:Normal Type:Auto Speed:Max
Digital playback: Yes / Use YADB: Yes / Get cover art: No / Calc replay gain: Yes / Copy volume: 32767
Eject after ripping: Yes / Play sound after ripping: No

Burning / Drive G: HL-DT-ST RW/DVD GCC-4241N Addr: 1:0:0 Speed:24 MaxSpeed:24 BurnProof:Yes
Test mode: No / Eject after writing: Yes / Direct decoding: Yes / Write CD-Text: Yes
Use playback settings: No /

Portable Device Info
Removed devices:

lalittle · « **Reply #1 on:** October 06, 2006, 05:51:42 am »

Unfortunately, it is not easy to really see the specific problems in the picture you posted since it appears that the jpg itself is adding artifacts, and the detail is lost in the conversion. Is there any way you could perhaps post a non (or at least "less) compressed picture, or perhaps a blowup that more easily shows the problem?

Thanks,

Larry

raym · « **Reply #2 on:** October 06, 2006, 05:55:21 am »

Quote from: lalittle on October 06, 2006, 05:51:42 am

Unfortunately, it is not easy to really see the specific problems in the picture you posted since it appears that the jpg itself is adding artifacts

I knew someone would say this. Yes it appears the JPG has introduced artifacts but trust me, this is how it looks on my screen!!! But yes I can try to generate a less compressed image.

JimH · « **Reply #3 on:** October 06, 2006, 06:00:48 am »

The difference may be because of the 3d drawing that is now being used. IF that is the case, then it could be driver related. Have you tried updating your video card drivers? Or searching for similar problems with your hardware and 3d?

Sometimes older drivers work and newer ones don't.

The HTPC forum at AVSForum has a lot of driver gurus.

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/forumdisplay.php?s=&forumid=26

Are you using any other video specific software? Windowblinds, for example.

raym · « **Reply #4 on:** October 06, 2006, 06:11:29 am »

Quote from: JimH on October 06, 2006, 06:00:48 am

The difference may be because of the 3d drawing that is now being used. IF that is the case, then it could be driver related. Have you tried updating your video card drivers? Or searching for similar problems with your hardware and 3d?

Sometimes older drivers work and newer ones don't.

The HTPC forum at AVSForum has a lot of driver gurus.

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/forumdisplay.php?s=&forumid=26

Are you using any other video specific software? Windowblinds, for example.

Thanks for the feedback Jim. I think you're probably right as far as the 3D drawing which is in v12. I've not gone down the driver upgrade path yet but I guess I could. As I said, this is not the first PC I've tried.

I see the same problem when I unload Window Blinds.

Thanks.

JimH · « **Reply #5 on:** October 06, 2006, 06:28:25 am »

What do the machines have in common? Video hardware and software, CPU?

raym · « **Reply #6 on:** October 06, 2006, 06:45:08 am »

I admit that none of them have fancy-schmancy video cards - they all have onboard video (but this never mattered before!). My HTPC has a grunty card but I havn't installed MC there yet. Will do it asap.

The PC's I have tried are all Dell's. Two have Intel video chipsets (82915G/GV/910GL don't know what the other is) and system info for one of them is below. The laptop has an ATI Mobility Radeon 9000.

I've actually just upgraded the Intel driver above to the latest but no change. I'm in the process of upgrading the ATI Catalyst drivers on the laptop to see what difference this makes.

Thanks.

Media Center Registered 12.0.87 -- C:\Program Files\J River\Media Center 12\

Microsoft Windows XP Workstation 5.1 Service Pack 2 (Build 2600)
Intel Pentium 4 2992 MHz MMX / Memory: Total - 514 MB, Free - 185 MB

Internet Explorer: 6.0.2900.2180 / ComCtl32.dll: 5.82.2900 / Shlwapi.dll: 6.0.2900 / Shell32.dll: 6.0.2900 / wnaspi32.dll: N/A
Ripping / Drive G: LITE-ON DVDRW SOHW-1653S Mode:Normal Type:Auto Speed:Max
Digital playback: Yes / Use YADB: Yes / Get cover art: No / Calc replay gain: Yes / Copy volume: 32767
Eject after ripping: Yes / Play sound after ripping: No

Burning / Drive G: LITE-ON DVDRW SOHW-1653S Addr: 0:0:0 Speed:48 MaxSpeed:48 BurnProof:Yes
Test mode: No / Eject after writing: Yes / Direct decoding: Yes / Write CD-Text: Yes
Use playback settings: No /

Portable Device Info
Removed devices:

Uwe · « **Reply #7 on:** October 06, 2006, 06:59:33 am »

Raym, i thought this is a feature not a bug. The font is ok, but i also see the allignment of the buttons. Tested on three PCs.

edited link

NickM · « **Reply #8 on:** October 06, 2006, 08:35:15 am »

Raym, I am running MC12.87 on a MacBook ( so new and supposedly decent graphic card ), and I get the SAME font degredation in Theatre view.

Uwe · « **Reply #9 on:** October 06, 2006, 08:58:28 am »

In my Jukebox System, i only see a very slow moving background but no buttons. Instead of the buttons, i see a blank, white box in the upper left corner. Independend from the skin, resolution etc. Newest drivers are installed, also newest dirctx.
Sorry, there is no hardcopy working...
Uwe

Media Center 12.0.87 -- C:\Programme\J River\Media Center 12\

Microsoft Windows 2000 5.0 Service Pack 4 (Build 2195)
Intel Pentium III 629 MHz MMX / Memory: Total - 261 MB, Free - 136 MB

Internet Explorer: 5.00.3700.1000 / ComCtl32.dll: 5.81.3502 / Shlwapi.dll: 5.0.3502 / Shell32.dll: 5.0.3700 / wnaspi32.dll: N/A
Ripping / Drive D: Mode:Normal Type:Auto Speed:Max
Digital playback: Yes / Use YADB: Yes / Get cover art: No / Calc replay gain: Yes / Copy volume: 32767
Eject after ripping: Yes / Play sound after ripping: No

Burning / Drive D: LITE-ON LTR-52327S Addr: 1:0:0 Speed:52 MaxSpeed:52 BurnProof:Yes
Test mode: No / Eject after writing: Yes / Direct decoding: Yes / Write CD-Text: Yes
Use playback settings: No /

Portable Device Info
Removed devices:

Mr ChriZ · « **Reply #10 on:** October 06, 2006, 09:10:15 am »

My brothers getting the same problem on a Dell Inspiron Laptop.
It's working fine on our desktop machines but fonts are barely
readable on the laptop.

glynor · « **Reply #11 on:** October 06, 2006, 09:54:29 am »

Just so you don't think we're all crazy by not seeing this font issue, this is how it looks on my work system which has a GeForce 7800 GTX:

Not vector-perfect since it's rendered in 3D but I think acceptable (especially since I typically use Theater View on my TV at home which has low enough resolution that I can't see any jaggies at all).

Perhaps Theater View can "enable" hardware Anti-Aliasing and Ansiotropic Filtering which would help clean this up (on video cards that support it). I keep my video card driver settings for this set to Application Controlled (so that I can set it through the individual games' options menus). I've manually enabled these options for testing on my nVidia drivers and it doesn't seem to have made any difference (but perhaps some level of support has to be enabled in the application as well). Of course, none of this would make a difference on wimpy cards.

Unfortunately, I don't really have a way to test it easily on a wimpy GPU. The slowest machine I have MC12 installed on right now is an ATI Mobile 9700 notebook computer. My other machines are:

ATI X1900XT
ATI AIW X800XT
nVidia 7800 GTX

And, of course, none of them are too wimpy. I do have a machine at work with an ATI AIW 9600XT, but I don't have MC installed on it (and it's used kinda heavily and shared so I don't know that I want to mess with it right now). I also have a machine in my basement that's torn apart with an ATI 9250 AGP card, which might be wimpy enough, but it's not operable (and I was going to replace the card with an ATI X800 XL that I also have lying around soon) and it's a Linux box.

?

Matt · « **Reply #12 on:** October 06, 2006, 10:26:31 am »

Try forcing AA and AF in your video card settings. We currently use the card defaults.

Also, it'd be interesting to see if newer drivers helped.

We've used it on some older ATI cards without a problem. (x300, etc.) However, we'll do some more testing with other video cards soon.

Thanks everyone.

Griff · « **Reply #13 on:** October 06, 2006, 10:56:25 am »

If you look at Raym and Uwe post

You will see the invisible forward slash, that I said about in a build thread.

I also tried diff. drivers and no change.

AIW 9000

glynor · « **Reply #14 on:** October 06, 2006, 10:59:16 am »

Quote from: Matt on October 06, 2006, 10:26:31 am

Try forcing AA and AF in your video card settings. We currently use the card defaults.

I did and it didn't seem to make much difference. That's why I wasn't sure if there was something you needed to "turn on" on your end to get it to work.

My card defaults are always set to Application Preference (which really should be the way to keep it). That way, I can enable AA 8x and AF 16x in UT2004 (because my cards can handle it in that game, AA 4x and AF 16x in FarCry (because my cards - other than the X800XT -- can handle it in that game), and AA 2x and AF 8x in Oblivion (because my X1900XT can handle it in that game -- but not a drop more).

If I set it manually in the driver, I have to remember to go into the driver and switch it before I start a particular game (and remember what settings I figured out that game could handle). Applications which just use the driver defaults generally don't use any AA or AF at all for most people...

Plus, forcing AA and AF in the driver uses more resources than Application Preference. Those options do full-screen AA and AF. In-game settings typically only apply AA and AF to the portions of the frame that need it (if they're well coded), which can drastically improve performance.

raym · « **Reply #15 on:** October 06, 2006, 11:56:09 am »

Well, nice to know it's not just me I guess.

Quote from: glynor on October 06, 2006, 09:54:29 am

Just so you don't think we're all crazy by not seeing this font issue, this is how it looks on my work system which has a GeForce 7800 GTX:

glynor, Just an observation..... what's interesting about your screen shot is that the "D" in "Display View" is far worse than the "D" in "CD & DVD". On one of my better machines, I see this also. It seems the issue gets worse the further down the screen the letters appear. On this same PC, "Playing Now" looks almost perfect whereas "Display View" (ie, the last menu item) looks terrible. This probably means nothing however...

Quote from: Matt on October 06, 2006, 10:26:31 am

Try forcing AA and AF in your video card settings. We currently use the card defaults.

Also, it'd be interesting to see if newer drivers helped.

Matt, I've done this on my laptop (the worst example of the problem I have) and no change. I will persevere with the tweeking though and let you know what I find...

glynor · « **Reply #16 on:** October 06, 2006, 12:01:25 pm »

Quote from: raym on October 06, 2006, 11:56:09 am

glynor, Just an observation..... what's interesting about your screen shot is that the "D" in "Display View" is far worse than the "D" in "CD & DVD". On one of my better machines, I see this also. It seems the issue gets worse the further down the screen the letters appear. On this same PC, "Playing Now" looks almost perfect whereas "Display View" (ie, the last menu item) looks terrible. This probably means nothing however...

Hmmm... Perhaps it has to do with having the buttons on different "layers" (to enable the flyin-out animation or something?). I don't know exactly how DirectDraw works at all, but I do know that on some of my vector graphics applications, items that are on layers far underneath multiple other transparent layers don't always render as well as those "on top". Typically this is because the upper layers either aren't fully, completely, all the way transparent or the graphics app just stinks at multiple layer handling (Freehand with layer effects does this).

Doof · « **Reply #17 on:** October 06, 2006, 01:58:26 pm »

You guys are lucky. This is what I get:

Literally, that's all it does. The white glob spins, but shows no textures, and the buttons never arrive. Nothing shows in the top status bar, either.

Of course, this on a 6 year old ATI Radeon Mobility M3 in a Dell Inspiron 4000. Unfortunately, this is what my HTPC is running on. Works great with MC11, but no so much with MC12. It runs great on my Inspiron 8600 that I have at work, though. That's equipped with a GeForce FX Go5200.

Seems to be that it's mainly an ATI problem, doesn't it?

glynor · « **Reply #18 on:** October 06, 2006, 02:08:57 pm »

As I posted above, most of my machines use ATI cards (I'm kinda an ATI/AMD fanboy but not too extreme).

I don't have trouble on any of them that I've tested. I'm using all Catalyst 6+ drivers though...

4BYE · « **Reply #19 on:** October 06, 2006, 02:52:55 pm »

Same problem here...
Not in the menu but in the text under the thumbnails.
Updated drivers etc. (latest NVIDIA)

Same letters appear good and bad on the same screen.

Theo

raym · « **Reply #20 on:** October 06, 2006, 07:06:20 pm »

Quote

glynor, Just an observation..... what's interesting about your screen shot is that the "D" in "Display View" is far worse than the "D" in "CD & DVD". On one of my better machines, I see this also. It seems the issue gets worse the further down the screen the letters appear. On this same PC, "Playing Now" looks almost perfect whereas "Display View" (ie, the last menu item) looks terrible. This probably means nothing however...

Quote from: glynor on October 06, 2006, 12:01:25 pm

Hmmm... Perhaps it has to do with having the buttons on different "layers" (to enable the flyin-out animation or something?). I don't know exactly how DirectDraw works at all, but I do know that on some of my vector graphics applications, items that are on layers far underneath multiple other transparent layers don't always render as well as those "on top". Typically this is because the upper layers either aren't fully, completely, all the way transparent or the graphics app just stinks at multiple layer handling (Freehand with layer effects does this).

Actually, on closer inspection, this idea that the font gets worse toward the bottom of the screen isn't the case anywhere other than on the main menu. Drilling down a little into the Audio menu for instance on my machine shows some pretty bad looking letters right at the top of the screen on the header/info area. Oh well....

Uwe · « **Reply #21 on:** October 07, 2006, 04:22:06 am »

@doof:
I get the same thing on my HTPC. The backgrond is moving very slowly, and the white blank box on top appears after moving the mouse.

ATI 3D Card (old fashioned...)
Uwe

Magic_Randy · « **Reply #22 on:** October 07, 2006, 12:10:32 pm »

I do not have any of these display problems. I’m running on Fujitsu notebook PC with a ATI Mobility Radeon 9600/9700 video card.

4BYE · « **Reply #23 on:** October 07, 2006, 04:01:55 pm »

Hello,

Earlier I said I didn't had problems with the menu, but I have. (along with the text under the thumbnails)

It's the same as mentioned above by other members/users.

I downloaded the latest drivers and have "application controlled" marked.

Thanks,

Theo

raym · « **Reply #24 on:** October 11, 2006, 12:07:14 am »

Quote from: Matt on October 10, 2006, 05:21:03 pm

9. Fixed: Theater View and 3D visualization textures could look garbled on some systems.

Not seeing any improvements at all with the latest build (.189)

4BYE · « **Reply #25 on:** October 12, 2006, 03:53:15 am »

Me too...
See image below.

And I still find the font sizes used in this view not in harmony with each other.

I use "small" for Theater View. I feel the menu's size is good this way. But the name of the artist (f.e. B-Tribe) is too big. Also at the top (Home.Audio>Ambient is too big for my taste.

Maybe an option to adjust them seperately?

Cheers,

Theo

raym · « **Reply #26 on:** October 12, 2006, 05:15:01 am »

Quote from: raym on October 11, 2006, 12:07:14 am

Not seeing any improvements at all with the latest build (.189)

Just to be clear, mine still looks like it does in the first post.

Dutch Peter · « **Reply #27 on:** October 12, 2006, 04:02:12 pm »

I have a strange cut through the buttons in theater view. See added balck line:

Dutch Peter · « **Reply #28 on:** October 13, 2006, 12:05:20 am »

Quote from: Dutch Peter on October 12, 2006, 04:02:12 pm

I have a strange cut through the buttons in theater view. See added balck line:

Fixed in 12.0.91

raym · « **Reply #29 on:** October 13, 2006, 01:05:26 am »

Quote from: Matt on October 12, 2006, 05:16:08 pm

15. Fixed: Theater View textures (buttons, text, etc.) could look torn through the middle.

As of build .191, I'm not seeing the "tear" in the main menu anymore - thankyou!. MOST fonts are ok EXCEPT I'm still seeing the same font distortion for:-

a) fonts appearing underneath Thumbs AND
b) fonts appearing in the final level of a list hierarchy (strange?? Perhaps the fix isn't applying to all view scheme levels?).

Looks like we're getting closer now... Thanks again.

raym · « **Reply #30 on:** October 13, 2006, 08:45:51 pm »

This all appears to be fixed now as of build .092.

Thanks again for adressing this. Theater View really looks great now!

lalittle · « **Reply #31 on:** December 02, 2006, 05:17:26 pm »

I'm now seeing this issue on build 123 on a Geforce Ti4600, but only when using 1024x768. It looks just like this (thanks to NickM for posting the picture):

Larry

raym · « **Reply #32 on:** December 02, 2006, 09:29:19 pm »

Quote from: lalittle on December 02, 2006, 05:17:26 pm

I'm now seeing this issue on build 123 on a Geforce Ti4600, but only when using 1024x768.

On the PC I'm using now which has Intel based graphics, anything other than 1280x1024 looks bad - jaggered/blocky/mis-aligned text. But as has been the case with this fonts issue since the very beginning, it appears to only affect some systems and/or some resolutions. The font size used (in Theater View options) also seems to have some impact. Have you tried playing around with that?

This is the only PC in my house which still exhibits the problem since build 191. Using large fonts and turning my res up fixes it though.

lalittle · « **Reply #33 on:** December 02, 2006, 11:53:07 pm »

Quote from: raym on December 02, 2006, 09:29:19 pm

The font size used (in Theater View options) also seems to have some impact. Have you tried playing around with that?

I'll give it a try for troubleshooting purposes, but I don't want to use it this way since a larger font is simply to wasteful of space on the TV monitor. The "normal" size in Theater View is the best size for my setup -- the large size is too big.

Quote

This is the only PC in my house which still exhibits the problem since build 191. Using large fonts and turning my res up fixes it though.

I can't change the res since the TV output of the graphics card cannot go any higher than 1024 x 768, and using a lower res is too chunky on my relatively large TV screen. I really need this to work at 1024 x 768, so I'm hoping that JR can find a solution to this in MC. I still believe that the answer lies with MC since I've never seen anything like this with any other application.

Thanks for the feedback,

Larry

lalittle · « **Reply #34 on:** December 06, 2006, 04:02:51 am »

Still seeing the blocky text issue (on some systems) with build 125 when the full screen display is set to 1024x768:

Note that with this issue, I've noticed a very interesting pattern, which is that the further the text goes to the right with any item in the list, the worse the blockiness gets. In other words, with my main "Audio" list contains the group "Recent Imports - Last 200 Tracks." The blockiness starts to look really bad with the word "Last," and seems to get worse on the text further to the right.

MC seems to be doing something "not-standard" with it's Theater View screens that is causing some odd issues. A Geforce Ti4600 is not exactly a "new" graphics card, but it should be plenty good enough to not have THIS issue. I see NO other graphics related issues on this system.

The "twitching" issue with an FX5200 remains as well.

Thanks again,

Larry

raym · « **Reply #35 on:** December 10, 2006, 08:15:02 pm »

Quote from: lalittle on December 06, 2006, 04:02:51 am

Still seeing the blocky text issue (on some systems) ....

Just built a new htpc for a friend. It has an intel board with integrated Graphics. System details below.

I'm running it at 1024x768 currently but at all resolutions and bit depths, this system exhibits fairly average looking fonts in Theater View. It's the first time in a while I've seen this. Yes, I have the absolute latest drivers (for everything!). I've also enabled font smoothing in the system options (which helps a bit).

I think there's still a definate problem here. The VPU on this board is very good. Directx 9 complient and all the rest of it. It's a modern peice of hardware so I wouldn't be expecting to see any of these issues. I'm certainly not seeing anything like this in any other app.

Thanks.

* Accelerator Information *

Accelerator in Use:      Intel(R) G965 Express Chipset Family
Video BIOS:      1377
Current Graphics Mode:   1024 by 768 True Color (75 Hz)

***********************

Media Center Registered 12.0.122 -- C:\Program Files\J River\Media Center 12\

Microsoft Windows XP Workstation 5.1 Service Pack 2 (Build 2600)
Intel Unknown 1864 MHz MMX / Memory: Total - 1021 MB, Free - 633 MB

Internet Explorer: 6.0.2900.2180 / ComCtl32.dll: 5.82.2900 / Shlwapi.dll: 6.0.2900 / Shell32.dll: 6.0.2900 / wnaspi32.dll: N/A
Ripping / Drive D: Mode:Normal Type:Auto Speed:Max
Digital playback: Yes / Use YADB: Yes / Get cover art: No / Calc replay gain: Yes / Copy volume: 32767
Eject after ripping: Yes / Play sound after ripping: No

Burning / No burners found.
Test mode: No / Eject after writing: Yes / Direct decoding: No / Write CD-Text: Yes
Use playback settings: No /

Portable Device Info
Removed devices:

lalittle · « **Reply #36 on:** December 10, 2006, 09:20:37 pm »

Thanks for the report.

Quote from: raym on December 10, 2006, 08:15:02 pm

I think there's still a definate problem here. The VPU on this board is very good. Directx 9 complient and all the rest of it. It's a modern peice of hardware so I wouldn't be expecting to see any of these issues. I'm certainly not seeing anything like this in any other app.

There is definitely a problem, and my guess is that regardless of where the problem is originating, it is within JR's ability to fix it -- in other words that a fix is possible, and that if any fix will be made, it will come from JR. I think that the only reason we don't see more reports of this is that 1) the number of people using Theater View is relatively small, and 2) of the people that ARE using Theater View, they just happen to be using a resolution that does not have the issue. I would bet that if more people made a more thorough check of this, we see a lot more reports of this (and other) issues with Theater View display.

Thanks again,

Larry

NickM · « **Reply #37 on:** December 10, 2006, 09:53:50 pm »

I would also suggest that it is possible to chose DIFFERENT fonts sizes for the Theatre view buttons as opposed to the text below the cover art image. In recent builds the button text has become bigger, and it's possible to set the font overall, but not separately.

INTERACT FORUM

Author Topic: Theater View Font Issues (Read 7041 times)