29/59 problem on Intel i5 Ivy Bridge 4000

[lurch66]

My brother in law just built his first htpc and is experiencing the 29/59 bug. newfiend you have been a great help to me and others in fixing this very annoying problem. If you or anybody else has any suggestions on how to fix this on the on board intell graphics we would be very thank full. If we cant get anything to work I am going to recommend he gets either the nvidia gt 430 witch I own and have great success with or the nvidia gt 640 that you have newfiend. Again thanks for any help. This is a great forum for new and old media center enthusiast.

[Mike88]

I had the bug when watching some old SD OTA programs using an Intel G620 CPU (Sandy Bridge with 2 cores). I waited for a good sale & got an HD6450 video card from Newegg for $14.99 after rebate. It solved my problem, of course yours may be different. But I figured I'd take a chance for $15.

[autopicasso]

Hello in the newbie brother in law, so far it seems to only do it on the premium channels (HBO! show time, etc). My wife refuses to use this as our primary dvr until I can get this fixed. Any help would be greatly appreciated!! Thanks in advance.

[lurch66]

ah yes the all important WAF. without it many HTPC's would be banished to the garage.

[richard1980]

Disable dynamic contrast. If that doesn't work, keep disabling post-processing "features" until it does work.

http://thegreenbutton.tv/forums/viewtop ... 896#p35896

[newfiend]

Try Richard's suggestion first.. if that doesn't fix it and you have updated the Motherboard Drivers and BIOS to the latest versions and you still have the issue I will suggest what others have already.
Look into a good Video Card like the Nvidia GT430 or GT640. Both work very well at helping with this issue. I have had both cards and both seem to work well.
I bought a EVGA GT430 and EVGA GT640. I currently run the GT640 with the latest Nvidia WHQL W/O issue.
Once you install the Video card and drivers update DirectX 9.0c http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download ... aspx?id=35
I'm sure Lurch66 can help you with the rest of the settings needed in Nvidia Control Panel once it's installed, if not PM me and I'll help you out there as well.
It should fix your issue and eliminate mama drama aka bad WAF.
newfiend~

[newfiend]

ah yes the all important WAF. without it many HTPC's would be banished to the garage.

there have been days brother that I thought the wife would do that to mine...especially in the early days when I was a newbiefiend.. haha

[lurch66]

Yes I can definitely help with the settings. I have had great success with my gt 430. thanks everybody for the help so far we will look into the dynamic contrast and see how that go's. If we don't have any luck I think a 430 or 640 may be in his future.

[autopicasso]

Where do I find the dynamic contrast settings?

[newfiend]

http://youtu.be/9g6Z1sWOOIA

Go watch this.

[lurch66]

you are a wealth of information.

[autopicasso]

Thanks for all of the help, thanks newfiend for the video. That was a perfect example of what I needed. That fixed the problem, again thanks to all.

[newfiend]

Have to give credit to Richard on that one. I didn't know disabling Dynamic contrast control would fix the ivy bridge 59/29.. so I learned something as well. For a Media Center user there isn't a better forum around.. although WEC and AVS are great sources of information as well. Glad it fixed your problem. Welcome to HTPC's... they are an adventure.. but the rewards are worth it.

Sent from my Windows 8 device using Board Express Pro

[richard1980]

In all fairness, user tad was the person that originally posted the Ivy Bridge solution.

[newfiend]

I found Mike Garcen's take on the ivy bridge graphics a bit telling.. http://www.missingremote.com/blog/2012- ... nd-forward

"Intel Ivy Bridge HD4000 Graphics
Between lack of 0-255 support and the pedantic HDCP implementation, it's just not useful in a high-end HTPC. Hopefully all the problems are driver related, but I don't have much hope for seeing them get fixed"

You may want to eventually look into a better graphics alternative.

[JazJon]

http://youtu.be/9g6Z1sWOOIA

Go watch this.

Excellent thanks. I just bought the new Mac Mini (Late 2012 model) with Intel i7 HD 4000. (Windows 8 Media Center, Ceton Cable card tuners)

The random flicker was driving me nuts! I was panicking that I made a bad choice buying an Apple Mac Mini but now I'm happy! Things are back to normal now that I disabled Dynamic Contrast. I love boot camp so I can play with iMovie, and do occasional maintenance stuff. (latest firmware update fixed occasional HD 4000 blanking out problems)

[Mike88]

I found Mike Garcen's take on the ivy bridge graphics a bit telling.. http://www.missingremote.com/blog/2012- ... nd-forward

"Intel Ivy Bridge HD4000 Graphics
Between lack of 0-255 support and the pedantic HDCP implementation, it's just not useful in a high-end HTPC. Hopefully all the problems are driver related, but I don't have much hope for seeing them get fixed"

You may want to eventually look into a better graphics alternative.

I read the missingremote article & it did mention using WMC, etc. I'm not sure what other software he used, but from everything I have read WMC uses 16-235 color space. IOW it would not matter which CPU is used with WMC because you will not get 0-255 color, at least not natively. There is a registry mod that changes this to 0-255 color.

Is the author's lack of 0-255 due to the CPU or WMC? If HD4000 graphics does use 16-235 then wouldn't he have experienced a double conversion, once with the HD4000 & once with WMC?

[richard1980]

By default, WMC lets the GPU control the RGB range. There is a registry mod that allows WMC to control the RGB range, and it can be set to either 0-255 or 16-235, but the use of 0-255 assumes the GPU is actually capable of that RGB range.

[jeffav]

Thanks to Richard and all others who posted on this problem. I just upgraded my HTPC from a Sandy Bridge i5-2500K to an Ivy Bridge i5-3570K, and got the 29/59 flickering on Showtime, which I didn't get before with the older CPU and Intel Graphics 3000. I was all ready to buy a dedicated video card like the nVidia 430, but read the post and was able to cure the problem by disabling dynamic contrast in the Intel Graphics 4000 control panel. Thanks for the easy (and free) fix!

[olyteddy]

FWIW it also seems to be related to the Windows MPEG decoder. See this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DshoUwqaop4