Poor picture quality with AMD display adapters (AMD GPU or AMD APU)

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nickk
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Poor picture quality with AMD display adapters (AMD GPU or AMD APU)

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You may experience poor picture quality on interlaced channels (480i, 576i, and 1080i channels) if you are using an AMD based display adapter (AMD GPU or AMD APU).

Problem:

When using GPU acceleration for video decode the AMD graphics path does not deinterlace video (DX10 and DX11).
The problem was reported to AMD in 2016 and has not been addressed to date.

Symptom:

When GPU acceleration is used you may see jagged left/right edges or horizontal lines following visual elements that are moving.

Starting with HDHomeRun app version 1.1.200.x GPU acceleration is disabled when playing interlaced non-protected channels if an AMD GPU is detected. GPU acceleration is used for 720p channels.

You may still see jagged left/right edges or horizontal lines following visual elements that are moving when viewing protected channels or if the channel changes from 720p to 1080i during playback.

Workaround:

A) If you have an older AMD GPU or APU you may have the option of installing the older Catalyst Control Center version of the driver. Depending on the GPU the Catalyst Control Center may provide the option "Enable AMD Video Quality features in supported video player applications" under "Video", "Global Video Quality". If this option is present, ticking this option should fix the problem. Note that there is another section "Video", "Quality", "Deinterlacing" however this will not enable deinterlacing unless the "Enable AMD Video Quality features in supported video player applications" is also ticked.

B) Upgrade your PC with a non-AMD graphics card. The Nvidia GTX1050 (and higher) GPUs support MPEG2, AVC (h.264), and HEVC (h.265) video making them a good choice for media playback. If you have an AMD APU check to see if it has a PCIe x16 slot for installing a graphics card. The PC will automatically use the new graphics card and disable the APU video path.

You may also consider contacting AMD technical support to go on record as needing deinterlace support to work.

Other notes:

The XBox One is not affected by this issue.

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