Shoutbox

OK, I have:
Windows Vista Home Premium Service Pack 1 (6.0.6001)
Windows Live Messenger 14.0.1202
Messenger Plus! Live 4.80.0.356

I took a DP with my webcam to use (not a motion pic)

It seems that every day or so my DP gets blurrier - but the strange thing is - I go "Change Display Picture" and I see the original clear image in the group of DP's + I see the blurry image that is used as my display picture.

Is this normal to see a DP get blurry after a while?

Its not too much of a drama as when it gets too bad i can simply delete the blurry image from the DP list and select the clear one...

Any idea's on why this happens?

Thanks.
Nick

in your options do you have (Options > Sign In) "Use the same display picture and personal message wherever I sign in." selected?

this would be the only reason why it is happening

Yes, this was selected - I have deselected it now to hopefully resovle the problem...

I'm guessing that when this is selected your DP is stored on a server somewhere, and when  this happens to reduce load on the server the file is compressed (ALOT). Therefore when you log in again and you'r DP is downloaded from the server you get back a low resolution image, rather than the one you had in the first place?

If this is the case, hopefully the problem will be fixed - if not I will be posting back soon.

Thanks a heap, NanaFreak!

I think the problem is that the server uses JPG to store the display pictures that show up on your windows live profile, which is lossy. The client uses PNG-24 which is lossless and will retain full quality.

The strange thing is that you mention is continues to get blurrier everyday, are you sure it continues to gradually lose quality? I would guess that it would lose quality the first time it's compressed and no more.

Let us know what happens when you use an animated display picture for your avatar.

I had the same problem.. But no more..

to exbox: I guess it can't be compressed more than once, lol
...and the logical explanation for gifs would be to stay completely unchanged or something, right? i hooope so, lol!

exbox, I am certain that it got worse every day - I'm guessing when I signed in, the Jpeg was downloaded, which had lost quality. When I signed out my blurry DP was uploaded and compressed agin - hence get lower resolution each time.

I agree with crimson about the gif - I doubt they would use anything other than gif format for animated DP's, and hence they souldn't lose quality. Sorry, but I'm not going to try this (my DP is the only picture that looks half descent of me, so I want to keep it as my DP for now )

Thanks,
Nick
p.s. The problem has been resolved for sure, as my DP has retained its quality since I first found out how to fix it!

Yeah, I guess what could be happening is that the JPG DP gets downloaded the second time you login, and then it's recompressed with each login/logout. Hopefully they fix it since lots of people use this features.

quote:

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Originally posted by exbox
Hopefully they fix it since lots of people use this features.

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That bug has probably been posted in every beta that was on Connect, and so far nothing has been done about it.
I don't really see it happening.