Integra Research, Progressive DVD player

[Gordon @ Convergent AV]

Last Wednesday we were lucky enough to get a chance to listen and view the new Integra Research AV system. It’s sort of a high-end Onkyo system made in conjunction with a couple of other companies.

We had the DVD player, Pre-amp (receiver) and 7 channel power amp on dem. Unfortunately our time with these units was only one afternoon, not enough time to get the best out of them in order to decide whether to stock them. So, the following is just a taster for us all.

As this is the progressive scan forum I’ll just comment on their DVD player. This unit has progressive component output capability (only with NTSC though). In order to evaluate its performance I used it with a SonyVPL10HT. It is possible to change from progressive output to interlaced at the click of a button on the remote, so we could make quick comparisons.

The problem arose though that this wasn’t an ordinary DVD player….. It has 3 user define-able presets for both interlaced and progressive outputs. Options that can be set include, sharpness, brightness, contrast, y/c delay, gamma. It was obvious that with the settings set flat for both there was a BIG difference between interlaced and progressive. Progressive looked much worse, it was totally washed out! We got out a test pattern disc and set about changing the settings to get each as close to the other as possible. I never really got them as close as I’d have liked but I got it enough to be able to compare the de-interlacing of the Sony’s internal scaler compared to that of the DVD player.

To my eyes they were very close, although, using “The Fifth Element” and the scene where she breaks out on to the ledge then jumps off I found very slightly less problems with the DVD player in progressive. When she jumps off you also seemed to get a greater feeling of falling with it. This wasn’t as big a difference as I was hoping for but I think that has more to do with the fact we didn’t have enough time to set up all the parameters of the DVD player to exact the highest performance from it.

Rob and Paul from Jamo, who are the distributor are, hopefully going to send us all the stuff up for a longer period after the other UK dealers have had a chance to see it all. From my first impressions though I’d say it looks very interesting. Very well made, beautiful to look at and feel, time will tell if it has the audio and video performance to match.

Cheers

Gordon


------------------
StereoStereo
Intelligent Solutions for Intelligent Homes !

[Ludae]

Originally posted by Gordon, StereoStereo:
To my eyes they were very close, although, using “The Fifth Element” and the scene where she breaks out on to the ledge then jumps off I found very slightly less problems with the DVD player in progressive. When she jumps off you also seemed to get a greater feeling of falling with it. This wasn’t as big a difference as I was hoping for but I think that has more to do with the fact we didn’t have enough time to set up all the parameters of the DVD player to exact the highest performance from it.

Gordon,

Did you compare the two without scaling the image?

The Sony will, in some modes, do a direct mapping of sampled pixels to LCD panel pixels (albeit with a smaller image).

Scaling is, as you know, filtering of the image, so without it you may see a greater difference between the two de-interlacers.


[This message has been edited by Ludae (edited 21-01-2001).]

[Gordon @ Convergent AV]

No, the Sony was scaling both images. When we get a progressive scan DVD that outputs RGB I'll try that input. It's the one that does the pixel map I think.

Gordon

------------------
StereoStereo
Intelligent Solutions for Intelligent Homes !