Current VP50 "issues" and roadmap?

[VirusKiller]

Would anyone be able to summarize these for me?

I've heard reports about poor VP50 PAL film mode deinterlacing. Are these true?

What other "issues" are there at the time being and what roadmap items are due in 2007 firmware updates?

Thanks,
Joel

[ihan]

1. 50 Hz (both SD & HD) cadence detection isn't so good, for me it seems strongly biased to video. The good news is, that it can be forced to 2:2 odd/even to compensate (bit of a nuisance having to switch between 2:2 & video with sky HD). Once it's forced into the correct mode, there are no problems.
Incidentally, you cannot force 3:2, which may (or may not) help with my subtitle judder problem (see my other latest post).

2. The SD scaling rings, you have to turn down the vp50 sharpness to -1 and considerably decrease sharpness on the display to get rid of the ringing the VP50 introduces (before others interject, yes, my display is pixel mapped properly). Despite what others say, this ringing is clearly visible on a 50" screen when watching normal material. The sharpness test with DVE clearly highlights the problem. IMO, the VP50 SD scaling is no better than my panasonic panel. The HD scaling seems ok.

3. The audio dropout was fixed (for me anyway, see Allan's post below).

4. Stutter with 60Hz input & 24/48Hz output. This can occur at scene changes but definitely can be made to occur by enabling subtitles on a (HD)DVD player.

5. Frame tearing with 24Hz output.

The first two are my main gripes, but that said, I'm an engineer, and as such a perfectionist, and can find fault with anything.

If I only watched film, I would definitely have bought a Lumagen HDP/Q.

The vp50, for under £2k, if you watch a significant amount of video material (SD& HD sport myself), is IMO the best bet.

I don't know anything about the 07 roadmap, but even if they do nothing, I won't be that upset, I'll just keep forcing the deinterlacer into the correct mode.

Regards,
Ian

[VirusKiller]

Thanks for the quick reply.

Originally Posted by ihan

I'm an engineer, and as such a perfectionist, and can find fault with anything.

So am I (engineer and perfectionist).

If I only watched film, I would definitely have bought a Lumagen HDP/Q.

I watch film much more than TV, but I do want to watch more sport on the big screen. I'm thinking that I should probably go with a used HDQ and live with jaggies for the time-being. Mind you, more and more sport from Sky is available at 1080i, so perhaps I'm worrying about nothing...

[The Nightfly]

To add to Ian's post:

1. 60Hz --> 48Hz occassional stutter at scene transitions (see reply to Ians thread)

2. Obvious 'ringing' with SD material (I'm using a projector with 6ft wide screen). Havn't tried reducing sharpness to -1 so will give that a go but sounds like a compromise solution

3. Audio drop-outs NOT fixed for me. Firmware 1.01 was actually much worse than 1.00 using optical input from XBox 360 using HD add-on. In fact, pretty much unusable, so have been forced back to 1.00 and live with occasional drop-outs.

The VP50 does a great job scaling 1080i to my 720p projector but the other problems I'm having are frustrating so can't really recommend it at this time.

Allan

[VirusKiller]

Thanks Allan. Shame about the SD ringing as that would seem to be a real deal-killer for me.

[choddo2006]

I don't know why sharpness of -1 seems to be equivalent to sharpness of 0 on the vp30 but that's definitely the case.

[StooMonster]

Originally Posted by ihan

1. 50 Hz (both SD & HD) cadence detection isn't so good, for me it seems strongly biased to video. The good news is, that it can be forced to 2:2 odd/even to compensate (bit of a nuisance having to switch between 2:2 & video with sky HD). Once it's forced into the correct mode, there are no problems.
Incidentally, you cannot force 3:2, which may (or may not) help with my subtitle judder problem (see my other latest post).

Solution is to set inputs such as DVD player to 'Film mode' rather than 'Auto', my only 'Auto' input is Sky HD. Before parting ways with DVDO, Dale Adams did develop a 3:2 lock-mode (especially for HD DVD playback as VC-1 is always a perfect 3:2 sequence) but this isn't implemented in VP50 (yet?).

2. The SD scaling rings, you have to turn down the vp50 sharpness to -1 and considerably decrease sharpness on the display to get rid of the ringing the VP50 introduces (before others interject, yes, my display is pixel mapped properly). Despite what others say, this ringing is clearly visible on a 50" screen when watching normal material. The sharpness test with DVE clearly highlights the problem. IMO, the VP50 SD scaling is no better than my panasonic panel. The HD scaling seems ok.

DVDO do lack the anti-ringing algorithm of Lumagen in VP50. Apparently they have developed such in the past, before iScan HD production, but AFAIK there is no roadmap to have such in VP50.

3. The audio dropout was fixed (for me anyway, see Allan's post below).

Yes, they rewrote entire audio block. Should be much better now.

StooMonster

[Timbo21]

Originally Posted by VirusKiller

I watch film much more than TV, but I do want to watch more sport on the big screen. I'm thinking that I should probably go with a used HDQ and live with jaggies for the time-being. Mind you, more and more sport from Sky is available at 1080i, so perhaps I'm worrying about nothing...

I have Telewest TV Drive into my HDQ.

I was testing out Match Of The Day, which was being shown on BBC HD on Saturday (Liverpool v Arsenal). I found there were some jaggies with 1080i, which disappeared by using 720p. This may not be a good comparison to Sky HD, which I believe outputs 1080i as native; since I've got a vague memory of hearing that TW uses 720p as standard, and then derives 1080i from that.

[ihan]

I should have mentioned that 2:2 cadence detection still isn't ideal even with 'Film bias mode' enabled. Forced 2:2 seems to be the only way of getting consistent, reliable film performance.

Regards,
Ian

[StooMonster]

That would be 'video' 1080i rather than 'film' -- i.e. 50 fields per second of video, versus 25 frames per second of film.

I've always found VP50 to be excellent with 1080i video, especially as it had edge-processing which makes the picture very sharp.

Was it 'combing' (feathered edges) or 'jaggies' (staircases) you saw? My Lumagen had problems with 1080i video and would often get false positives on 2:2 cadence and switch to 'film' deinterlacing which resulted in combing.

StooMonster

[ihan]

It was a case of visible 'moire' effect with 1080i film sources. One example source material I used was 'revenge of the sith' from skyHD box. It plays fine if you force it into 2:2 odd, I can find examples of moire effect if played back in 'auto' or 'film bias mode'.

The same is true of Unforgiven R2 DVD 576i from Arcam DV29, look at the scrolling text intro, flicker is evident on the text unless the vp50 is set to 2:2 odd.

I agree that the 1080i video performance is fine.

[The Nightfly]

Originally Posted by choddo2006

I don't know why sharpness of -1 seems to be equivalent to sharpness of 0 on the vp30 but that's definitely the case.

Ok, if -1 is equalalent to zero then sounds like it's a good solution, the -1 'label' being just a quirkyness of the VP50 firmware. I'll give it a go.

Regarding occassional stuttering with inverse telecine, especially following scene transitions; someone just posted to AVS this translation of a cine4home review of the VP50 (I assume "ruckeln" means stutter):

We started with the 24Hz expenditure: The processor recognizes the filmmaterial in fractions of seconds and accomplishes an adequate De-Interlacing. At the same time it changes the disturbing Ruckeln on 24Hz, reliably disappeared. It is already a satisfaction to admire HDTV in full quality without restrictions on the canvas. Who got accustomed only once to the liquid Bewegungsabflaeufe of the 24Hz rendition, the 60Hz Ruckel variant appears increasing unreasonable. But where light is, is also shade: With our test occurred it again and again once that the Scaler lost its Rhytmus, disturbing Ruckeln was the result. Remedy creates a short Pausieren of the film, thus the Scaler synchronizes again and the picture runs again liquid. It is annoying nevertheless to pausieren a film until twice. Easy weaknesses showed up also with fast picture changes: Particularly when flashing, e.g. with thunderstorm scenes, here and there fast a cinema picture was jumped over, which makes itself visible in a short Ruckeln. We went over to 48Hz, here remain the picture still more stably in the Rhytmus, but the Ruckler in parts and/or only the Sync which can be corrected by Pausieren also here still occurred.

So there we go, maybe I'm not mad afterall.

Allan

[The Nightfly]

I decided to give 1.01 firmware another try as I'm no longer using the XBox HD Add-on which gave me quite severe audio dropouts when using this version previously.

From what I can tell, the problem is still there but it's been shifted from clearly audible dropouts (about half a second) once or twice during a movie to much smaller dropouts on a more frequent basis. The dropouts in 1.01 are less perceptable but they are there and they now happen about every 20 minutes or so.

It's almost as if in firmware 1.00 something is drifting out of synch but is masked by some buffering going on in the VP50. Eventually the buffer fills up, the VP50 flushes the buffer, half a second of audio is lost and the process starts again. I'm just guessing here, but what I think is happening in 1.01 is the firmware has simply been tweaked to dropout much earlier, therefore the dropouts are less severe but more frequent. I don't think the underlying cause has actually been resolved.

Allan

[madshi]

On my PC connection with the beta software I have "constant dropouts". Basically the whole audio is kind of distorted. With 1.0 the sound is fine most of the time, but has a longer dropout every once in a while. So I agree that the problem is not fixed yet. For me actually it's worse in the beta version.

[StooMonster]

I am currently not running any audio via VP50.

Haven't had any kind of replies to emails in a long, long, long time.

StooMonster