MerMan - What Were Your Conclusions ?

[GearHead]

MerMan,

Did you manage to come to any conclusions about the relative merits of the Arcam DV27 vs HCPC via DVI when you had the TW100 ?

Allan

[GearHead]

^^^

[MerMan]

Hi Allan

Sorry for the delay in answering. I now have my very own TW100 and so will be able to carry out proper testing. When I had the demo machine last week, I do remember being surprised at how good the HTPC picture was. However, I do not think it had the edge on the Meridian and as for the sound quality, there is no competiton.

I am however looking forward to testing the TW100 at its nativie resolution rather than the workaround you gave me.

FI the TW100 I purchased came with the 1,08 firmware already installed.

Regards

[GearHead]

Merman,

I would be interested in any thoughts you had to share on the relative merits of HCPC vs a high-end DVD player like the Arcam DV27 or the Meridian. HCPC is impressive but the areas that could be improved on, in my opinion are:

pans - I think judder is too strong a word but I definitely notice discrete steps on panning shots.

pauses - occasionaly (about once every ten minutes) the image seems to freeze for a fraction of a second. I notice it and then its gone, enough to snap you out of the film.

audio - the digital-out sounds a little hard and fatiguing compared to my Sony DVD player which in turn sounds clean and open in comparison

heat/noise - I have a smallish room dedicated to the home cinema

I'm the sort of person who won't compromise on picture quality to get improvements elsewhere, so anything that looks as good (or better) than HCPC and improves substantially on its weaknesses has got to be worth investigating.

What are your opinions of the Faroudja de-interlacing built into the projector ? I would imagine that an interlaced signal from your Meridian would still look pretty good when de-interlaced by the Faroudja processor, comparable to progressive from the DV27 ?

Allan

>pans - I think judder is too strong a word but I definitely notice >discrete steps on panning shots.

This is indeed an HTPC issue, have you tried setting the display frequency at 50 or 60 Hz (depending on PAL or NTSC of course)?

>pauses - occasionaly (about once every ten minutes) the image >seems to freeze for a fraction of a second. I notice it and then >its gone, enough to snap you out of the film.

I noticed some pausing also, but maybe only once per movie, but then quite severely. I will try some caching settings (disabling it) or a different soundcard (I have now a cheap SB 5.1 but according to different sources, it is prone to stuttering). I do have quite an old DVD-drive so that may be the source also.

>audio - the digital-out sounds a little hard and fatiguing >compared to my Sony DVD player which in turn sounds clean >and open in comparison

This also may depend on the soundcard you're using. There are some high quality cards available. HTPCs are prone to jitter though. (Maybe you could try an dejitter filter?)

>heat/noise - I have a smallish room dedicated to the home >cinema

My HTPC is actually a lot quieter than the TW100, without resorting to exotic cooling solutions etc. There are some cheap and simple tricks you can try to lower sound level.

>What are your opinions of the Faroudja de-interlacing built into >the projector ? I would imagine that an interlaced signal from >your Meridian would still look pretty good when de-interlaced by >the Faroudja processor, comparable to progressive from the >DV27 ?

I haven't seen the Meridian, but in my experience using an interlaced input highlights the 2 most prominent issues in the TW100:
1) The vertical lines issue is more visible
2) Bright reds are showing a chroma bug-like effect. (IE bright red colours are diplayed extremely lo-res. (if you have "The Emperors New Groove", try watching that using svideo, it's horrible) This is not the chroma bug however, as the same effect is visible using my console (DC) on the svideo input of the TW100).

[GearHead]

Mr Custard,

Thanks for the comments.

50/60Hz - I'm running at 60Hz regardless of NTSC or PAL. I havnt noticed if the NTSC is any better or worse but perhaps I'll see if I can get the projector to accept a 50Hz signal on the DVI input when it comes back and I'll see if there is any correlation.

Soundcard - I'm using an SB Live 4.1 . It works faultlessly as far as it goes, just sounds a bit mediocre (IMO). If I could be sure of eliminating the video problems I would invest the £200 or so in an M-Audio card. If I end-up with a DVD player, that £200 could have gone towards it.

Noise - My PC is quiter than the TW100 now that I've installed an Enermax PSU and Verax CPU cooler. Its still not silent though and eliminating this isn't crucial but nice to have anyway.

Having said all that, the HCPC is still pretty good and I much prefer it to my mid-range Sony DVD player. I don't have a problem though in investing in a serious DVD player (or other items of equipment) providing I'm getting serious upgrades in return.

Allan