Sony (Ruby) deinterlacing

[VirusKiller]

Anyone know if Sony's proprietry deinterlacing is any good? I'm particularly interested in the Ruby's deinterlacing as a benchmark (although I don't plan on getting a Ruby). For instance, is it motion adaptive? Does it do a reasonable job with HD video? Does it do HD 2:2 and/or 3:2 pulldown competently?

Consider my situation. I have a Crystalio (I) which does a marvellous job with SD material, but is very limited with 1080i (simple weave only).

Now, dare I say it, but if one considers that the majority of HD source are 1080i rather than 720p (and with HD DVD, BluRay and Sky HD this is the case), scaling is not an issue when feeding a 1080 line PJ - the Crystalio (I) can handle the SD scaling duties.

So, for HD, I can either replace the Crystalio with a next gen model (or a Lumagen HDP) or, when I upgrade to a 1080 line PJ, hopefully next year, I go for one with decent HD deinterlacing. The obvious PJ candidates are the Sony "Pearl" (with DRC processing), the Cinetron 1080 LCoS (with Realta based processing) and the Panasonic AE1100 (or whatever it's called with less sophisticated processing).

Thoughts?

[NicolasB]

I believe the Ruby is one of the relatively few displays capable of per-pixel motion-adaptive deinterlacing of 1080i.

[JohnWH]

The ruby's deinterlacing is a real mixed bad, 3:2 pul down is very good for SD but haven't got a US HD source to try it on, it completly fails 2:2 pull down for both SD and HD. It does do motion adaptive on SD video mode but its hardly state of the art, with Sky HD as a source definitely seeing a lot of bluring of motion but its hard to say exactly what its doing but I'd say the detial loss is worse than on SD.

Basically external processor definitly needed to get best from a Ruby! (I'm waiting on a Crystalio II at the moment)

All imo of course.

John.

[VirusKiller]

Thanks guys. Not the answer I was looking for, but useful nonetheless! The Crystalio II would of course be perfect, but it's just too expensive for me at the moment - my next big purchase will be a HD projector, initially exclusively for upscaled SD material. However, I'll bear in mind that the Sony Pearl, for instance, will almost certainly need an external scaler for HD sources. A Lumagen HDP would be a cheaper, albeit less state-of-the-art, option. The Cinetron 1080 LCoS might be different, of course, if they've done some good work with the Realta chip.

[mattmarsden]

Thats a shame about failing at 2:2 pulldown, is there a cheapish scaler that can accept the 1080i output from Sky HD and convert it to 1080P?

[tryingtimes]

I think that the Lumagen HDP is the cheapest scaler to actually do more than bob/weave.
I haven't actually evaluated it next to the Crystalio 1 (which looked pretty good to say it was just using simple bob/weave) but people seem reasonably happy.

Then it's VantageHD, then Crystalio.

I don't know what budget VPs are on the horizon - there's a Lumagen Radiance at some point and maybe Pixel Magic will do a VXP-based Plasma Enhancer. I would't be surprised if DVDO announced their HD VP at CEDIA.

[Liam @ Prog AV]

Originally Posted by mattmarsden

Thats a shame about failing at 2:2 pulldown, is there a cheapish scaler that can accept the 1080i output from Sky HD and convert it to 1080P?

Yeah a Lumagen HDP at £1,295!! 2:2 and 3:2 is every bit as accurate (if not better in some cases) than the C-II, it's video mode work that the C-II and other big-power processors really go to town on.

Next closest is £2k for the Vantage (but it has other issues just now so I wouldn't be recommending that), or the Crystalio II at £3k+.

[KenB2]

Hi,

I have also gone through a similar search (to find a good scalar for the Ruby), after finding the PAL performance less than inspiring with the built-in scalar.

I have ended up with a Lumagen HDQ, which has worked out very well. I'm driving it at 48Hz for NTSC and 50 Hz for PAL, with the genlocking feature enabled. Its giving a better picture than the HTPC setup I was using up until recently (an Nvidia based system with Theatertek).

As the scalar also supports per pixel motion adaption for HD it should work ok for HD-DVD and Blue-Ray too, but I have not been able to check this out yet.

I cannot comment on scaling video, because I only feed the Rudy DVD at the moment (and will go to HD-DVD and Blue Ray when they get to these shores officially).

I was looking a the latest models with the new chip sets, but they all seem to be having trouble with firmware stability, and I did not really need top quality video scaling for my system (I watch ordinary telly on a different system) - just film.

Ken B.