Panasonic TH-50PHD8. What scaler for my setup... if any?

Stoo: I guess I am the ANAL RETENTIVE you are talking about ;)

I actually only do it to try to get the multitude of folk on here who don't know, that RGBS and RGB and RGsB are not the same as that which comes out the SCART socket on your Sky/Freeview/Cable/DVD player....so even although your display says it accepts RGB/RGBS/RGsB....it may not work....as many have found out.

I do agree that I have seen some Sky channels can go a bit weirdo with lip sync issues. However the requirement to actually have to add more delay has not happened to me in...well I can't actually remember...but when it does go it's HUGE...is there actually enough lip sync adjustment to compensate for those occasions in anything?

I am also sure that the ABT scaling in the VP3O will outperform the HD+.

I suppose I should also point out for good measure that the Lumagen only uses half of the SIL504 solution for de-interlacing. They do not use the co-processor that runs alongside the SIL504. Instead that work is done in the Lumagen FPGA using their own code.

On the HD front it would be remiss of me to not to mention that the 2:3 pulldown is not in the firmware yet. They have done some work on the 1080i video source material so it's no longer doing BOB like everyone else at this price. 2:3 is next along with more 1080i video source improvements.

Gorman: Scalers are not mandatory. Scalers can make poor products alot better and great products superb. Ideally you should choose one by viewing and if that's not possible then 'd go with who you feel will give you the best support and talks the most sense. I would suggest that if you are buying "mail order" or from a distance you get the lot from one person who can configure and set up the whole shooting match before it gets to you. Or, failing that, pay for someone who understands how to get the best out of your chosen system to set it up optimally. Video processors have lots of adjustments. They are designed to allow this with the know to get the best out of the attached sources and display. In the hands of someone who doesn't know it can be a mess...in the hands of someone who does it can be pretty wonderful.

Have fun,

Gordon
 
Gordon @ Convergent AV said:
Stoo: I guess I am the ANAL RETENTIVE you are talking about ;)
No mate, some guy gave me a ticking off on American board for using RGBS term -- which is what the menus in my scaler call it, and most people I've ever talked to! Apparently RGBS is a TTL term ... blah ... blah ... blah ... :boring:

My down-the-road Lumagen AV man Liam @ Prog AV is going to sort me out a demo of Lumagen kit. Some mighty impressive features indeed.

Have to say I am looking forward to seeing what Dale Adams is up to with his deinterlacer, and I am assuming that DVDO are going to offer it as replacement card for VP30 at some point.

StooMonster
 
welwynnick said:
Plasma Enhancer pro? - better than a Vision HDP? - absolutely no way. Everyone here will undoubtably agree with that.
On PAL SD sources as well? This is my question. Overall I've no doubt that the HDP is the better product. And what with this HD upgrade for the Plasma Enhancer Pro. Has anybody heard anything about it?

And by the way... do you know of any online store that has the TY-42TM6D (DVI Board) available?
 
Scalers all seem to work with PAL and NTSC - it's not reallly an issue.

The only slight problem may be with cadence detection for 2:2 pull-down when de-interlacing film sourced material. That means correctly pairing up the repeated fields that came from the same original film frame. This applies only to 50Hz PAL material. It's not trivial, and a poor de-interlacer may not pick it up very well. Lumagens probably do it better than anyone.

HD upgrade? That could mean many things, but it's probably just filling-in one of the many gaps in functionality. What about the Lumagen HD upgrade? That's much more important.

Nick
 
Well... thanks to everybody. I ended up buying the Lumagen HDP second hand at Euro 790,00. Let's hope it's not *too* complicated to setup, as in Italy I can't find any company doing ISF calibration or anything similar...
 
I'm back from a two afternoon set-up session with Lumagen and Panny... I'll report on my findings and problems soon. :)
 
Unfortunately problems more than findings. This evening while I was watching Sky News (its Italian equivalent Sky TG 24) I started noticing the scaler going "crazy" when presented with mixed footage, probably at different frame rates. As long as the camera was on the anchorman and anchorwoman everything was fine. As soon as there was a picture in picture effect with NTSC (I guess) footage, the screen went crazy.

Same happened on another channel, when they were showing videocamera recorded material (some sort of candid camera thing). This on PAL feed, with the HDP outputting 50Hz genlocked to my 50PHD8.

Is this normal behaviour for the scaler?

Plus, on football matches the absence of diagonal antialiasing (or whatever it's called) it's really noticeable.
 
Just out of curiousity - how many people with a phd8 and a scaler run NTSC films at 48hz?
 
The break up you see is not common, no. In fact I've never seen it unless the device is broken or the firmware is corrupt and that is extremely rare.

davdu: I think hardly anyone uses a scaler to run 60Hz film source back at 48Hz. Probably because so few scaler can do it properly and also because so few folk know it's possible.....

Gordon
 
Gordon @ Convergent AV said:
The break up you see is not common, no. In fact I've never seen it unless the device is broken or the firmware is corrupt and that is extremely rare.

davdu: I think hardly anyone uses a scaler to run 60Hz film source back at 48Hz. Probably because so few scaler can do it properly and also because so few folk know it's possible.....

Gordon
Did a quick test last night with my 50" phd8 and my Iscan HD+ set to 48hz "locked" (actual output 47.95hz). Compared it to "standard" 60hz output and 48hz looked more smooth than 60hz - at least to my eyes.
Will do some more testing during the following couple of days.
 
Gordon @ Convergent AV said:
The break up you see is not common, no. In fact I've never seen it unless the device is broken or the firmware is corrupt and that is extremely rare.
Do I interpret correctly what you are writing with a probably defective unit (I bought it second-hand, it might explain the low price... :rolleyes: )? The unit went from simply garbled screen to complete lack of picture for a couple of seconds, to garbled screen again to normal once regular programming resumed... I noticed that when this happened the genlock got lost as well (indicating disabled even if it was set as on in the menu).
davdu: I think hardly anyone uses a scaler to run 60Hz film source back at 48Hz. Probably because so few scaler can do it properly and also because so few folk know it's possible...
Well, they haven't read your guide! :D
 
davsdu said:
Did a quick test last night with my 50" phd8 and my Iscan HD+ set to 48hz "locked" (actual output 47.95hz). Compared it to "standard" 60hz output and 48hz looked more smooth than 60hz - at least to my eyes.
Will do some more testing during the following couple of days.
No one else running at 48hz?
 
davsdu said:
No one else running at 48hz?
I could give it a try with my HDP, but I'm currently more worried about understanding whether I have a defective unit or what...
 
Gorman: Early units required a sync stripper onthe composite input with RGB from scart in order to get a stable sync. Then the next units only had fully RGB compiance on INPUT3 without the sync stripper. What input are you using? Can you also email me the serial number.

Gordon
 
Gordon @ Convergent AV said:
davdu: I think hardly anyone uses a scaler to run 60Hz film source back at 48Hz. Probably because so few scaler can do it properly and also because so few folk know it's possible.....

Gordon
Gordon what scalers have tried this with? (ie. NTSC @ 48hz) and have none of these produced a better result than running @ 60hz?
 
Lumagens do it and I've tried. However it's also whether the display accepts 48Hz and then whether it does FRC of it's own on that to change it back to 60....Yesterday I was with someone and we tried 48Hz in to an LCD projector. It accepted the res and we got pixel mapping but there was obviously something going on and the image tore..... Last week I saw a DLP projector that recognised the 48Hz signal but did FRC and created judder of its own.....

Gordon
 
Gordon @ Convergent AV said:
Lumagens do it and I've tried. However it's also whether the display accepts 48Hz and then whether it does FRC of it's own on that to change it back to 60....Yesterday I was with someone and we tried 48Hz in to an LCD projector. It accepted the res and we got pixel mapping but there was obviously something going on and the image tore..... Last week I saw a DLP projector that recognised the 48Hz signal but did FRC and created judder of its own.....

Gordon
Interesting, have you tried it on a phd8?
 
Gordon @ Convergent AV said:
Gorman: Early units required a sync stripper onthe composite input with RGB from scart in order to get a stable sync. Then the next units only had fully RGB compiance on INPUT3 without the sync stripper. What input are you using? Can you also email me the serial number.
Ok, my dealer told me that they forgot to send me a "filter" that needs to be applied on the synch cable going into input 5. I am currently using input 3 for RGB and 5 for synch.
As soon as I am home this evening I'll send you an e-mail with the serial number of the unit. Thanks a lot for your help.
 
One more thing... is it possible that nobody has exact timings for PHD8 by now? I searched everywhere with no luck and yesterday night tried at random with very little results.
 
gorman said:
As soon as I am home this evening I'll send you an e-mail with the serial number of the unit. Thanks a lot for your help.
E-mail sent with the serial number.
 
StooMonster, just wondering if you'd sorted out a demo of a Lumagen as Liam offered and what you reckoned to it vs your iScan? I've got an iScan HD too which I've been more than happy with feeding it SD but I plan to get into HD in a big way, now I've got one of Joe F's Snazio 1350 HD Net thingies up and running! In the new year I'll be wanting to upgrade to something that can handle hi def so that's either a VP30 or a Lumagen something-or-other. I will demo both with my own eyes before buying, of course, but I wondered if a fellow iScanner was impressed when he borrowed a Lumagen? (Assuming, of course, you did get around to it?!)

Cheers,

Dan.
 
Dan, I placed an order for a LumagenPro HDP; although with a lot of faith in Gordon, Liam, Joe, etc. I'll be able to let you know in two weeks time.

There are three things about Lumagen that really impress me:

Firstly, software support. It appears that Lumagen really care about their products and are constantly updating them with new features and fixes. This is very good. e.g. they got rid of the ‘slow down’ caused by false positives on 2:2 pulldown detection, with having to simply force everything into “video” mode.

Unfortunately DVDO are not as good at this, last updates for HD product was so long ago I can't even remember; even though they were promised to be in sync with HD+ updates. Some of the promised features of VP30 are “in future software versions” and that worries me. This can only be because Anchor Bay Technology (ABT) are a chip business who make scaler chips and will have a deinterlacing chipset in the future, their business model is to license these technologies to third parties (e.g. Denon) however they make use of the DVDO brand to produce products that firstly demonstrate their technology and secondly make a few quid. Therefore scalers are not their core business, and they have no commercial incentive to keep scaler software maintained.

Secondly, calibration technology. One of the things that had the most dramatic impact on the PQ of my plasma was getting Gordon to ISF calibrate it three years ago. However, that was using PAL and NTSC over component directly into plasma. I’ve duplicated the settings on native resolution feed from iScan HD, and DVD player is now SDI, but I have a suspicion that they need doing again.

The Lumagens have 11 point parametric grayscale and gamma correction, also hue and saturation correction for red and green push meaning that the display can be set to defaults and the scaler can be ISF calibrated to the finest degree (much finer than display can be adjusted) to produce the best quality picture. Many people rave about this, and it’s often asked for from DVDO over in the American forum.

DVDO test patterns are good for setting up screen – and in HD manual they kindly credited me with coming up with the idea of the ‘judder test’ :) – and the greyscale boxes from 0% through to 100% are some way towards ISF calibration they are nowhere near as sophisticated as Lumagen. When I read the VP30 manual and saw it was the same old stuff (as my HD) I wasn’t impressed that calibration has not been developed further.

Thirdly, HD per-pixel motion adaptive deinterlacing. Want this ready for SkyHD launch. That Lumagen have this working properly with 2:2 pulldown is impressive feat. I have to say that I am not impressed with DVDO’s approach with VP30 atm, perhaps it will improve with software but I suspect their next product will be the one that does it properly.

Others considerations were my PARC209 (RS232 aspect ratio switcher) that I believe works with Lumagen too (waiting for settings from Andrew Bush). I am going to have to either get another Russ Andrews powerpack for new scaler, or ask them to mod the current DVDO one (as the volt and amp requirements are different). I recently bought SDI input for DVDO, which would work in VP30, and I am going to lose use of that; and I was going to take advantage of DVDO’s trade in programme but with the US$250 for shipping it cost as much as getting new one in UK.

Few worries include that many independent commentators say that ABT’s scaler is “second to none”. “IScan HD … world class scaling engine. This scaling engine was made right in house at DVDO by the co-founder and very well may be the best one I have seen to date.” said Don Munsil and Stacey Spears of hometheaterhifi.com So I am taking on faith that Lumagen is nearly as good.

Dale Adams's new deinterlacing chipset sounds like it could beat HQV, for a more reasonable price. However, we have no idea when this will be available.

On hometheaterhifi.com the Lumagens fail the 2:2 pulldown candence film flags test – but Gordon tells me this was with beta software and it does work now. Hope he’s right.

Forgotten the last one, so it can’t have been that important! ;)

So … that was my thinking process. What are your thoughts?

StooMonster
 
davsdu said:
Just out of curiousity - how many people with a phd8 and a scaler run NTSC films at 48hz?
I do (well on a three year old phd5, rather than a new phd8), and it's fabulous!

Hoping that Lumagen does as good a job as DVDO at outputing 2:2 @48Hz.

StooMonster
 
Blimey Stoo, thanks so much for the detailed reply! Plenty of food for thought to wear Mrs S down with - I mean *obviously* we need a new high def. enabled scaler now HD (from a Snazio) is part of the Smiffy household. She thought the sequence from Gladiator we watched last night looked stunning, and my eyes lit up as I explained how the screen was converting 720 lines to fit 768 blah blah and with a new scaler it'd look even better still, then I told her how much a VP30 or Lumagen would cost... She said "but it already looks fab, so why bother?" so I've still got some more work to do on her! But fingers Xed I'll be in a position to demo new scalers at least in the new year, or worse case scenario, even if I can't persuade her to let me bleed the savings account (yet again!) I get my yearly bonus in March, which is not very long to wait and plot in the grand scheme of things.

Again, Stoo, cheers for your thoughts, and if you could compare HD vs HDP once it has arrived and had a chance to bed-in then I'd def. be all ears!

Dan.
 
The new firmware from Lumagen is stunning anmd if y had calibration done years ago and no new (2005) firmware you're still back in the ice age.

Lumagen HDP Rulez.

Dil
 

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