The Lumagen Vision ProHDP has landed..

rscott4563

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Well its here and my god it looks good! :cool:

DSC00761.jpg


DSC00763.jpg


I previously had a first gen Lumagen Vision and in comparison this is like a Bentley compared to a Golf,it just oozes quality. One big extra bonus is the included cabling, I'd completely forgtton about the inclusion of cables. These are no bog standard cheap as chips cables you'd get with a dvd player or television. They are top quality and look every bit as good as the Belden cables I've just got from the USA (could have saved myself some money.. :oops: ). The cables included are 6 BNC to RCA component cables, 2 S-Video to BNC cables and 6 RCA to BNC adapters.

DSC00764.jpg


Heres the whole shabang....

DSC00765.jpg


I'm off to start connecting everything up now, but I've one problem. I've forgotten to source a Scart to 4 BNC/RCA cable to connect up my digital set-top box, so no TV source and the football starts in less than 6 hours! :eek: Anyone know where I can source one, preferably today in Leeds or at least by tomorrow, I've got a wanted add in the classifieds but so far no joy.. :confused:

I'll be back with loads more comments and findings soon.. :smashin:

If there are any other ProHDP owners out there I'd be really keen to here from you with any hints on initial setup or known beta issues so that I'm not spending ages trying to fix something which has already been reported.

Cheers

Ryan
 
Nice one, Ryan! I hope you'll both be very happy. :smashin: I just knew they'd bring a new model out with DVI output after I'd bought the ProSDI. :p
By the way, you could try www.av-sales.com for a Van Damme cable - they might be able to supply one for tomorrow if you beg!

Steve
 
rscott4563 said:
Well its here and my god it looks good! :cool:

DSC00761.jpg


DSC00763.jpg


I previously had a first gen Lumagen Vision and in comparison this is like a Bentley compared to a Golf,it just oozes quality. One big extra bonus is the included cabling, I'd completely forgtton about the inclusion of cables. These are no bog standard cheap as chips cables you'd get with a dvd player or television. They are top quality and look every bit as good as the Belden cables I've just got from the USA (could have saved myself some money.. :oops: ). The cables included are 6 BNC to RCA component cables, 2 S-Video to BNC cables and 6 RCA to BNC adapters.

DSC00764.jpg


Heres the whole shabang....

DSC00765.jpg


I'm off to start connecting everything up now, but I've one problem. I've forgotten to source a Scart to 4 BNC/RCA cable to connect up my digital set-top box, so no TV source and the football starts in less than 6 hours! :eek: Anyone know where I can source one, preferably today in Leeds or at least by tomorrow, I've got a wanted add in the classifieds but so far no joy.. :confused:

I'll be back with loads more comments and findings soon.. :smashin:

If there are any other ProHDP owners out there I'd be really keen to here from you with any hints on initial setup or known beta issues so that I'm not spending ages trying to fix something which has already been reported.

Cheers

Ryan

Ryan,

Keene do a Scart=>4RCA converter for £5.99 - part number KA150S.

JJ
 
Dutch said:
Nice one, Ryan! I hope you'll both be very happy. :smashin: I just knew they'd bring a new model out with DVI output after I'd bought the ProSDI. :p
By the way, you could try www.av-sales.com for a Van Damme cable - they might be able to supply one for tomorrow if you beg!

Steve

Tried AV-Sales, but no joy, I need a straight entry scart, they only have side shot ones...

Cheers anyway

Ryan :thumbsup:
 
Jasonjo said:
Ryan,

Keene do a Scart=>4RCA converter for £5.99 - part number KA150S.

JJ

Jason your a star, that will do nicely, it means I can just use the RCA to BNC cables I get with the Lumagen.. :clap: :smashin:

Cheers

Ryan
 
No probs, I use one to connect NTL to my iScan.

JJ

P.S. Your new toy looks great - I am sure you will enjoy it and spend the next 6 months tweaking and tuning it!!! :D :cool:
 
So how much is one of these then? Here we go again...... lol

Andy
 
Yeah I'm going to use one to connect my NTL via a Tivo to my Lumagen, certainly a better option than using a converter (RGB2YUV etc..) and having to find space for another power socket..
 
Nice one Ryan :smashin: . Thanks for posting pics of the whole package - looks fab. Keep us posted on the results (I hope to be joining you later in the year) .

Will you be doing 48/50 Hz via analog or PAL/NTSC @ 60Hz (frame-rate conversion for PAL) via DVI once you're up and running?

JP.
 
kaspj said:
Nice one Ryan :smashin: . Thanks for posting pics of the whole package - looks fab. Keep us posted on the results (I hope to be joining you later in the year) .

Will you be doing 48/50 Hz via analog or PAL/NTSC @ 60Hz (frame-rate conversion for PAL) via DVI one you're up and running?

JP.

I have the Lumagen connected with both analogue RGBHV BNC's and DVI, I hope to do a lot of comparisons between the two at the same resolutions and refresh rates to see what benefits an all digital path gives.

I will definitely be trying 48/60/72Hz at native resolution via DVI for NTSC film material, I expect 48/60Hz to give very very good results as the plasma shouldn't try any FRC. For Pal I'm not too sure, I'm determined to try and get native resolution at 50Hz to work via DVI as there is no hardware reason it shouldn't. If I can't get Pal at native resolution via DVI without FRC, I think I'll go for analogue and see how it compares to Pal converted to 60Hz with DVI, according to Stoomonster theres not much in it..
 
Lots of things for you to experiment with! As a Panny TH-42PHD6BX owner, I'll be reading your future posts with much interest (particularly re. Pal DVI issue). Good luck and enjoy! :)

JP.
 
Yeah, same here, looking forward to reading about this one. £1950 is a lot of money though, twice the cost of the Iscan HD so I guess this must do something special that the Iscan HD doesn't. Will keep an eye on this thread with interest anyway...

Cheers,
Andy.
 
Can someone please explain what the difference is between this and the Iscan HD? What can this do that the IScan HD can't and visa versa. Why might this be a better match for a Panny TH42PHD6?

Cheers,
Andy.
 
Oh, also wanted to ask. I presume using the DVI output with the panny plasma isn't a good idea due to the well documented DVI problems. Is using the analog output from the lumagen compromising the performance significantly? e.g. if using an SDI input it seems a shame to introduce a D/A conversion. Is it better to live with the DVI 'problems' whatever they are (60hz only?).

Cheers,
Andy.
 
I'd say the single benefit, is that the iScanHD has audio in/out with an automatic delay for the processing of the iScan and a manual setting for dialing in the delay introduced by your screen. Of course if you have a processor/receiver that has audio delay built in then this is not of much use..

On the video processing front, which is of course what these two products are actually meant to do, the iScan HD is more comparable to Lumagens base model, the Vision DVI and they are priced at around the same level (I think the Lumagen maybe slightly cheaper).

In comparison to the ProHDP the iScan HD is not really in the same league. Firstly the iScan HD is a SD only processor, it can't process HD signals, i.e 720p 1080i/p. The iScan has limited inputs/outputs and they are of a lower quality than those of the ProHDP (RCA's, S-Video Din, VGA 15pin of the iScan compared to all BNC's of the ProHDP), the ProHDP has a greater number of inputs and so can act as a SD/HD, Analogue/Digital switcher for all your current and future equipment. Also don't forget when comparing the prices you have to add on the cost of a SDI upgrade for the iScan, whereas the ProHDP comes with 2 as standard.

The Lumagen will be offering second generation scaling and de-interlacing, at some point soon they hope to be introducing true HD de-interlacing (adaptive per-pixel) and you will be able to turn off the SiI504 de-interlacer and use Lumagens own processor to do the job better. The hardware in the ProHDP has a lot of headroom and uses a reprogrammable FPGA chip, this should mean that it is fairly future proof for a while as Lumagen can continually upgrade its capabilities, as far as I know the iScan is much more limited in its processing power and therefore has a smaller potential for upgrading.

Obviously I'm probably as biased as can be, seeing that I've just taken delivery of a luvely new ProHDP, but you can get all of the details I've listed above and many more by simply downloading the manuals of the two processors and going through their respective threads on AVS.

Ryan
 
As Ryan has said...plus you are assuming that all processors with analogue and digital inputs and outputs using a SIL504 chipset are of same quality. This is not the case.

You need to remember that these devices have analogue inputs that need digitised and digitally processed outputs that need turned back to analogue. How well these stages are carried out also has bearing on quality of image. Not only that the Lumagens have lots of nifty service settings that allow supertweaking for optimum imagen quality across all inputs.

Gordon
 
Well...come on then Ryan tell us more about your latest aquisition - how is it performing.

I realise that it's still in 'beta' form but does it show a significant improvement from you old Vision ? and if so how does it show itself ?

Is 1:1 mapping the nirvana it's touted to be ? either via RGBHV or DVI ? or is it still best to feed the panel a higher resolution and allow it to downscale as the SD panel boys are reporting with there iScanHD's ?

I must say both you and Buns have been rather quiet compared to the iScanHD lads regarding there new toys. Is this because they are still beta units or are you not as pleased as you hoped to be :rolleyes:

Cheers, Lee
 
To be honest its down to a simple lack of time to get playing. I've only just got it all wired up today, I'm still missing a cable to connect my NTL and my RP82 has developed a fault and so has to go back. This all means that the only thing I've been able to test is my Xbox and that was for about an hour. Unfortunately due to other things going on at the moment I'm really not going to have any time to sort things out for a while so I may be even quieter for a week at least.. :( sorry, though I promise I will be back with much more as soon as I possibly can... ;)

Ryan
 
I found some info on the frame rate function of the Pio 50MXE1.
(see attachment) It seems the Pio does accept a 50hz ( 49.861hz) pal pc signal from the scaler. Does this also mean int will not convert it to 60 or 70Hz.?

Bart
 
see attachment in plasma forum. I cannot attach the same file twice i guess...

Bart
 
Hey guys, sorry for the long wait for an update but a number of things have been conspiring to keep me away from my plasma and Pro HDP (holiday, house renovation, birthdays, anniversaries, broken dvd players, missing cables etc...). But thankfully I've had a brief and I do mean brief opportunity to play with my Lumagen and my new replacement RP82 SDI.

So I hooked up the RP82 via SDI and the Lumagen to the plasma via DVI, set the Lumagen to 576p at 50Hz and adjusted the position slightly to centre the image and get rid of the black bar I had on one side.
Now this was with no real setting up, just plug and play, and as the Lumagen is still in beta testing the firmware is still missing many of the final features.
I used a number of dvd's including Fast Furious, Moulin Rouge and Band of Brothers. I can say that in my opinion the picture quality was the best I have yet seen, better than I had been able to get previously with my original Vision.
A quick comparison of DVI with RGBHV shows that with my setup DVI is definitely better, crisper colours, better edge definition and less noise (though this may simply be due to the RGBHV connection requiring more setting up).

I'm hoping to do more testing this week, but I'm going to be really busy again :( so no promises...

I'm looking forward to trying 1:1 over DVI once the HRES option is introduced.

Ryan
 
Yeah, interesting you mention the hres option cos I was wondering where that had got to! Does the lack of that option at the moment prevent 1:1 mapping? Also why did you set the lumagen to 576p? Isn't that display 1366x768 so wouldn't 768p have been a better option? You may have seen my thread, I've just got the HDP today and am not convinced I've got it set up correctly at all. I'm convinced I'm not getting 1:1 pixel mapping, without the hres option what is the hres set to by default? Anyway, going to do more experimenting tonight, also interesting you said you had a black bar at one side as that's what I'm getting , at 768p I do anyway, not at 480p or 720p (not sure why that would be?).
Ta for the update anyway..

Cheers,
Andy.
 
Hi Ryan,

Good to hear from you. Good luck with the DVI issue etc. Fingers crossed!

Andy,

IIRC 576p is 'officially' the only PAL video rate supported by the series 6 DVI card. Hopefully there will be workarounds or other options. Joe any news?

JP.
 

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