Vantage or Lumagen

Thats not a bad SRP, so perhaps a tad lower at retail.

Im confused TBH, i held of getting lumagens current line as i realy want to go with HQV, at the same time i like the sound of the Radiance but i just dont think my setup will do that justice. perhaps im wrong, but i dont think i need anything to flexible but at the same time i dont want to under do it and it will have to work well with a 1080p display.

Depends on how much the radiance will cost at retail i guess, but i dont think i will spend more than £2500 for a video processor.
 
Aside from the Radiance XT and Crystallio 2, the new bunch of HQV & VSX processors do not seem to have the same flexibility with display interfacing that even my poxy little Focus CS-1 has.

Mindful of what happens when you connect ANYTHING to a high def plasma over a digital interface at the moment, I am hopeful that once the 1080 sources and displays are here, there will be ONE resolution to deal with at all levels. None of this 1024x768 display and 1280x720 input muddle.

It will be difficult to justify spending several thousand pounds on any non-essential equpment. The cheaper VSX/HQV processors will have 1920x1080p50 & 60 as selectable output formats, and should pixel-match with the corresponding displays. And if they are not quite right, then a bit of H & V sizing will fit the bill. With digital interfaces, we shouldn't have to worry about sync pulses or front porches, so all those expert-only customisations shouldn't be necessary, should they? :rolleyes:

That being the case, we can buy a Vantage or TheatreSync safe in the knowledge that it will do exactly what we want. However, on recent anecdotal experience, I think I will wait until someone else has done it first, and in the meantime, I will keep my eyes on a Vision HDP.

Nick
 
Hello all

Seeing as its Friday night and everyone should have their acronym anoraks on by now I thought I should point out its the Lumagen RadianceXD (as in Dual Output) that's been announced as the new 'Flagship' HQV powered Video Processor from Lumagen.

Best regards

Joe
 
Here is a very interesting post from the AVS today:

Hi All,

I just found this site and thought I'd join. I am a video engineer currently evaluating the HQV processor (Realta) from Silicon Optix. The company I work for is considering licensing HQV for inclusion into our product line. I've been comparing the Realta chips performance against 5 competators and have learned a great deal about all of them.

So if I can answer any questions please feel free to ask. Here are some of my observations to date:

Realta is by far the best single chip video processor out there. For starters it is the only solution that includes all of the features one would expect: deinterlacing, scaling, frame rate conversion, motion adaptive temporal and compression noise reduction, detail enhancement, adaptive contrast enhancement, etc etc etc. All of the other solutions leave out one or more of these features.

In most processing steps Realta is only slightly better than it's nearest competator, which is still pretty darn good. But where HQV and Realta really shine is in their temporal noise reduction and compresion artifact removal. No other solutions come close to what HQV has achieved. But it is not without cost as the Realta is also the largest chip, consumes the most power, and requires the most external memory to support their multi frame temporal adaptive algorithms. The other area it really excells in is frame rate conversion - definately best in class.

Regarding flexibility, the Realta chip can be programmed to implement literally any HV timing and any arbitrary scale factor (to a limit of course). Programming specific modes is a complicated task though as it requires in depth knowledge of the chip architecture, so NEC has only implemented a very limited subset of what is possible. I'm sure over time the list will grow.

Anyway, that's all I can say for now. I have to get back to my meeting....

Rimshot
 
Still delayed due to chip+HDMI issues, some US guys reckon it will be February before we see the product.
 
Hi,

I've read through the Vantage manual, and a few things concern me:

1. The unit includes a couple of fans, so potentially (for some people) it could make excessive noise. I suppose all Realta HQV solutions are the same? I didn't like the CrystalioI because of the noise it made.
2. You cannot specify your own output resolution and/or timings, you have to choose it from a list. Looking to the future (when a variety of 1080 line displays become available), this may be a limitation.
3. There don't appear to be any test patterns included, so in my experience, it may be difficult to acheive/verify 1:1 mapping.

Do other people share my concerns, or am I being picky?

Regards,
Ian
 
1. is a big bug bear for me, my fan in the main VP is getting noiser as it get older :( and it bugs me. In fact two deal killers for me on VP and projectors would be noise level and whether you can turn lights off.

2. Silly on vantage part but not a deal killer if the standards are well chosen. Can be done later in firmware IF THEY WANT TO.

3. Again the competition can do this.

I don't think you are being over picky, personally I don't think they are flexible enough in their approach to take too much business from Lumagen abd Crystalio.
 
ihan said:
Do other people share my concerns, or am I being picky?
Regards,
Ian
Ian, they certainly do.

Firstly the fan. You wouldn't expect these very powerful processors to work without a fan given that PC video cards often need one, would you? There is mention of this in the VantageHD FAQ section - It doesn't sound like it is much of an issue. All kit makes some noise.
http://www.calibreuk.com/downloads/vantage-faqs.pdf

Custom resolutions are much more contentious. No other self-respecting scaler manufacture would omit custom output resolutions, and this has to be a gamble by Calibre. You will have seen that they have a range of pre-set output resolutions, and I would imagine that range will get larger as it gets used with more different displays. However, if customers are largely going to be using HDMI interfaces, that may take some of the analogue variables out of the equation. However, HDMI introduces its own new problems, so this is a big subject. Open fire, boys.......

Test patterns are important (though not absolutely essential) to ensure that a scaler is effective with a wide range of displays. I've pressed this point with Calibre directly, and they say:
> It is our intention to add user definable gamma mapping and possibly
> user-definable colour temperature as an upgrade to Vantage-HD at a
> later date, but as yet we do not have a release date for this. I
> would expect it to be months away, not years!

> At present we do not offer test patterns on our home-user products,
> there is debate as to whether to do this but at present our firmware
> in Vantage-HD does not have this capability. I would think it likely
> this functionality may be added as an upgrade, but at present I
> cannot confirm that.

and then:
Thank you for your email. I agree that test patterns would be nice, but at present we don't have then since there is no firmware for Realta to generate them. I would hope they come at some point in the future, but they are 95% certain not to be in the initial production release for Vantage-HD

A 1920x1080 picture with underscanned active area will only be re-scaled if you alter the width or height, or the output mode requires it. However DVDs are compressed so are generally not a good source of high resolution test patterns.

If you have a good eye, you can actually set up the pixel clock H-total in the display device very easily using the blue screen background which Vantage-HD produces with no input signal. That's what I used on every display at CEDIA. You can then easily set up the pixel clock phase in the display device using the menu text - you adjust for maximum sharpness and no horizontal noise, again this is how I set up all the CEDIA demos.

To make things easier, we will publish in the user manual and on the website what the correct pixel clock totals are for each mode, this will make set-up of display devices much easier for our customers.

I think the jury is out on both of those issues. The Crystalio 2 and RadianceXD will offer far greater flexibility, but if the Vantage can be shown by one of the clever guys to work successfully with a range of HD displays, then it could offer very good performance for the money.

Just my opinions, Nick
 
No custom resultions is not really a problem, unless you can't adjust H and V size on your display, then you need to have exact timings.

Not being able to pixel map makes it a non starter though, they need to add something like the pixel magic mode if they are not going to have internal test patterns.

I know one of the reasons Pixel Magic went with the Genum is the fact it does not need any fan cooling, making it totally silent, having said that I have not noticed my Crystalio I in the 12 months or so I have had it, and fan noise is a real annoyance of mine.
 
Thanks for the replies everyone.

I only sit 3m away from my kit, so I will be able to hear the fan. Due to my immense personal dislike of fans, I think the only options for me will be the Lumagen HDQ or Crystalio II. The crystalio II is almost certain to have much better SD video deinterlacing (using either VXP or DCDi), it is just a question of whether the extra cost is worth it.

I suppose an additional question is, "Can a crystalioII installation be calibarated as well as a Lumagen installation"? The main calibrators that appear on this forum (Gordon et al) appear to favour Lumagens so much, that I begin to wonder whether a Crystalio ISF calibration could/would be performed to the same performance level.

Thanks for the help,
Ian
 
The CII has 11 point gamma correction capabilities built in, so I think it's up to the Lumagens in this area now.
 
madshi said:
The CII has 11 point gamma correction capabilities built in, so I think it's up to the Lumagens in this area now.

According to PMS the CII has 20 point gamma correction :)

And Gordon callibrated my Crystalio - I hope he spent as much time with it as he would a Lumagen ;)
 
Hi,

Reading the CrystalioII manual leads me to believe that the advanced gamma correction (section 7.2) will only be available with firmware 2.00 onwards. That presumably means it isn't worth calibrating until that version of firmware arrives?

Ian
 
ihan said:
Hi,

Reading the CrystalioII manual leads me to believe that the advanced gamma correction (section 7.2) will only be available with firmware 2.00 onwards. That presumably means it isn't worth calibrating until that version of firmware arrives?

Ian
It's tough to say - they've got some predefined curves in firmware 1 (or at least in the manual). The general curve shape is fixed, but the degree of correction is variable.
I would think that one of those curves would do a decent initial job (if needed at all).
But when the custom gamma comes online, I guess you're always going to be wondering if it could improve things a tiny bit.
 
Does anyone have a summary of the Vantage vs the Crystallio based on specs? Who tests these things side by side (when both are available)? (ie reliable sources to keep an eye on)

Cheers

Steve
 
welwynnick said:
Rumour has it the VantageHD has started shipping:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=647733
Nearly there - this was announced by Invision:

8th February, 2006
Vantage-HD Scaler To Make its UK Debut at the Smart Home Show 2006 in Birmingham

Available in the UK from March 2006, Vantage-HD will have its UK debut at the Smart Home Show (2-5 March 2006, NEC, Birmingham) on the Invision Stand, No. 2507 in Hall 18.
Bristol would have been good.

Just my opinion, Nick
 
The main benefit of the custom gamma is to fix the non linearity in the greyscale that you get with some sources and some display devices. The actual gamma curve of them is usually pretty good it's just that there are humps or bumps in the response of some channels.

There are of course some devices where shifting the actual Luminance levels to create new response curve can bring nice benefits but I've not found many where that's required.

Gordon
 
stevekale said:
Does anyone have a summary of the Vantage vs the Crystallio based on specs? Who tests these things side by side (when both are available)? (ie reliable sources to keep an eye on)

Cheers

Steve
The spec lists are so long it's very difficult to write them out.
Even the C2 speclist on the brochure doesn't mention half the features.

I guess you really need to have a good read through both manuals and see what takes your fancy :)

Basically Crystalio offers (not all with firmware 1.0)

Customised output resolutions
More flexible and potentially higher quality analogue BNC inputs.
Gamma Correction and custom gamma correction (inc seperate RGB)
Rules-based settings "if input=XX then output=YY" (DynamicVP)
Saving and exporting of all settings (seperately if you want)
Built-in HD media player option.
Picture-in-picture PIP PBP
Multiple simultaneous outputs (same resolution I believe)
Internal test patterns - allows perfect calibration of display, then you calibrate your source to this.
Customised ARs
Macros
Custom naming of just about everything (inputs only on vantage afaict)
Fanless design (just the noise of the HDD on the pro I would think)
Passthru and secondary passthru (this makes my head hurt)
Y/C delay
4xHDMI (expansion needed on Vantage)
2xHD-SDI on Pro (expansion on Vantage)


Anything else? Vantage reckon on having Y/C and custom gamma in a later firmware. Can't tell about things like anamorphic lens support on the vantage.


Gordon mentioned that the new chips take longer to do their processing but I seem to remember someone on the pms forums saying that it's faster than C1. I'll try and dig out the post in a bit. This was important for me because I play console games.

Re comparative reviews - it's a really tricky one - keep your eye on AVS and Secrets. Magazines are worthless for scaler reviews (maybe Widescreen Review if any)

Hope that helps
Tryingtimes (and they certainly are while arsing with my HTPC waiting for C2 :) )
 
Tryingtimes: I only know that the HQV takes longer to process information for de-interlacing and NR than the current Lumagen products.

G

If iposted somewhere that all new chipsets took longer then I must apologise.
 

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