Video processor benefits

IWC Dopplel

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I was wondering if there would be any benefits from looking at Scalers for my set up of Oppo 983 direct to JVC HD100 via HDMI ?

I intend to run with DVD until early next year before moving to Bluray, I want disc prices to come down and enjoy buying DVD's at £3-4 at the moment :D

When I do move to Bluray would a scaler be of less value then ?
 
If you chose your scaler wisely you could get significant improvements to gamma and colouromitry in that scenario.

Gordon

Are there affordable ones that have limited inputs and flexibility but would work in my scenario.

Crtystalio prices are expensive :D
 
Well I woudn't have put Crystallio in as one of my choices ;)

The best solution is the most expensive....Radiance XD
There are plenty of folk who use units from the Lumagen Vision range with sources like you suggest and HD1/100's and who have great results in doing some gamut mitigation and custom gamma curves. If you want to completely tame the nutter primary red and green issues you need a Radiance though
 
Well I woudn't have put Crystallio in as one of my choices ;)

The best solution is the most expensive....Radiance XD
There are plenty of folk who use units from the Lumagen Vision range with sources like you suggest and HD1/100's and who have great results in doing some gamut mitigation and custom gamma curves. If you want to completely tame the nutter primary red and green issues you need a Radiance though

Just looked up the Radiance price :eek: What about something like the DVDO edge ?
 
BTW I am more interested in the motion and high quality processing to DVD replay than necessarily the ultimate colour accuracy
 
Just looked up the Radiance price :eek: What about something like the DVDO edge ?

Edge has very limited calibration/customisation features and certainly no CMS. It will IVTC 60hz film material to 1080p/24 thus avoiding 3:2 judder. I'm a beta user but don't think I'd pay the retail price for the unit. Generally I prefer Lumagen in terms of processing/customisation although PRep is a nice feature when the iSD nterlaced signal is screwed over HDMI.

AVI
 
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For your purposes Prep is irrelevant. A vision series unit new or s/h will give you the best increase in image quality.

Something like the HDP ? Looking at the spec differences it looks like the HDQ is a nicer case but offers little extra in my circumstances (I only use DVD with the projector)

Any offers on what I would see with the following from DVD replay :

Lumagen HDP
Lumagen radiance
DVDO edge
DVDO VP50
DVDO VP50 Pro
Crystalio 3100

I'm thinking in terms of :

Black level and black detail
Image sharpness, depth and quality of picture
Motion and removing digital yuk
Colour accuracy

Just not sure what I am missing for £600-£3000 :rolleyes:
 
You'll get the best picture quality with a Lumagen product.

If you're only hooking a DVD player to a projector, then the HDP is a good thing to see if you can find a good secondhand one.
 
You'll get the best picture quality with a Lumagen product.

If you're only hooking a DVD player to a projector, then the HDP is a good thing to see if you can find a good secondhand one.

Would the Lumagen HD be good enough or is there any advantage of the Pro ?

PJ are advertising the HD exdem for £675 not a huge discount on a new item :rolleyes:
 
Would the Lumagen HD be good enough or is there any advantage of the Pro ?

PJ are advertising the HD exdem for £675 not a huge discount on a new item :rolleyes:

Pro has BNC connectors, DVI and Analogue outputs on seperate connections,more analogue inputs with greater configureability of those inputs.

HDP used to be £1200.....it's current price is greatly reduced. Scalers do not have any moving parts so it's not as if an ex dem unit is going to have "worn out" or reduced it's lifespan greatly by being used for a dem.
 
Pro has BNC connectors, DVI and Analogue outputs on seperate connections,more analogue inputs with greater configureability of those inputs.

HDP used to be £1200.....it's current price is greatly reduced. Scalers do not have any moving parts so it's not as if an ex dem unit is going to have "worn out" or reduced it's lifespan greatly by being used for a dem.

Are they straight forward to connect ? Looks like they have DVI and not HDMI ?
 
Would the Lumagen HD be good enough or is there any advantage of the Pro ?

PJ are advertising the HD exdem for £675 not a huge discount on a new item :rolleyes:


Just some things to consider.

The Vision range (HDP/Pro/HPQ) doesn't support or passthrough 1080p/60 signal plus it has only two DVI inputs and this may be a consideration for the future.

The Pro and HPD use the same processing etc but the pro has a nicer case and some additional connections but no advantage in terms of processing. I used a HPD for about three years and it's a nice product for use with film based material. I like Lumagen's "no ring" scaling although to many it may appear to soften the image (unless using 1:1 passthrough) due to reduced ringing (artifical sharpening) and inherent filtering that is applied during scaling. There is no diagonal processing so jaggies can be a problem and detail enhancement processing is pretty crude i.e. just a sharpness setting. The unit is limited to RGB DVI output and there is no audio switching.

On the plus side it has good calibration and customisation features and even a partial CMS that is limited to just the primary colours.

If you only ever plan to use with SD DVD it's not a bad option but is more limted than some offerings but they cost more.

AVI
 
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IWC: There is a basic set up guide available to download at the Lumagen support forums. It explains simple methodology to set it up. You are correct it has DVI sockets not HDMI. The DVI inputs support HDMI video signal types and as AVI points out the output is DVI, RGB digital video at either PC or STUDIO/video levels.

Gordon
 
IWC: There is a basic set up guide available to download at the Lumagen support forums. It explains simple methodology to set it up. You are correct it has DVI sockets not HDMI. The DVI inputs support HDMI video signal types and as AVI points out the output is DVI, RGB digital video at either PC or STUDIO/video levels.

Gordon

Tks, I am going to see how the projector looks with the Oppo 983 (still awaiting delivery). The Carada screen arrived today so will hopefully put up this week :D

I watched another film last night through the Toshiba and component. A lot of dreadful digital artifects it is far worse for combing and other artifacts than my old NEC HT1000 ! Picture is obviously tonnes better in terms of contrast and black levels but the digital problems are huge :confused:

Fingers crossed the Oppo will sort things out. I wonder if the JVC does not like a 480p feed ?

Once I have my bearings I really do want to explore seperate upscalers that will benefit my DVD set up and still be beneficial as I move on to Bluray

So far if I understand things correctly the picture quality of the Lumagen HDP is the best affordable option ?
 
HDP upscaling SD is nigh on as good as the Radiance doing it. It really is the best solution for SD upscaling in this market.
 
I watched another film last night through the Toshiba and component. A lot of dreadful digital artifects it is far worse for combing and other artifacts than my old NEC HT1000 ! Picture is obviously tonnes better in terms of contrast and black levels but the digital problems are huge :confused:

Fingers crossed the Oppo will sort things out. I wonder if the JVC does not like a 480p feed ?


Don't feed the JVC SD resolution as it's looks pretty poor. An external HDMI source that does the processing/upscaling should improve things a bit.

AVI
 
So far if I understand things correctly the picture quality of the Lumagen HDP is the best affordable option ?
The HDP has superb upscaling, and very flexible grey-scale and colour correction facilities. Its weaknesses are comparatively poor deinterlacing of SD video sources (film sources are fine), the inability to extract a pristine 576i signal from Sky HD, and (perhaps) a lack of inputs - you can't connect more than two digital sources to it at once. If you have an important analogue source (particularly if it's a composite source like a VCR) it may be worth going for the HDQ model, which has slightly better A/D conversion.

Something like the DVDO VP50 will give you better SD video deinterlacing and can get a clean digital 576i out of Sky HD, but its upscaling is nowhere near as good and its colour correction facilities are also much more limited.

So it depends on your priorities, really.
 
The HDP has superb upscaling, and very flexible grey-scale and colour correction facilities. Its weaknesses are comparatively poor deinterlacing of SD video sources (film sources are fine), the inability to extract a pristine 576i signal from Sky HD, and (perhaps) a lack of inputs - you can't connect more than two digital sources to it at once. If you have an important analogue source (particularly if it's a composite source like a VCR) it may be worth going for the HDQ model, which has slightly better A/D conversion.

Something like the DVDO VP50 will give you better SD video deinterlacing and can get a clean digital 576i out of Sky HD, but its upscaling is nowhere near as good and its colour correction facilities are also much more limited.

So it depends on your priorities, really.

Nick thanks, So running the HDP unit with the Oppo would be a good option then ? I can play with settings / outpouts from the Oppo too (maybe I shouldn't of ordered the 983 and ordered a lesser unit :confused:

Your comment on deinterlacing is interesting, by film do you mean DVD ?

The projector will be used for films R1 and R2 via DVD before adopting Bluray to run in parallel
 
Your comment on deinterlacing is interesting, by film do you mean DVD ?
Deinterlacing is a big topic, and I'm deliberately trying to avoid getting into a detailed discussion of it. :) But one important thing to grasp is that the approach used to deinterlace material depends on how it was captured in the first place.

Some sources were captured in a progressive format, for example by using a film camera. What this means is that the odd and even fields which make up each frame were both captured at the same moment in time: it started out as a single progressive frame which was then split into two fields. A cinema film works like this: the camera takes 24 progressive pictures per second, each of which is split to produce two fields. There was no time delay between the capture of the odd and even fields in the same frame, but there was a delay of 1/24th of a second between an even field and the odd field in the next frame.

But if you think about something like a live football match or news broadcast on British TV, the camera doesn't take 25 progressive-frame photographs per second: it takes 50 interlaced photographs per second. So there was a delay of 1/50th of a second between the odd and even fields, and then a delay of another 1/50th of a second between even and odd fields.

So, when deinterlacing you first have to decide if what you're looking at is "film" (i.e. captured progressively) or "video" (i.e. captured in an already-interlaced state), and the strategy you use depend on which it is. (I might add in passing that one thing which distinguishes deinterlacers is how good they are at telling the difference between film and video).

The Lumagen HDP is quite good telling the difference between film and video, but its ability to deinterlace video is less than top-notch compared to something like an Edge or a VP50. But both approaches will do an equally good job of deinterlacing film and of course the HDP's scaling is significantly better than the VP50's. So you'll find that the HDP will be more less unambiguously better for film, but for video it may be a more complex question. If what you watch is mostly material originally shot on film then the VP50 or Edge's superior video deinterlacing won't count for much; but if you watch a lot of football, then it might.

Obviously there are a lot of other factors to consider as well, like grey-scale correction, ability to get a good signal out of Sky HD, etc.
 
Nick thanks, So running the HDP unit with the Oppo would be a good option then ? I can play with settings / outpouts from the Oppo too (maybe I shouldn't of ordered the 983 and ordered a lesser unit :confused:

Your comment on deinterlacing is interesting, by film do you mean DVD ?

The projector will be used for films R1 and R2 via DVD before adopting Bluray to run in parallel

If you're running with a VP the Oppo 980 would be an option that avoids paying for double video processing as it supports 576i/480i over HDMI. The 983 can only output a progressive signal i.e. 480p/586p meaning the Lumagen cannot deinterlace the film.

Also you woudn't be able to send 1080p/50/60 from the 983 into the HDP/HPQ to use it's other calibration features as it will not accept these signals.

AVI
 
Also you woudn't be able to send 1080p/50/60 from the 983 into the HDP/HPQ to use it's other calibration features as it will not accept these signals.

AVI

and you wouldn't want to anyway as the upscaling in a Lumagen is superior:rolleyes:
 
and you wouldn't want to anyway as the upscaling in a Lumagen is superior:rolleyes:


Just trying to point out that if a person did prefer the "sharper" image that may be provided if the 983 does the scaling it couldn't be passed as 1080p/50/60. The JVC can look a tad soft with upscaled SD DVD.

I guess the 983 could send 1080i/50/60 but that's more processing.

AVI
 
Just found out my 983 is in the post.

So my plan is to run the 983 and then consider selling the 983 and swapping to 980 and Lumagen. Any ideas about what improvements I would see ?

I understand the scaling is better, how does this look to the eye.

Would I expect a big improvement going to 980 / HDP over a 983 ? again I am only interested in DVD replay as that makes things easier. I have sky but in a different room with no connectivity planned between the two.

I must admit I am expecting a BIG improvement over the Toshiba, the softness and quality of the picture from that unit is truly aweful into the 100 ......... :rolleyes:

Well Monday I will find out !


PS Nic thanks for the notes on deinterlacing, I did read up about progressive at the time (2002) and it all cane back with your note :) Very glad I don't like footy and dont need sky connectivity and only watch TV on the pioneer plasma upstairs
 

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