Do you have any idea how the NR of the GF9450 might compare to what a Mosquito does?
Not really.

Madshi, thanks for your informative post.

Having spent as much as we have for the CII in light of rapidly developing technological advances, it would be a shame if PMS were to abandon its loyal customers by not offering an upgrade path. PMS' contributions to this forum and their own forum (bravo!!) indicate that they are attuned and responsive to their customers, so hopefully PMS' silence on this subject only indicates that they have not formulated or finalized their plans, yet, rather than that they will not be offering an upgrade path.

Companies like Anthem, B&K, Lexicon and Theta have endeared themselves to many because of the upgrade paths they have offered with their products. I would think it would be a terrific marketing move for PMS to do the same. Who wouldn't sleep better knowing that the substantial money you've spent on the current CII, even in the face of existing, published reports on the next Gennum chip, HDMI 1.3, etc. wouldn't be in vain when these new technologies are brought to market? I sure would, and I'd be willing to bet that PMS would sell more CIIs along the way.

I think it is safe to say that nothing is coming out in the near future that will have a night and day difference. I still am very happy I chose to get the crystalio II. No buyers remorse... Especially when I upgrade the firmware easily with the USB flashdrive...

Having spent as much as we have for the CII in light of rapidly developing technological advances, it would be a shame if PMS were to abandon its loyal customers by not offering an upgrade path.
To be fair, PixelMagic never promised hardware upgrades and they never claimed they'd be able to upgrade to a newer Gennum chip. Basically you bought what you bought. You're getting constant firmware upgrades, and PixelMagic listens to customer wishes (for firmware changes). So there's not really a reason to complain. Sure, hardware upgrades would be nice, but I don't really think it's very probable for the CII. Replacing the whole mainboard (if that is what it'd take) would be quite costly and probably not a DIY job.

Madshi, you've misunderstood my post. My point was that I think it would be an additional, beneficial selling point if PMS were to promise an upgrade path. I know they haven't promised one. I'm not complaining - in fact, I lauded PMS for its customer support!

As for the potential cost, that's really beside the point. Let the customer decide if it's worth it to him/her. And I would hope the factory would be doing the upgrade, as the other companies I mentioned in my post do for their customers. This should not be a DIY job.

Its now almost a week since I replaced my DVDO VP50 with the Crystalio 2, and I'm very pleased with most of the results. I should write a more detailed comparison about what I like more with the Crystalio and what I'm less excited about soon, but for now I wanted to see if anyone else here has run into a problem I'm having with the built in media player?

PQ when playing for example HD TS files using the built in media player is noticeably better when compared with playing from my HTPC, however, on some files I get significant stutter - when playing over the network and even when copying the files first to the internal hard disk and playing them from there. I'm trying to upload a sample file per Pixelmagic support suggestion, to their ftp site.
I noticed this tends to happen more often in HD sample files, for example the Sony, JVC and Sharp sample HD TS files, which I suppose might be files with higher bitrate?

Has anyone else run into this stutter problem with the Crystalio's built in media player? The same files play perfectly on the HTPC.

I also noticed some strange readings on the Crystalio's LCD display when playing these stuttering files - for one file for example input shows as 1280 X 1080i60 - but it keeps changing from film to vid every 10-15 seconds. In between it sometimes shows on the Crystalio LCD screen 'no signal' as well, while that file is playing.

Output is 1080p@59.94

Deintrlacing is JXP 3:2 pulldown (when it shows as film) and VXD Motion Adapt (when it shows as vid).

And - it stutters every few seconds - picture freezes, skips 1-2 seconds - then continues for about 20 seconds with no stutter, and then again.

I hope Pixelmagic can sort this out, but was curious for any suggestions and whether anyone else has experienced something similar?

I know hardware upgrades would make many customers excited but getting these firmware upgrades that keep adding exciting features (like PiP) is enough for me. Like I already posted, going thru a hardware change to try and squeeze out a 3-5% (which is still not for certain) better picture Q may prove to be cumbersome. Seriously, how much better will the next gen be? Like Lumagen's new one coming. Even with an updated chip I will guarrantee most will not be able to see the difference. As for nowwith up to date features and terrific picture Q the crystalio II is still top dog...

I certainly hope so! My HT installation is still a couple weeks away. The closest I can come to the CII for now is their website and this forum.

Its now almost a week since I replaced my DVDO VP50 with the Crystalio 2, and I'm very pleased with most of the results. I should write a more detailed comparison about what I like more with the Crystalio and what I'm less excited about soon, but for now I wanted to see if anyone else here has run into a problem I'm having with the built in media player?

I haven't seen this problem and I don't recall having read about it over at the PMS forum but you should check over there. That is the best place to raise issues like this and PMS might respond as they do frequently in that forum.

Its now almost a week since I replaced my DVDO VP50 with the Crystalio 2, and I'm very pleased with most of the results. I should write a more detailed comparison about what I like more with the Crystalio and what I'm less excited about soon, but for now I wanted to see if anyone else here has run into a problem I'm having with the built in media player?

PQ when playing for example HD TS files using the built in media player is noticeably better when compared with playing from my HTPC, however, on some files I get significant stutter - when playing over the network and even when copying the files first to the internal hard disk and playing them from there. I'm trying to upload a sample file per Pixelmagic support suggestion, to their ftp site.
I noticed this tends to happen more often in HD sample files, for example the Sony, JVC and Sharp sample HD TS files, which I suppose might be files with higher bitrate?

Has anyone else run into this stutter problem with the Crystalio's built in media player? The same files play perfectly on the HTPC.

I also noticed some strange readings on the Crystalio's LCD display when playing these stuttering files - for one file for example input shows as 1280 X 1080i60 - but it keeps changing from film to vid every 10-15 seconds. In between it sometimes shows on the Crystalio LCD screen 'no signal' as well, while that file is playing.

Output is 1080p@59.94

Deintrlacing is JXP 3:2 pulldown (when it shows as film) and VXD Motion Adapt (when it shows as vid).

And - it stutters every few seconds - picture freezes, skips 1-2 seconds - then continues for about 20 seconds with no stutter, and then again.

I hope Pixelmagic can sort this out, but was curious for any suggestions and whether anyone else has experienced something similar?




yes, the stutter problem can happen on all media players.

I have three different network players (Roku,JVC's Pro HD (AvelLink) and the 3800.

some files play better on one but studder on the other. it's a file problem and
not the players fault. even the different network player (most of them use the Syabase (spelling?) platform , behave differently.

the chip used in many of the players has so many problems that it's impossible
to get the decoding right on every file that's been pushed around on the net.

the latest chip of this company which supports HD VC-1 and HD H.264 has been
on the market fo over half a year and we still haven't seen a player on the market.

PixelMagic said that it will not use the latest chip due to too many bugs

and I guess they (and all others) are chewing on the faults in this design.

the AvelLink player was one of the first to come to the market and it was totally

unusable when it came out. after a couple of firmware upgrades, it's now quite

usable. I don't like the Mediaplayer of the C2, they should have never put one in

such a high priced scaler. have a look in the PMS forum about what others say

(http://www.pixelmagicforum.com/forum/index.php)

other media players are so dirt cheap now, try one of those


Michael

C2 built-in media player is a complete and utter joke. The only files it plays properly are DVD ISO-images. Even MPEG-2 TS files cause problems on the internal player, not to mention it doesn't support divx/AVI like the MediaBox external counterpart from PMS does.

PMS has also stated that they will NOT improve the support on the C2 internal mediaplayer, because they are afraid people will complain about the files it doesn't play. Good grief.

So, it looks like in order to protect their customer support lines (which seem to be quite heavily bombarded already due to all the bugs), PMS has decided to cheat the current C2 owners out of the internal MB features that were originally promised.

So, if you are thinking of buying C2 for the internal media-box features, don't.

Just like Michael said, there are far more reliable, cheaper, better featured & supported media players out there.

I hope PMS can at least fix the issues they have with the main job C2 was made for: switching, scaling, de-interlacing & video filtering.

However, currently I'm not totally conviced they are able to do this properly.

It seems that their software unit doesn't even the rudimentary understanding of unit testing or test driven development, as they keep introducing more and more bugs to new releases of software as they try to fix the old ones (often unsuccessfully).

I'm very disappointed in PMS' performance on C2 myself and am seriously considering selling my unit and switching to something which comes with a better support and less marketing BS.

Then again, many people who only use it for _very specific_ setups and don't have to face the bugs, seem to be fairly happy with their units. But then again, for applications like that, there are often much cheaper alternatives.

So, caveat emptor.

Thanks Halcy.

I wonder if reading your post before I bought the C2 would have changed my mind. It may very well would have. I am still very happy I did get the the C2, but that could always change.

I only have the C2 for less than two weeks so far, and the PQ I get is better than what I got with the DVDO VP50, which I sold out. The files the internal media-player does play without stutters simply look amazing, compared with playing them from my PC. The PIP is very cool. Overall I'm very happy.

In what I've experienced, there are only two things that I am unhappy with - the media-player stutter for some TS files (I'm yet to understand which files, though I suspect its for TS files with very high bitrate) and something new that does not effect my viewing but concerns me (and I suspect might be related to the TS stutter for some files I get) - I get a 576i signal from my dish network provider (called 'Yes' in Israel) - and the Crystalio does not lock to film vs. video on this signal and keeps changing between these two modes every 10-15 seconds (and as a result changes the way it deinterlaces). I noticed the same issue happens with the TS files that stutter in the media player (and does not happen on TS files that play without stutter - they lock to 'film' without problems).

Again, other than these two things, I'm yet to experience other problems, like the infamous screen tearing / green flashes the Crystalio's support forum is all about and I get a great PQ which is the main thing I was after. I do hope the internal media-player gets improved as its interface is very basic at the moment. Have you heard from PMS they are not going to improve it further? Personally I am less concerned about the file types it supports, as I try to go on a pure HDTV / TS diet and don't own (or plan to download) xvid / dvix or other files - but I can understand why this is upsetting - I would have expected the internal media-player to be the equal of PMS's MB200 and I was surprised and disappointed to find out that wasn't the case. I did notice their support response on their web-site is not that responsive.

At this point in time, I still feel I'm getting my money's worth and the PQ improved from my previous VP. When the next best VP will be released (anyone knows which VP & when is this going to happen?) I have no moral problems with jumping ship if the C2 doesn't catch up through more firmware updates, selling it and switching to the next best. I guess at this time most people would agree that the C2 does provide the best PQ?

sounds strange. The MB200 I have has been continually receiving more updates and getting more and more stable.

I can't think of any reason why the internal player wouldn't ultimately receive exactly the same featureset as the external one.

Hi Ofer,
A pleasure reading you here, as it is on hometheater.co.il.
That would be my expectation as well - in fact I was very surprised to find out this is not the case at the moment. I hope to get word from PixelMagic on whether they intend to get the built in media player to be the equal of the stand alone MB200. If not that would be a disappointment, as I would expect they'd want to make their flagship be just that.

It's been awfully quiet around here lately. How are people feeling about their CIIs these days? Is anybody using one in conjunction with a 1080p projector? If yes, what kind of projector, and do you notice any differences using the CII?

it's getting better and better with each FW upgrade


get it while you can


Michael

it's getting better and better with each FW upgrade
get it while you can :confused:
MichaelI'd like to hear from Phil (Free) I'm looking forward to hearing about his experiences with the CII since he received his replacement, particularly, as he previously owned a DVDO VP50 - how does the CII now compare to the DVDO?

I'd like to hear from Phil (Free) I'm looking forward to his experiences with the CII since he received his replacement, particularly, as he previously owned a DVDO VP50 - how does the CII now compare to the DVDO?

ike Phil, I think many other VP50 owners are looking at what else is there in the market for their next upgrade cycle..... myself included ...

However, at the same time... I would rather not spend much more then the price of a VP50 ..... $3k ish ....

I am still enjoying mine. I love having PiP. Being able to play video games while keeping up with tournament games is unbelievable! ;)

My very first post on this forum.. so pls bear with me.

Expecting Cii to arrive in a week to be mated with Sony Pearl 1080p.
Also waiting for Schneider Anamorphic lens and 2.35 ratio stewart.
Really biting the bullet, dreaming of some magnificent images once complete.

Wonder if this Cii will help throw good image on the flat 2.35 screen with little distortion.... or is the curved screen the right path.... (though price prob prohibitive)
Read/heard that a curved screen(in the shape of a lens) can increase the screen
gain multi-fold, thereby brightening the projected image.

My HT will be in the living room so need an electric screen to hide when not in use.
I know that pretty much eliminates the curved screen idea, but what about
2.35 ratio screen on studiotek130... any such thing?


Terry
----------------------
anxiously awaiting my overbudget setup

The crystalio II is an asset in any home theater. It will give your theater the flexibility it needs to be able to handle anything. Oh and the pic Q is as good as it gets! ;)

Thks joerod.

Really looking forward to Cii.
My first test would be whether Cii will produce better picture than 2nd gen Toshiba HDDVD,
XE1 (in europe use this name). I know some other thread made such observations.

Well... we shall see. :)


Terry
----------------------
anxiously awaiting my overbudget setup

Keep us posted! :)

My very first post on this forum.. so pls bear with me.
Well, from your choice of equipment it seems like you've been digesting the forums well :)

Expecting Cii to arrive in a week to be mated with Sony Pearl 1080p.
Also waiting for Schneider Anamorphic lens and 2.35 ratio stewart.
Really biting the bullet, dreaming of some magnificent images once complete.
I'm sure it'll be fantastic - really really stunning.


Wonder if this Cii will help throw good image on the flat 2.35 screen with little distortion.... or is the curved screen the right path.... (though price prob prohibitive)
Read/heard that a curved screen(in the shape of a lens) can increase the screen
gain multi-fold, thereby brightening the projected image.
CII doesn't so anything to counteract the effects of the anamorphic lens, so in terms of distortion, it'll be the same with/without CII in the chain.
One critical factor is throw. If you're using the Pearl at it's longest throw, the Schneider shouldn't produce anything too distracting. If it's at the shortest, then maybe a curved screen does start to make sense.
Indeed it will increase brightness (don't know about multi-fold though), but it's far more expensive.

My HT will be in the living room so need an electric screen to hide when not in use.
I know that pretty much eliminates the curved screen idea, but what about
2.35 ratio screen on studiotek130... any such thing?
As you say - no curved electric screens.
2.35:1 electric screens are quite common though - most of the big companies will make them for you - cost is similar to the 16:9 screen of the same width. Studiotek130 is no problem at all.
Electric masking is definitely expensive though - the Stewart Electrimask system seems pretty good, but certainly in the UK, the price is just daft. I guess you should talk to Jason at AVS to see what the US street price is for your chosen width.

Look forward to seeing your setup - the Schneider lens is quite rare around these parts, so it will be mice to hear your impressions.

Also make sure you've got the new CII firmware as it fixes an issue with 2.35:1 and 1080p24.

tryingtimes,

Thks advise. Will try throw up some pics when properly setup.
One of the dealers also will help calibrate the machines.
Crystalio has hit the town already, but lens not expected till June, yikes !
Seems they make a batch of the glass at a time. Sold out of last production they say...

JUNE!!!
If I were you I'd either try and find one in stock at another dealer (surely your dealer would understand) or move over to the ISCO/Panamorph/Prismasonic options.
But then it's not my system so these decisions are always easy to make :D

So were you thinking of zooming in the meantime?

Did anyone read The Perfect Vision (March issue) about the crystalio II being used with a projectiondesign model three ($24,495.00) 1080p pj? He says the pj uses a processor called the crystalio II from Pixel Magic. He remarks on the exceptional video processing, details, and colors it produces... He does give a insiders tip which mentions keep NR off for a much sharper image. I have to agree with this atleast for HD viewing. Well, I just thought I would mention it just in case you missed it. It's good to see an expensive pj choosing the crystalio II as its video processor. Maybe I am not crazy after all! :D

The crystalio II is an asset in any home theater. It will give your theater the flexibility it needs to be able to handle anything.
Did you try LPCM 5.1 through HDMI lately ?
Or perhaps 1080i60 to 1080p24 without image problems ?

I'd like to hear from Phil (Free) I'm looking forward to hearing about his experiences with the CII since he received his replacement, particularly, as he previously owned a DVDO VP50 - how does the CII now compare to the DVDO?
Any news on your replacement Phil (Free)?

I was wondering the same thing...

I am in good shape. Pixel Magic took good care of me, and I have a unit that no longer suffers from the blue screen issue. :)

I am in good shape. Pixel Magic took good care of me, and I have a unit that no longer suffers from the blue screen issue. :)
Gear to hear Phil. Now that you're settled in with the CII, how does it compare to the VP50? What features would you like the VP50 to have and which do you find are missing on the CII. Useability issues - any differences? I'm looking for the sort of things that you won't find it the manuals, but only through "bitter" useage.

Great news! :)

I find the picture quality to be superior, but I am not a big fan of the menu system. I know I am in the minority on that, but I find it hard to read and rather obtrusive. It is more refined looking than the VP50 though and has more features.

In the end, it is the picture quality that really makes the difference.

I find the picture quality to be superior, but I am not a big fan of the menu system. I know I am in the minority on that, but I find it hard to read and rather obtrusive. It is more refined looking than the VP50 though and has more features.

In the end, it is the picture quality that really makes the difference.
Have all you audio drop-outs completely disappeared since switching to the CII?

I have never had an audio drop out using the crystalio II. For some reason Pixel Magic knows how to make the audio work correctly... :)

I haven't used HDMI for audio on either unit.

I had a blast yesterday playing MLB 2007 on my 360 while watching the Sox play at the same time. I love the PiP feature! :)

I would be interested in hearing from other members of this forum that have this combination as I have been having problems setting the CII output to display properly and would be interested in hearing what setups you are using to get this to work.
You can PM me with replies or post on the forum

A word of warning from a long time C2 user (1st batch).

- lots of QA issues
- problems with SDI input stability
- blue screen (loss of sync?) issues
- constant problems with new firmware (fix one thing, break another)
- VPS 3800 will not support all advertised features
- VPS 3800 internal ftp broken
- user support very unresponsive and has told that some of the problems listed above they will not even try to fix

I could go on, but I'm too tired.

As soon as the new Lumagen alternative is available here, my C2 is up for sale.

I'm really disappointed with PMS as a company. I think they have behaved dishonestly in their marketing (vs delivery) and their technical firmware expertise appears not to be best-of-breed on the market.

So, if you are considering Crystalio II, caveat emptor!

A word of warning from a long time C2 user (1st batch).

- lots of QA issues
- VPS 3800 will not support all advertised features
- VPS 3800 internal ftp broken
- user support very unresponsive and has told that some of the problems listed above they will not even try to fix

I could go on, but I'm too tired.
...

I'm really disappointed with PMS as a company. I think they have behaved dishonestly in their marketing (vs delivery) and their technical firmware expertise appears not to be best-of-breed on the market.

So, if you are considering Crystalio II, caveat emptor!

From a shorter term C2/3800 owner (December):
I agree with Halsy.

I relied heavily on this forum and the PMS Forum to help determine what to buy, so it is time to give back a bit.

We have an all digital and HDMI system incorporating the C2/3800 and a Sony Ruby that projects to a Silverstar 110" 16:9 screen in a dedicated Home Theater. 7.1 Audio output is provided by Magneplanars (T-1D's and MG12's) all around, except for a 30" EV subwoofer (actually a low frequency driver as it was called- it predates the term subwoofer!)

The video quality is outstanding, but it has been a beast to get to work and does not provide all that was promised!

We chose the 3800 vs. the 3300 under the pretext that we were getting the equivalent of the MB200 included in one box. Nothing could be further from the truth. This was an expensive mistake. The 3300 will be just fine in most applications.

The Media Player is a joke. It is marginally functional and now PMS has said they will not support any other formats.
The 200G internal drive is effectively unaccessable. For connectivity, we have configured our W2K server for NFS. Access is OK, but not easy. The UI is pathetic. Frequent lockups with lower resolution videos. No JPEG support. No Windows Media support. We will be looking for an alternate Media Player.

The processor does not handle HDMI audio pass through very well- 2 channel was the most we were able pass through. Now we have the C2 just in front of the Ruby and rely on the HDMI AV Receiver to provide an audio delay to match the C2 processing delay. Suboptimal.
There is only 1 optical digital audio input (3 coax).

There is quite a bit of control available, but because we have it relatively far down the chain- using only 1 video input, much of the control is unavailable to us.

We chose this box knowing that the software was not where it needed to be, but at least it looked like it was going in the right direction. Recently, PMS has been slowing down their contact with the user base and is now saying that they will not be supporting some of what was promised- on their flagship, no less. It is too early to say if they are not planning on supporting the rest of the 3800 feature set, but it does not look real promising at this time. They created great platform with loads of potential, but there is a gap in the implementation. Unfortunate.

Got my 3800 last August, and while I've generally been quite happy with the scaler portion of it (barring a number of annoying bugs), I have to agree that the internal mediaplayer is a massive joke. I have a MB200 as well, and was expecting the 3800's mediaplayer to outperform the MB200 easily (which shouldn't have been too hard, as the MB200 is a useless POS).

First I had to wait for months for PMS to enable the mediaplayer in the first place, and when they did, it was practically useless. It's now been months since the first mediaplayer-enable firmware update, and guess what? The mediaplayer's still practically useless.

No support for divx/xvid - and there never will be, according to the announcement PMS made some days ago. While the MB200 is able to access shares over Windows network (barely), the 3800 is limited to NFS shares. I purchased a new NAS box that has NFS sharing just to test the 3800 mediaplayer functionality, which turned out abysmally bad. While its supposed to play HD transport streams, in reality it rarely does - unless the file's bitrate is very low. And you all know what very low bitrate HD .TS looks like...

Oh yeah, the built-in FTP server. It's possible to transfer files to 3800's internal HDD over LAN, true. But the files won't play any better from the HDD. And as a seemingly cruel hoax, once you put the files on the HDD, you can't transfer them back! Thanks to a bug, FTP clients (and I've tried many different ones) download only a few hundred megabytes at best. This is because the FTP server reports incorrect filesizes to the client.

As things stand, the 3800 does not work as advertised. Some parts of it never will, according to PMS themselves. I've put my C2 up for sale, but I will also contact their local retailer in the hopes of returning the product for a refund.

Thank you gentlemen for these honest appraisals of the CII. As much as I or anyone else would prefer nothing but glowing reports (like those from a gentleman who shall remain anonymous :D ), I prefer to see the whole picture. No doubt, as with any toy, if you use only some of its features, you can be completely satisfied, but that's not to say that everyone will be if they are using some (additional) or other features.

The fact the PMS have no intention to provide all the features thay they promised for the media player section of the 3800, is in my mind a total deal breaker to ever consider a PM VP - particularly as they purport that the 3800 is the creme de la creme of all VPs - it certainly is as far as price :( .

As things stand, the 3800 does not work as advertised. Some parts of it never will, according to PMS themselves. I've put my C2 up for sale, but I will also contact their local retailer in the hopes of returning the product for a refund.

Have you given any thought as to what scaler will you use instead?

Ray

Have you given any thought as to what scaler will you use instead?

RayYes, I currently have the DVDO iScan VP50. By no means the perfect answer (yet) and I'm still hanging in to see if DVDO will eventually get it right. It too, has arguably one or two unfulfilled features. But, for my current requirements, it fulfils all my needs and performs pretty well - audio drop-outs really being the only remaining problem for me (others still have issues with 1080p24 for example). It also costs a lot less than the CII, so bang for your buck, it's a better proposition. I originally owned the HD+ model, and upgraded to the VP30 and now the VP50. But, if you must have dual HDMI video outputs and dual HD SDI inputs (the 3800 CII), the VP50 is not for you.

Sorry, I just realised that I answered this post on behalf of L Ray - my comments still apply though ;) .

Have you given any thought as to what scaler will you use instead?

I've got two choices at the moment: Lumagen Radiance and Anthem Statement D2.

Crystalio's local retailer is also the Finnish distributor of Anthem's products, so maybe I'll try to swap my C2 for the Anthem D2. If that goes sour, I'll try to sell the C2 direct and will wait for the Lumagen.

I'm aware neither of those scalers have media player functionality. It's too bad, since I really need that. However, I'm now in the market for an external media player which supports H.264; there are a couple of interesting (but buggy, I'm sure) products released already, and more in the horizon.

Sorry, I just realised that I answered this post on behalf of L Ray - my comments still apply though ;) .
No, you answered L Ray's question on my behalf :D

Leaving the media player out of the equasion, neither the Anthem D2 or the DVDO VP-50 can touch the crystallio in scaling. So, for those of you that need a scaler alone, then the C2 3300 seems to be working as promised and without any serious issues. I too have read about the C2 3800 media problems and agree that there are major problems there but, considering that these posts are all compairing the scaling outputs of other scalers to the bugs found in the media portion of a specific C2 product it just isnt apples to apples. None of the other products mentioned even have a media option and none of them are better scalers.

Correct me if I am wrong but, is there a better scaler on the market right now then the C2 3300? I don't think so and to speculate what the Radiance "might" look like is a joke because that product is still in beta and has been promised for nearly 2 years now. If you waited to buy the Radience then you would have had crappy scaling for 2 years and counting, while the C2 owners were smiling. And, if you think that the Radiance wont have months of bug issues when it finally IS released then you are mistaken.

My 2 cents.

Leaving the media player out of the equasion, neither the Anthem D2 or the DVDO VP-50 can touch the crystallio in scaling.

What is your basis for this statement?

Leaving the media player out of the equasion, neither the Anthem D2 or the DVDO VP-50 can touch the crystallio in scaling.
You've tested all three? Anthem D2 has the same Gennum chip as C2 3800 - and I really can't see Anthem being worse with their firmwares than PMS. I'm sure programming firmwares for products like these is difficult at best, but that's no excuse for shoddy workmanship. Companies that release these products must be aware of the difficulties in advance, and should therefore have been prepared for them. Based on PMS' firmware output for C2 and MB100/MB200, I get the feeling PMS' programmers are not up to the task.

And, if you think that the Radiance wont have months of bug issues when it finally IS released then you are mistaken.
That might be so. At least the C2 3800 was buggy as hell when I got it, and even the latest revision contains a number of niggling bugs. Judging by my past experiences with Lumagen products, I'm safe in the knowledge that Lumagen's firmware development is by far better, faster and more reliable than PMS's.

Rob: I have tested all 3, that is the basis for my statement.

pteittinen: The C2 has a newer chipset then the Anthem does and it is a stand alone big horsepower scaler, not an afterthought add in video board that happens to have a gennum chip on it.

You once again are comparing the 3800 that is bug ridden with the potential Lumagen scaler that has not yet been released and has no media player. If you wish to continue comparisons, please use the stand alone C2 3300 when comparing to the upcoming offers by Lumagen that have no media player either.

The 3300 is rock solid with minor bug issues that are addressed every month. I can reccomend this scaler today without reservation, because it is fully functional and is providing everything it promised to deliver.

As long as you are not using the media player in the 3800, shouldn't it be the same as the 3300? I am wishing I got the 3300 instead, because I probably wouldn't even use the media player if it worked.

The C2 has a newer chipset then the Anthem does and it is a stand alone big horsepower scaler, not an afterthought add in video board that happens to have a gennum chip on it.
As far as I know, C2 and D2 both have the same Gennum GF9351 chip in them.

On what do you base the assumption that the Gennum video processing on D2 is an "afterthought"? I'd imagine it's near impossible to add something as complex as that to a product once it's already been designed and manufactured. It would be nice to see how Anthem engineers comment your claim.

You once again are comparing the 3800 that is bug ridden with the potential Lumagen scaler that has not yet been released and has no media player. If you wish to continue comparisons, please use the stand alone C2 3300 when comparing to the upcoming offers by Lumagen that have no media player either.
Actually, I wasn't talking about the media player in my previous post at all. I was talking about the scaler part of C2, which still has a number of bugs and several users are experiencing intermittent problems/glitches with it. I'm sure you're aware that the scaler & other video processing portions of 3300 and 3800 are exactly the same, so my experiences with 3800 apply to 3300.

If I was comparing something, I was comparing how Lumagen and PMS approach the issue of firmware updates.

The 3300 is rock solid with minor bug issues that are addressed every month. I can reccomend this scaler today without reservation, because it is fully functional and is providing everything it promised to deliver.
Wow, that doesn't describe my experiences with C2 at all. I regularly read the PMS forum and usually install the latest firmware the day its released.

"Rock solid"? Nowhere near that level of reliability. "Bug issues addressed every month"? If by that you mean PMS posting on their forums that the issue should be resolved in the next firmware update, then yeah, sure, they are 'addressing' the issue. More often than not, however, the bugs are not fixed, and again, more often than not, something else gets broken by the fw update.

PMS has a nasty habit of skipping proper testing and declaring a feature as "Done" in their roadmap. Instead, they jump on some new feature and start implementing that. Basically what it boils down to is that I've been a beta tester for PMS firmwares since August last year, and my trust in PMS and C2 has been shot to hell.

While C2 might be "rock solid" on beever's setup, it surely is NOT on both pteittinen's and my setup.

Too many bugs, odd behavior and unreliability with new bugs being introduced in new firmware releases.

And this is all without even considering the media player functionality (i.e. applies equally well to 3300 and 3800 models).

So, if you are considering C2, make sure it functions 100% ok in your fixed setup, as it doesn't work in several of it's features and in all setups. If you want to find out more, wade through the complaints in the PMS support forum.

I'm not saying C2 is useless, it maybe perfect for your setup, if you know it performs well in that particular setting.

As for the company itself hower... pfffff! I'd best not comment more or I get my blood pressure up again :)

Rob: I have tested all 3, that is the basis for my statement.

pteittinen: The C2 has a newer chipset then the Anthem does ....

Can you point me to a link or literature that would show that the C2 and D2 do NOT use the same Gennum chip?

I have had a crystalio II for quite some time now. I admit it is the backbone of my theater set up. I run my 360, HD DVD, Blu ray, JVC HM DT100, and 4 DirecTV HR20s (2 700s and now 2 new 100s BLACK) thru my unit. I do use the TX1000 to switch a few of them and then send it to the crystalio II but that is still a heck of a lot of stuff going thru it. I do the 1080p/24 from the pioneer and then send it at 48 to my Ruby. Which looks amazing! :eek: I also love what it does with 1080i sources and sometimes 480i (I am hardly using any 480i sources anymore). I also really like being able to play my 360 on one side of my screen while I watch a live baseball game on the other. Having PiP or PoP is my favorite feature now. I know some have posted this unit has not meant their expectations but for me it has done everything I have asked it to do. I had a VP50, A Lumagen HDQ as well as a few others and I will say the crystalio II is the BEST. I get a very sharp, clear picture without noise! And yes, the 3300 and 3800 are the same except for the media player. And I was under the assumption the D2 used the same chip. I will say I have been happy with the firmware upgrades thus far. I asked them to work on that bright blue NO SIGNAL screen because it was hurting my wife's eyes and within a day they had a new firmware that would make the NO SIGNAL screen black. Much more pleasing to the eyes. With all the Image, OSD, Input and output options I do not know what else this video processor could be missing. I still have absolutely no buyer's remorse! ;)

I still have absolutely no buyer's remorse! ;)
Apparently I got yours as well, then ;)

But seriously, are you saying your C2 is working perfectly, without glitches or weird behaviour? Have you, for example, been tweaking gamma curves, only to lose all your work after touching another setting which has nothing to do with gamma?

I'm sure I wouldn't be feeling such animosity towards Crystalio, had I settled for the 3300. But as things stand, I wanted a world-class media player along with a world-class scaler. That's what PMS promised in the 3800, and failed to deliver.

I tweaked everything before and have not had to do so again. I can see why one would be upset if they were experiencing technical issues (we all have been there before) but did you at least switch out your unit for another? My unit does a lot and then some and I have not had any problems. I am using beta firmware version 2.02 but still I was good at 2.01. The main tweaking I have done was for the picture. And once I had my inputs optimally set I have not touched them. I just enjoy the show! ;)

I tweaked everything before and have not had to do so again.
No, you misunderstood a bit. Like you, I was tweaking everything, hoping it would be the first and last time I need to touch any settings. While I tweaking the unit, setting gamma curves etc., I lost all the work I had done so far because I went and touched one setting (can't remember specifically what it was) - and C2 simply threw away all the settings I had done up to that point. Most annoying, I can tell you, and something one really doesn't expect from such a product.

I can see why one would be upset if they were experiencing technical issues (we all have been there before) but did you at least switch out your unit for another?
Yes! This is in fact my second C2. The first one was a complete lemon, and it went back to the manufacturer.

This processor is not for everybody. I will be the first to admit it. Especially if you get one that is a lemon (the first time) it makes it that much more frustrating. I as well as many others are perfectly happy with the crystalio II. I hope you get a video processor that you can be equally happy with. :)

This processor is not for everybody.
So, in other words, if you're a person who buys a $7500 (that's how much the 3800 costs here) product and expects:

- all the features promised by the manufacturer
- hassle-free operation out-of-box
- not having to spend hours reading the manufacturer's forum, looking for fixes/work-arounds
- not having to download and install frequent fw upgrades
- not having to wait for months for features that were supposed to work the moment you bought the product
- not having to work as a non-paid betatester by installing supposedly non-beta firmwares that are actually still in beta stage

then yeah, I'd say you're right; C2's not a processor for such a person.


To be honest, I'd be more than happy to keep my C2, provided PMS

- would just admit they've done a sub-standard job so far and apologize to their users
- hire a bunch of skilled engineers/programmers and actually started producing stable firmwares that really fix the reported problems instead of introducing new ones
- do whatever it takes to make the media player section worth having & using!

And you know, the biggest irony of all? I passed on Vantage HD (and went for the C2) because I heard so many bad things about Vantage's buggy firmware!

Well, like I said this unit is NOT for everybody. I do NOT experience the issues you do. If I did then I would be upset and looking elsewhere. You have posted your feelings and I understand you want to move on. That's fine. This VP is THE backbone of my theater and I cannot imagine going back without it. I guess we agree to disagree...

I tweaked everything before and have not had to do so again. I can see why one would be upset if they were experiencing technical issues (we all have been there before) but did you at least switch out your unit for another? My unit does a lot and then some and I have not had any problems. I am using beta firmware version 2.02 but still I was good at 2.01. The main tweaking I have done was for the picture. And once I had my inputs optimally set I have not touched them. I just enjoy the show! ;)

Joerod,
I've been looking into the crystalio II when I finish my HT and buy a JVC RS-1. You mention that you tweaked everything. What equipment and software did you use? I'm trying to decide if it's worth it for me with somewhat limited experience with tweaks. If I can get past my concerns of setting it up, I'm all but ready to jump.

My biggest tweaks have come from DVE 1080i DTHEATER. I am looking forward to getting the newer HD DVD release soon. Even the THX optimizer found on most of their dvds wll help to a good degree... Trust me, PRO AVIA is nice but not truly needed... :)

That's exactly what I was hoping to hear! Thanks.

I will say it again, hopefully for the laast time, that the only people complaining about the C2 are those who have the 3800 with the media player. those of us with the c2 3300 have no such user issues and problems. Yes, they are very similar but, clearly there is a difference between the two units and the media player seems to add a degree of instability to the unit. Furthermore, it is quite common for the people who are having problems and issues to be the most vocal, guys like me who have no such issues spend more time watching amazing video and HD and less time complaining on the boards.

I am no expert in chipsets and numbers but, I can tell you with certainty that the chipset used in the C2 is different from that on the Anthem. And for those of you who claim that the D2 video board wasnt an after thought I can tell you it was with a few simple facts.

First of all the Anthem was designed as a D1 which is exactly the same thing as the D2 except the video board. As such, the power supply is underpowered to handle the new video and audio boards and the 10,000 post thread about it speaks of bugs, overheating and multiple failed units. The entire video section was an afterthought, the Gennum Chipset wasnt even created when the D1 was being built so they couldnt have planned ahead for it. I have used it along with the DVDO and C2 and there is no comparison between the 3 products. I have never owned a Lumagen product but, based on the above posts and others in these forums, it easily bests the old Lumagen stuff and we have yet to see what the new stuff will look and work like.

I am no expert in chipsets and numbers but, I can tell you with certainty that the chipset used in the C2 is different from that on the Anthem.


LOL!

With "certainty", but with no basis!

With certainty because I researched it a year ago before buying the C2.

With certainty because I have read it on the forums, but cannot find it among thousands of posts.

With certainty because received an email from Pixel Magic telling me so before I bought the C2

With certainty because now that you made me search like an animal I found the specifics...

Anthem uses a Gennum 9350 and the C2 uses the 9351 which "consumes less power and can run faster internal clock"

The 9351 is an enhanced version of the chipset and was released AFTER the 9350 was discontinued. So, now YOU know with certainty too.

The 9351 is also interchangeable with the 9350. I'm sure if Anthem has too many problems that are heat related, the upgrade could be done. How does the faster internal clock help? I can see where running cooler would be an advantage.

Don't worry Rob, you have a 9351 in the RS1.

The chip is the most expensive part of the board. Perhaps you can swap it out but, I doubt it is as simple as just soldering it in and even if that could be done, who eats the cost of buying 2 sets of chips?

It runs faster meaning it processes faster. It also runs cooler that is TWO improvements over the 9350 and it is a second generation chipset rather than the original first generation chipset.

I am fairly certain that the Radience chipset will be an even newer version than the Crystallio chipset and IT will run faster and cooler as well. Such is the nature of technology, how it is implemented with algorithyms and GUI's is paramount.

I will say it again, hopefully for the laast time, that the only people complaining about the C2 are those who have the 3800 with the media player. those of us with the c2 3300 have no such user issues and problems.
Not true. Just read PMS forums and you'll see plenty of issues raised by 3300 owners.

Yes, they are very similar but, clearly there is a difference between the two units and the media player seems to add a degree of instability to the unit.
The media player runs on a separate chip & board, and unless it is selected as an input, it does not interfere with video processing operations.

Furthermore, it is quite common for the people who are having problems and issues to be the most vocal, guys like me who have no such issues spend more time watching amazing video and HD and less time complaining on the boards.
Naturally! People want to have their problems fixed. So what's your point?

I am no expert in chipsets and numbers but, I can tell you with certainty that the chipset used in the C2 is different from that on the Anthem.
GF9350 and GF9351 are not that different. It's just a newer revision of the same design, pin-compatible and running the same command/feature set. Lumagen Radiance is based on GF9451 which is of a different generation altogether, not just a revision.

As such, the power supply is underpowered to handle the new video and audio boards and the 10,000 post thread about it speaks of bugs, overheating and multiple failed units. The entire video section was an afterthought, the Gennum Chipset wasnt even created when the D1 was being built so they couldnt have planned ahead for it.
It would be so nice to have an engineer from Anthem read this thread and give his comments on the matter.

Don't worry Rob, you have a 9351 in the RS1.

Without the proper programming that is, aka the HDMI 480i/576i "jaggies" issue! Sorry couldn't resist! :D

<off record>
For those VPS3800 owner really want to try playing Dvix/Xvid/WMV files, you can try simply rename those .avi file to a recognized filename extension such as .mpg Some files should play.
</off record>

regards,

Li On

www.pixelmagicsystems.com

I don't care what chip Lumagen is using if history repeats itself (which usually happens) the userface will be terrible. Did anyone use the Lumagen HDQs? :eek: As far as chips go in the Crystalio II and Anthem I am sure they are close but according to PMS there are a few good improvements between them. Which maybe why I won't be saying goodbye to my VP just yet. ;)

Without the proper programming that is, aka the HDMI 480i/576i "jaggies" issue! Sorry couldn't resist! :D

<off record>
For those VPS3800 owner really want to try playing Dvix/Xvid/WMV files, you can try simply rename those .avi file to a recognized filename extension such as .mpg Some files should play.
</off record>

regards,

Li On

www.pixelmagicsystems.com

Won't be a problem as long as you take it through the D2 first. :)

It would be so nice to have an engineer from Anthem read this thread and give his comments on the matter.

They are aware of this thread but they won't answer anything Beever is writing in here since he's Notanewbie, EricBee, Cigarguy under a new alias. A well known Anthem (and Lexicon) basher all across the net.

Nick at Anthem is getting tired of answerting the same old nonsense form this guy all across the internet on alot of different forums.

Go read post from Notanewbie and Cigarguy. Same old things. Same guy. He will probably get ban again since he's going (sigh... again) in the same direction concerning Anthem.

I was able to try the VP50 and Crystalio II, and the D2 is on par with those for picture quality and with the latest firmware, feature wise also. Sony Ruby, JVC HS-1 (RS-1 clone), Pioneer ELite Blu-ray BDP-HD1, Toshiba HD-XA2 HD-DVD player. The D2 was on par with the other 2 scalers.

I'm not alone, since alot of D2 users are coming form the VP50 and are all happy they made the switch. Go ask in the D2 mega-thread if you don't believe me. Alot of people made the switch form the VP50 to the D2 in that thread and are glad they did.

<off record>
Interesting! I'll give that a try. Thanks for the tip.

I would say the vp50 is definitely not on par with the crystalio II and most likely the D2 (haven't played with one yet but will soon)... :)

I own the 3800 since good half a year. I like the scaling really and look with much fun at it.

I use the Mediaplayer and with MPEG-2 HD files in .TS container it works quite good. It misses some navigation possibilitys the MB200 has (own that as well)
I stream up to 25 mbit/sec from a Thecus N5200 NAS via NFS
Using internal HD it plays up to 38 mbit/sec MPEG-2 file without a problem.
FTP to internal HD is a bit slow, but it does work with bigger files for me (Windows Commander FTP)

I owned a CRT projector, and it was really great for that. Now i own a JVC HD-1 and i kept it to be able to do a few things:
- mask the grey stripes which some transmissions have: works great
- 1080i60 to 1080p24: works not good, PMS claims they way for Gennum to provide a fix
-correct the grey scale of the HD-1: works sort of OK.

One big disapointment for me is that it does not support multi channel PCM over HDMI. This blocks the road to HD-DVD and BluRay for me.

So the only problems i have are the 1080i60 to 1080p24 and multi channel PCM.

I don't care what chip Lumagen is using if history repeats itself (which usually happens) the userface will be terrible. Did anyone use the Lumagen HDQs? :eek: As far as chips go in the Crystalio II and Anthem I am sure they are close but according to PMS there are a few good improvements between them. Which maybe why I won't be saying goodbye to my VP just yet. ;)
I didn't like the HDQ user interface, either, but in the end image quality is more important to me. The new Gennum chip which will be used in the Lumagen should be a noticable step up from the one used in the Crystalio II, especially in terms of noise reduction and detail enhancement. And the Lumagen is claimed to be a modular design, so next year we may be able to update to the very newest Gennum chip which should again outperform the current latest chip. Progress in video processing chips is very fast these days, thanks to increased competition.

We are getting to the point where picking absolute best picture Q is like splitting hairs. I doubt any new VPs in the next 2 years will be a "step up" from what is the best nowadays... Of course that's just my opinion...

That depends on just how big a difference you think HDMI 1.3 will make in the next couple of years. Seems to me there could be the potential for lots of room for improvement.

I posted in the next 2 years. HDMI 1.3 will not be mainstream for sometime. ANd lets hope there aren't any major handshake issues like there is with every HDMI spec! :eek:

We are getting to the point where picking absolute best picture Q is like splitting hairs. I doubt any new VPs in the next 2 years will be a "step up" from what is the best nowadays... Of course that's just my opinion...
Ok, let me give you a few examples of what the CII does not do and will most likely never be able to do:

(1) compression noise reduction (mosquito noise, mpeg2 block edges etc)
(2) anime cadence detection

These features may not be important for you. But many people bought an Algolith Flea/Mosquito just to get (1). So having it implemented in the Gennum chip itself is definitely an interesting feature. And people watching lots of Anime stuff certainly will appreciate cadance detection for such material. You can still watch Anime with the CII and it will not look too bad (thanks to the edge diagonal processing), but you're definitely at least losing some vertical resolution.

Other features I see coming in future generations of Gennum/Realta chips are motion compensated deinterlacing, improved cadance detection and finally usable motion compensated frame rate conversion (to get rid of stuttering camera pans and to work against motion smear in sample-and-hold type displays/projectors). We may also see totally new scaling algorithms (e.g. check what LetItWave does).

I understand what you are posting but still for me this is as good as it gets (or needs to be). My 1080i sources look perfect! My 480i sources (every once in a blue moon now) look the best I have ever seen them. And sending 1080p in and back out is seamless. Now, add that with all of the options, features (especially PiP and PoP), and picture adjustments and I just don't see the point in looking for another VP for quite sometime... But again, that's just me... :)

Lets all assume for a moment that the Lumagen wont be out for another 6 months..would you still want to wait?

Now a different scenario..It gets released in 60 days and is ridden with bugs, handshake issues and so on that takes many months to cure. Is it still worth waiting?

Finally, when all is said and done, the Lumagen works as promised and is marginally better in PQ then the C2 but, has a very unfriendly user interface. Was it still worth waiting for?

That's why the C2 was and IMO still is the best choice right now. It is available, not vaporware, works as well as any current scaler and has the best PQ of any current scaler. Dog gone expensive but, worth the price of admission if you can afford it.

I use the Mediaplayer and with MPEG-2 HD files in .TS container it works quite good. I stream up to 25 mbit/sec from a Thecus N5200 NAS via NFS
Using internal HD it plays up to 38 mbit/sec MPEG-2 file without a problem.
Infrant ReadyNAS NV+ here. Tested ~80 HD MPEG-2 transport streams via NFS. ~20 of them played without major problems, but none of them played 100% glitch-free. The rest were practically unwatchable. Transferred 30 random transport streams to internal HDD (took a while!) and about half of them were viewable.

FTP to internal HD is a bit slow, but it does work with bigger files for me (Windows Commander FTP)
Have you tried transferring the files back?

Have you tried transferring the files back?

The FTP transfer from Crystalio II to PC issue is fixed on the next firmware update, which will be out in a few hours.

regards,

Li On

www.pixelmagicsystems.com

And some say they don't care! :rolleyes:

Infrant ReadyNAS NV+ here. Tested ~80 HD MPEG-2 transport streams via NFS. ~20 of them played without major problems, but none of them played 100% glitch-free. The rest were practically unwatchable. Transferred 30 random transport streams to internal HDD (took a while!) and about half of them were viewable.

Hmm, that sure sounds much worse than my experience.
The Thecus is know to be faster than the Infrant, but .. that speed is not needed i think for 20 mbit/sec films.

Glitch free is something that is hard to reach with downloaded movies. Almost all of them have edited-out comercials. I have found that the PMS mediaplayers are not very happy on some of these files. I also own a MyHD 1.30 and that runs through much more files withouth problems.

Have you tried transferring the files back?
No, i never have.

And some say they don't care! :rolleyes:
Well, PMS has been aware of the issue for ages, so it's high time they did something about it.

The Thecus is know to be faster than the Infrant, but .. that speed is not needed i think for 20 mbit/sec films.
Indeed, NV is easily fast enough.

Glitch free is something that is hard to reach with downloaded movies. Almost all of them have edited-out comercials.
Which is why I take care to fix all my streams either with M2Repair or VRD. My PCs play those files beautifully.

I have found that the PMS mediaplayers are not very happy on some of these files.
I've got both the MB100 and MB200. Both are gathering dust and waiting for someone to buy them off of me. Granted, I haven't tried the absolutely latest firmware update, but to be honest, I've lost all faith in PMS ever getting those boxes working anywhere near satisfactory levels.

Now, I'm aware my posts in this thread sound like I'm just bashing PMS for bashing's sake. For the record, I'm generally quite happy with the 3800's scaling and video processing; like Beever wrote, it's the best of its breed on the market currently.

Firmware version 2.06 installed! :)

This new firmware is the absolute BEST so far! Doing 1080p/47.95hz has never looked better going thru my DVI input on my Ruby! :eek:

Will the new firmware accept 24sf? I haven't upgraded in a couple generations, because I have been waiting for this. For now, I have to go around the C2 to get 24sf.

It sure does!

Uploaded the new firmware, and the C2 will now accept 24sf. Unfortunately, there is intermittent jerky video when outputting 24hz, to my RS1. It is the bug that requires pausing, or fast forwarding to get rid of the problem. If I choose a different refresh rate, such as 60hz, I start getting the old Blue Screen flashes, the ones without the no signal message. This was what my unit went back to China for several weeks to eliminate. :(

Can someone explain to me what the benefit of 24sf is, or more exactly what it is?

I am located in the US and use NTSC..if that has any bearing on the response.

Can someone explain to me what the benefit of 24sf is, or more exactly what it is? Just to make sure we are all on the same page.... Is the discussion about the C II and 24fps or the C II and 24sf?

Movies are typically shot at 24 fps (frames per second). In order to show the film on a 60 hz refresh rate display, the film is processed (telecined - first frame repeated 3 times and second frame 2 times and so on for each successive pair of frames). On receipt by the display, a "reverse telecine" (3/2 pull down) is done to get the film back to its original state. I'm told, this can cause problems with judder, particularly for folks with a 50hz standard. If the set could take the original format of 24 fps and display it at a multiple of 24, for example, 48 or 72 fps, then there should be no judder. (See here for details: Secrets of Home Theater: Interlacing and Deinterlacing Explained (http://www.hometheaterhifi.com/volume_7_4/dvd-benchmark-part-5-progressive-10-2000.html) )

On the other hand, 24sf is 24 "segmented frame." This is a beast developed in the old days to allow content shot in progressive mode to be broadcasted and displayed as an interlaced format without having to replace all of the studio equipment and TVs in the land with progressive scan versions.

Personally, I do not know for sure which folks are referring to above, but I thought 24fps.

So, is this 24 beneficial if your display is 60 hz? I thought all US displays were 60hz so what benefit can one expect by using 24fps..if there is such a setting on the C2?

Sorry, I am not to savvy on this, do the HD players output 24hz, or 24sf?

Anyway, they output 24something :) and this leaves me with a predicament. Either go straight to my projector, and loose the ability to adjust saturation, which it needs, or go through the C2, and keep pausing the movie, a dozen or more times to get it to lock. The other alternative is to turn off 24 from the player.

Anyone know if Pixel Magic is coming out with a C3, with a new chip that works?

Hi Phil,
How badly does the RS1 need that saturation adjustment??

Hi Phil

I have the Sony/ Pioneer. Going direct I just do not see any improvement in PQ. As far as the motion thing I think that is subjective just like some see rainbows with 1 chip DLP.
At this stage of the game I see 24 complicating things, no one seams to be doing it correctly. I hope in time it not only becomes a seamless feature but becomes the norm and 60 becomes a thing of the past. I think its to early in the game at this point.

Hi Alan, I agree, it is one of those things where you look and say, is there a difference, or am I just imagining it?? If there is a difference, it is very subtle. I may just end up turning 24 off.

Mark, the saturation thing is a bit more than subtle on the RS1. It is small enough that it could be a matter of taste, whether you like the more saturated colors or not. Personally, I cut the saturation back on the C2, about 15 notches, and flesh tones look better to me. I think it is the flesh tones where it is most obvious to me, since they look the most unnatural with too much color.

Hi Phil

I have the Sony/ Pioneer. Going direct I just do not see any improvement in PQ. As far as the motion thing I think that is subjective just like some see rainbows with 1 chip DLP.
At this stage of the game I see 24 complicating things, no one seams to be doing it correctly. I hope in time it not only becomes a seamless feature but becomes the norm and 60 becomes a thing of the past. I think its to early in the game at this point.

I think this is exactly right and a point that should be reiterated. 3:2 telecine judder is a subtle motion artifact and the whole issue is being complicated by the fact that 24p implementations in both the source and display devices often have problems. A/B comparisons between 60p and 24p should therefore be taken with a grain of salt.

This sort of behaviour by a manufacturer really makes my blood boil. Pixel Magic Systems went and deleted practically all threads on their forum discussing the lack of the promised media player functionality, but left this one:

PMS, should we infer from the deletion of the few mediaplayer grievance threads that there will be no more discussion/support of the mediaplayer?

As we mentioned before that there will be no further file formats supported in the 3800 internal media player. We shall not comment this topic further. Technical support on the currently supported formats will be continously provided of course. Thank you for your attention. Thread closed.

So, in other words: "We will delete all posts complaining about us going back on our promises and cheating our customers, thus re-writing history and denying potential new customers from finding out the truth from reading our forums. Thank you for your money. Now piss off."

How can a company producing such high-end products behave like this? The mind boggles.

This sort of behaviour by a manufacturer really makes my blood boil. Pixel Magic Systems went and deleted practically all threads on their forum discussing the lack of the promised media player functionality, but left this one:


So, in other words: "We will delete all posts complaining about us going back on our promises and cheating our customers, thus re-writing history and denying potential new customers from finding out the truth from reading our forums. Thank you for your money. Now piss off."

How can a company producing such high-end products behave like this? The mind boggles.

Disgusting behaviour. When I bought the CII 3800 (June 2006) I was promised a fully functional unit including the mediaplayer in 2 months time. It is still not fully functional and the mediaplayer is officially declared dead.

They seem to have enough time to delete threads, while I am still on FW 1.24 because they changed something in later FW's that messes up audio over HDMI in combination with my Pioneer amp.Look at this thread to see how long it takes to just get a response on a problem http://www.pixelmagicforum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=2130

I see a class action lawsuit re the 3800 in Pixel Magic's future...

Wait til you guys get a load of this.

I checked PMS' forum a minute ago for new announcements and interesting new posts. There was a post by someone asking about the 3800's Firewire connections and their possible usage. I wanted to reply by saying I'd like to use them to hook my D-VHS deck to C2 - but was told by the board that I don't have posting priviledges for such an operation. I can no longer access PMs, either, or make new threads. In other words, PMS has forbidden me from posting on their boards, but haven't deleted my user account.

I guess it's possible this is caused by a glitch in the system, but somehow I doubt it. PMS, do you actually think you can silence the critics this way? Shame on you.

I'm going to be hooking up a new Samsung BD-P1200 blu-ray player to my CII in a couple of weeks (I'm going format agnostic as well).

I still will have my CII outputing 1080p60 to my HP DLP.

My question is has any compared the diffference from any of the blu-ray players that can output BOTH 1080p24 and 1080p60 of 1080p24->CII->1080p60 vs. 1080p60->CII->1080p60??

Can the CII even accept 1080p24 reliably and produce 1080p60 on output? I've heard some comments about the CII having a problem maintaining a frame lock with the source at 1080p24?

Thanks guys!

My unit accepts 1080p/24 and then sends out 1080p/60 like a champ. I also use it to send out 1080p/48 to my DVI input on my Ruby which works well. I am using firmware version 2.06... :)

My unit accepts 1080p/24 and then sends out 1080p/60 like a champ. I also use it to send out 1080p/48 to my DVI input on my Ruby which works well. I am using firmware version 2.06... :)

Thanks Joe. I'm running 2.06 as well.

I take it you do not see any frame studder or loss of HDMI lock?
Also -- is there a difference in image in your opinion of converting 1080p24 to 1080p60 vs. sending 1080p60 direct to the CII?

If your D-VHS deck is a JVC, the firewire is an input only and cannot be used to output video. In this case, you've been banned from the PMS forum for nothing!
Well, they obviously didn't ban me for firewire related arguments. Funniest thing is that they apparently banned me thanks to my comments here on AVS, and not for anything I wrote on their forum. So who's the little snitch? :D

Thanks for the info on JVC; had no idea it's input only. Heck, who reads those manuals anyway? :)

Bumpity bump for attention. Caveat emptor, folks.

Is anyone besides Bob Sorel and me using a C II with the JVC-RS1? If so, I'd love to compare current settings.

Harry

I am. Just about the only thing I am doing currently, is dropping the saturation to -15.

Thanks Joe. I'm running 2.06 as well.

I take it you do not see any frame studder or loss of HDMI lock?
Also -- is there a difference in image in your opinion of converting 1080p24 to 1080p60 vs. sending 1080p60 direct to the CII?

I am running 2.06 as well, and get both frame studder, and loss of HDMI lock, when the C2 goes from 24-60.

I have pretty much given up on sending 24 to the C2, or outputting 24 from it. Looks like I will have to wait for another scaler, before having those capabilities.

I don't know how Joe got a miracle problem free C2?? Does his unit walk on water too? ;)

I am running 2.06 as well, and get both frame studder, and loss of HDMI lock, when the C2 goes from 24-60.

I have pretty much given up on sending 24 to the C2, or outputting 24 from it. Looks like I will have to wait for another scaler, before having those capabilities.

I don't know how Joe got a miracle problem free C2?? Does his unit walk on water too? ;)

Wow, I would be extremely disappointed if I had a C2 that couldn't do the 1080p/24 with my RS1. I don't understand why these VP's can't get this right. :confused:

If your D-VHS deck is a JVC, the firewire is an input only and cannot be used to output video. In this case, you've been banned from the PMS forum for nothing!


If you own a Mits D-VHS, I believe you can also output through the firewire.

:confused:

I have output video via JVC 5u and 30k firewire many times, to my Mitsubishi 9" CRT and many other devices like PC's and etc., this is including playback of D-Theater tapes in that also, the JVC's output video just fine via firewire ;)

-Gary

I have also used it to do my DTHEATER viewing! :eek:

:confused:

I have output video via JVC 5u and 30k firewire many times, to my Mitsubishi 9" CRT and many other devices like PC's and etc., this is including playback of D-Theater tapes in that also, the JVC's output video just fine via firewire ;)

-Gary


Thanks for the heads up guys!

I have been unsuccessful in getting any video from the 5U's firewire into a PC. I was told by a JVC Rep that the 5U has a one way i link connection for recording purposes only.

Since you and Joerod are able to pass video, it looks like I received some bad information from JVC's customer service. I suppose I need to look into this feature again.

PMS has invented the perfect way to solve and prevent problems, just scrap the whole thing.

IEEE 1394 Firewire port of Crystalio II will not be used.

David Wong
Pixel Magic Systems Ltd.


mediaplayer status= dead
firewire ports status= dead

Whats next?

PMS has invented the perfect way to solve and prevent problems, just scrap the whole thing.



mediaplayer status= dead
firewire ports status= dead

Whats next?
A clear case for getting your money back if you want to, I'd say. That brings to mind the question of how long you should have to wait before instigating a return if features listed on a public brochure are not implemented. My gut feeling is anytime, until such time as it's publicly announced that certain features that were promised will NOT be implemented.

At this point I think you'd have to act quickly, as keeping the unit any longer implies that you accept the new limitations. So, in a way, PMS have done their users a favour by telling them that they will NEVER get one or more of the promised features - end of story.

I wonder if they have written to each and every one of their affected customers though? If they are relying on Forums like this one to promulgate the information, anyone who hasn't seen or visited the relevant Forums could be excused for demanding a full refund anytime in the future. PMS take note!

....I don't know how Joe got a miracle problem free C2?? Does his unit walk on water too? ;)
Oh yes, certainly...and it flies too! :) .

Hey guys. A little perspective please. There do seem to be some very vocal unhappy owners of the CII but there are a lot of us who are really happy with it. It's hard to know what percentage of users are having problems but my sense is that there are not that many. And to be fair, PMS have been pretty responsive to users' complaints and needs. I guess they have not solved all the problems but they seem to be trying.

Is it perfect? No. PMS have been slow to develop the media player for those of us who purchased the 3800 model but it does work. There have been some odd problems with picture breakup (I experienced them but not to the extent that some others seem to have) but PMS pretty quickly released a FW upgrade that was more stable. I haven't seen the vertical picture breakup since I installed the fixed FW although some others still seem to have some problems in this regard.

Re Firewire: So they put a port on the unit but I don't think that was the main attractiion in the first place and they never advertised it that way either. If someone purchased the unit specifically to use with firewire they should have researched it before putting out the money. I had asked questions about it a long time ago and PMS was forthcoming in saying that they put the firewire port in with a view to develop it in the future but they never made any promises about when they would do this. I was interested at the time because I had a crappy STB that would not pass through signals via HDMI. I was investigating if I could get around this using firewire. In the end I got an HD TIVO to solve that problem but I don't hold a grudge against PMS.

My personal opinion is that there is not a better VP out there at the moment in terms of picture quality, GUI, or feature set. They built a nice archetecture around the Gennum chip.

I don't want to minimize the frustration of those who have not had a good experience with the CII. I know how irritating it can be when you have high expectations and then find out your purchase will not do what you hoped it would. I think probably the best thing to do in that case, if you feel you cannot get any farther with PMS tech support, is to request to return the unit and get your money back. I'd be surprised if PMS were not responsive in this regard.

I have been one of the earlier buyers of the 3800 and I can understand that it takes some time to get features implemented and bugs removed. Its almost a year now and what really starts to annoy me is that they seem to have given up on the CII.
Communication with the customers has been slowing down, promised features are getting scrapped. And instead of addressing this they now start to delete postings (I posted the same thing about the scrapped features on the PMS forum. Its gone now)

To put this in perspective:It doesnt matter if you have problems *now* or not, if they are cutting back support on the CII it will impact *everyone* who owns a CII

And yes, I am going to request a refund. I didnt pay this amount of $$ for less then a year of support

Why is my unit a miracle machine? It does everything I want it to. Great deinterlacing, great picture adjustments, HDMI switching (flawless), PoP/PiP, great userface, easy firmware upgrading, input and output options galore, and of course hands down the best picture Q. Maybe I don't try and do more than the average high end user. Maybe I am boring in that regard. Have fun making jokes about my posts but I am the one who is enjoying a perfect crystalio II. And according to you it is the only one that is perfect! Why does it seem it is always the same 3 or 4 people complaining about PMS? Do us a favor and either SELL your unit or try and RETURN it...

Why is my unit a miracle machine? It does everything I want it to. Great deinterlacing, great picture adjustments, HDMI switching (flawless), PoP/PiP, great userface, easy firmware upgrading, input and output options galore, and of course hands down the best picture Q. Maybe I don't try and do more than the average high end user. Maybe I am boring in that regard. Have fun making jokes about my posts but I am the one who is enjoying a perfect crystalio II. And according to you it is the only one that is perfect! Why does it seem it is always the same 3 or 4 people complaining about PMS? Do us a favor and either SELL your unit or try and RETURN it...

yes I agree, people can piss and moan all day about fringe extras and etc., but if the scaler delivers the real goods that are important then I would be happy, I have no doubt that PMS does in that department Joe

-Gary

I have been one of the earlier buyers of the 3800 and I can understand that it takes some time to get features implemented and bugs removed. Its almost a year now and what really starts to annoy me is that they seem to have given up on the CII.
Communication with the customers has been slowing down, promised features are getting scrapped. And instead of addressing this they now start to delete postings (I posted the same thing about the scrapped features on the PMS forum. Its gone now)

To put this in perspective:It doesnt matter if you have problems *now* or not, if they are cutting back support on the CII it will impact *everyone* who owns a CII

And yes, I am going to request a refund. I didnt pay this amount of $$ for less then a year of support

Well that is an interesting point that you sense PMS are not being as responsive to users as previously. I can't really say. I've been traveling for a while and so not paying much attention. I did check quickly over at the PMS site recently and I noticed that they put out a new FW just in the last week or so. I haven't had the chance to download it but at least they are still working on improvements or bug fixes.

In any case, since you are so unhappy it seems the right move to return your unit. Maybe when the Radiance comes out it will suit your needs better than the CII.

yes I agree, people can piss and moan all day about fringe extras and etc., but if the scaler delivers the real goods that are important then I would be happy, I have no doubt that PMS does in that department Joe

-Gary

So I "piss and moan about fringe extras"? I paid $1400 USD (700 GBP) for an 3800 over the 3300 to get this:
1 HD-SDI
2 Precision clock
3 Media player
4 Firewire inputs

The Media player is a joke in its current state and declared dead by PMS. The firewire ports are declared dead by PMS. Lets see what happens when more people are actually using the HD-SDI ports

And another "fringe extra" is dead too:
It's a hardware limitation. The Crystalio II does not support multi-channels LPCM over HDMI.

Pixel Magic Support.

This is has been in the HDMI specs since version 1.0 and PMS gives this statement at March 31 2007
Now go ahead and connect your Bluray or HDdvd player to your CII to take advantage of the advanced lipsync functions or HDMI switching. Guess not if you want to use the new audio formats over HDMI.

And yes the picture is great. But that still doesnt make the other problems go away.

I can be added to the list of owning a perfect C2 3300. I have no problems whatsoever in any department. Perfect scaling, no picture break up, flawless HDMI switching, IR works great, PQ outstanding. Don't know what else to say but, perhaps you got a lemon, perhaps I got lucky but, I am very happy with mine.

After reading this forum (perhaps too much) about what constitutes a good picture I started noticing several artifacts while watching movies in my Home Theater downstairs. I thought I would just deal with them until I got High-Definition cable upstairs (where I have an HDCP-compliant 37" LCD TV.) I have no HD sources in my Home Theater; only SD cable, Laserdisc, and SD DVD. My DVD player, a Denon 1600, has been modified by Gary to output via SDI. My projector is an older Runco CL-700 (first-generation HD DLP, or as I like to call it "Graychip 1"). It has no digital inputs.

In short, once I saw HD (CSI, in particular) I knew EXACTLY what I was missing downstairs.

As you know AVS was having a March special on scalers. There was a pre-buy special on the Lumagen Radiance XD and promotional pricing on the Pixel Magic Crystalio II. Again, as you all know the Radiance uses a newer Gennum chip than the Crystalio, and is cheaper. On the other hand, the Crystalio is available now, and works with my current hardware better. Choosing between the two was easy; the Radiance XD doesn't have an SDI input nor an analog output built in. The Crystalio has both. I know you can get optional modules for the Lumagen, but I wanted as few dongles as possible in the signal path. Also, the converters would have narrowed the price gap. I called Runco to see if my CL-700 would accept 720p. They said it would, using the YCbCr colorspace.

My Experience:
Well, I don't know where to start. The unit shipped from Hong Kong, and arrived more quickly than if it had come from Chicago! I had to move my shelves in the rack around to make room for it (royal pain). I also had to get RCA-to-BNC adapters. In the long run I will have my cables replaced/re-terminated.

I got the unit connected, feeding it my three sources; DVD via SDI from a Denon 1600 (audio over optical), Laserdisc via S-Video from a Pioneer Elite CLD-99 (audio over digital RCA and analog RCA. The AC-3 output goes directly to my AVR-5700, as it is the only device I have that can decode it.), and SD cable via composite from a Panasonic VCR (analog audio over RCA). Once I powered it up my projector said "unsupported format". Imagine my horror, thinking my projector is too old to work with the scaler. Fortunately, one of the nice things about the C2 is the LCD screen and control buttons on the front of the unit. I changed the colorspace from RGB to YCbCr, the primary output from HDMI1 to component and the resolution from 480p to 720p and bingo! I had an image. Turns out the unit shipped with firmware 2.02.

There are SO many settings in the unit and I haven't had time to play with more than 20% of them. So far, I have the unit using the Faroudja deinterlacer and outputting 720p @ 59.94 Hz.

First problem: Seems like the toslink connection isn't working. It works if I bypass my VP. I'll verify with my Laserdisc player later.

Second problem: Since my father-in-law was over he came down to see what I was doing. I had just put in The Bourne Identity. The special edition has an alternate beginning. I don't know what that was shot in, but the picture is horrid. Tons of artifacts and and aspect ratio of 3:1 or so (I'll measure later). I couldn't stand to watch it before I had the processor, so this would be my acid test.
Well, the Crystalio made things better, but this footage still sucked. Garbage in, garbage out, they say. By now my dad was really into the movie, so instead of more tweaking we just sat and watched. The picture quality was great. I saw no artifacts (well, OK, a little ringing, but easily just 10% of what I saw without the external scaler.) Unfortunately I had a ton of audio dropouts! Eventually I just bypassed the Crystalio.

We finished the movie and retired for the night.

I got to play with it later on that week, re-routing the cables, and I haven't had an audio dropout since. I'm thinking it might have been a loose/bad cable. Anyway, here's the breakdown of my observation by source.

Standard-definition cable:
I used to hate watching Standard-Definition cable in the theater because of the crappy quality (Yes, I was aware of the pitfalls of trying to watch SD quality on a theater-sized screen, but I had the connections down there anyway.) Well, after installing the Crystalio all I can say is wow! It doesn't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear, but SDTV is definitely watchable now. It look like a large SD set, not a poorly scaled up image.

Laserdisc:
My CLD-99 purportedly has a good 3D comb filter, so I've only tried connecting via S-video. I will try composite later to see if the Crystalio's comb filter is better. I haven't even watched a full movie yet, but here are my observations based on a few sides.

Heat: The opening scene with Robert DeNiro descending the escalator used to be so fuzzy I hated it. Now it's great. (This is one of the few laserdiscs I own encoded in AC-3. I sent the RF straight to my AVR and didn't notice any lip-sync issues.) I watched until the first robbery scene. I noticed a little moiré in the tow trucks grille, but otherwise I was quite pleased with the picture. I can enjoy my Laserdisc collection again.

The Fugitive: Again, nice, smooth colors and no video noise (at least on side one, which is CAV.) It's obviously not a DVD, but the picture quality is much, much better than before.

Five Fingers: This 1952 spy thriller set in WWII was filmed in black and white. It's a good film and I often show it to guests. The grays? were good and I noticed no rainbows (which doesn't have to do with the scaler of course. I just threw that in.) The other cool thing is I set my Crystalio to always format the output to 16:9; no more toggling of stretch modes in the projector for this movie since it was shot in 4:3.

DVD:
This is what I've waited for. When I finished my home theater the existing DVD player I had was a $79 Costco unit. Not to knock the player, but you get what you pay for. After reading on AVS forum for a while I determined a scaler + SDI was for me. I have an extensive library of DVD's, and won't dump them for HD-DVD or Blu-Ray (I kept my laserdiscs, after all.) Anyway, I got an SDI-modded Denon 1600, which has Faroudja deinterlacing built in. I noticed an improvement in PQ right away, but could still see artifacts (some due to the scaling capabilities of my 2002-era projector. With the Crystalio in the chain things are as good as they are going to get for a while.

The Bourne Identity: This is the only movie I've watched all the way through. I didn't see a single artifact! (Like I mentioned earlier, the modified beginning and ending were horrible, but the theatrical-release parts were great.) After I re-cabled the C2 I watched all the scenes that had audio dropouts before and they played just fine through the scaler.

Star Wars - Episode III: I usually play the first five minutes of this when I demo the home theater, so I'm used to it. It is a high-quality "transfer" and looks good on anything. It looked better with the C2.

The Tuskegee Airmen: This PBS special I figured was shot in video, so I used it to test the video deinterlacing. Strangely, the C2 locked on a 3:2 pulldown mode. Also strange; I got white flashes during scene cuts. I looked at the front panel of the C2, and it lost film mode intermittently. I'll do more research here. The PQ was great, however.

Miami Vice - Original Television Series: Again, I was looking for video performance, but the C2 locked on 3:2 pulldown. No flashes of white between scene cuts this time. Again, nice PQ, noticeably better than before. The C2 didn't improve the acting, but I still love this series.

Star Trek - Original Television Series: Once again, I was looking for video performance, but the C2 locked on 3:2 pulldown. No flashes of white between scene cuts this time. Again, nice PQ, noticeably better than before. (Am I sounding like a broken record yet?)

Prince: Live in Las Vegas: Currently queued up in the player. THIS should be video-sourced. Update soon. If this shows 3:2 pulldown I'll have to check to see if the C2 is set to be forced into film-mode. Update I watched a couple of songs. It stayed in video mode. Looks pretty good. My Runco does Picture-by-Picture so I displayed the component (Crystalio) and S-video (1600) side by side. Wow, what a difference. Tons of jaggies through s-video (using the projector's deinterlacer.) I also played with using the Gennum vs. Faroudja deinterlacer in the C2. For this source the Faroudja was much better. I suspect I'll be playing with menu options for many months to come. What fun!

Conclusion:
I've probably watched only 5 hours with the Crystalio II, but I understand why people rave about it. Most users have projectors with digital inputs and HD sources. I don't. I will, just not for a year or so. Even with my older HD1-based projector I feel like I've gotten my money's worth out of the scaler. Like far too many first-time Home Theater people, I got a 92" screen and wasn't happy with the quality of my existing sources blown up that large. (Of course, people starting now can get 1080p sources to go with their 1080p displays and skip all this aggravation.) The C2 allows me to enjoy all I have now, knowing that as I upgrade components in my home theater, my scaler can keep pace. I'll have to double-check that optical connection, but nice work, Pixel Magic.

Addendum: I feel sorry for the 3800 owners out there; is seems like PMS left you all hanging. I thank you for telling your stories. I just wanted to tell what it's like to add a scaler to a theater with older equipment.
- Marc

Nice user review! Very thorough... What movie are you watching tonite? :)

What movie are you watching tonite? :)

The Bourne Supremacy, if we can get the kids in bed soon enough.

Thanks for the kind words.

The Media player is a joke in its current state and declared dead by PMS.


What do you mean that the media player is declared dead by PMS?

What do you mean that the media player is declared dead by PMS?
That's not what they said; they said they wouldn't be adding support for any additional content formats, but would continue to support the existing ones.

That's not what they said; they said they wouldn't be adding support for any additional content formats, but would continue to support the existing ones.

I still haven't used my MP much. As I recall it didn't support some of the standard formats that you download from the net (.avi, etc) but it does support the standard format in which people rip DVDs. Is that about right?

[i]Addendum: I feel sorry for the 3800 owners out there; is seems like PMS left you all hanging. I thank you for telling your stories. I just wanted to tell what it's like to add a scaler to a theater with older equipment.

Well I don't feel sorry for myself! :) I knew I was gambling when I got the 3800 but I had the cash. I wasn't sure about the MP or if I could use the HDSDI but I thought it was worth the risk. I still think the MP might come in handy but I just haven't had the time to play with it much yet. And the MP does work. I guess it's just that it doesn't support all the video formats that people would like. The idea of having my collection of DVDs on disc is nice and also I think the PQ playing directly off the CII internal disc is better than going through all the additional transmission mechanisms when you use a DVD.

My attraction to HDSDI was/is that I had such a great experience with SDI on my SD DVD player that I thought HDSDI would be great for HD content. Not only might it give better PQ but it would also get around all the crap with HDCP. Not that I really care about pirating HD content just that there are so many handshaking issues, etc with HDMI/HDCP. I still think that HDSDI might be very nice but I'm waiting to see how the HDSDI mod market develops. I would need that for the HD STB.

What do you mean that the media player is declared dead by PMS?

This is what PMS has to say about it

As we mentioned before that there will be no further file formats supported in the 3800 internal media player. We shall not comment this topic further. Technical support on the currently supported formats will be continously provided of course. Thank you for your attention.


It took them almost a year to get to this point. Since firmware 1.30 there hasnt been any development done on the MP anyways so I dont see any signs that they are going to put more effort in it. And there are more then enough problems with it:The interface is crap. Try fast forwarding and it desyncs audio or freezes up. Try a few resolution changes and it freezes the whole C2. 2 out of 3 USB disks(all different brands) are not recognized when connected. I have several .TS files that freeze the C2 when playing and I have to do a powercycle to get the C2 working again. etc etc

On the PMS forum (http://www.pixelmagicforum.com/forum/showpost.php?p=17545&postcount=30) David Wong (engineer from PMS ?) explains something on the mediaplayer:
On 3800, We use processing power of EM8620, SoC for media playback, to controll all video chips, Input/Processing/Output. And all add-on software feature like DynamicVP also drain resource from EM8620. Any unexpected behaviour of HDMI handshake may slow down media playback.

It also implies:
3800 is NOT 3300 + MediaBox, as some EM8620 resource are used for scaler feature. And from development point of view, they are managed by different team of software engineers. The code of 3800 internal player and MediaBox are heavliy forked. Like the case of Apple Safari web browser and KDE's Konqueror. It is very hard to back port code from other branch.

David Wong
Pixel Magic Systems Ltd.

Hello,

ANyone has problems with sdi dvd player also componenet dvd player playing star wars (2.35 film sd) goes into 3800 to rs-1 and isco III , it suppose to fill up the screen 2.35 stewart (120x51 inch) but what I get is thick black bars on top and bottom and the picture look squeeze (person look short chubby).

the set up in crystalio is screen size 2.35 res. 1080p60 . Does this video processor support 2.35 cih??

Crystalio forum ,signup and I still can't post there for support...under the same user name.....Go figure.

Screen shape should be "2.35:1" and Aspect Ratio should be "16:9 LetterBox 2.35:1"
It should work with no problems.

On the PMS forum (http://www.pixelmagicforum.com/forum/showpost.php?p=17545&postcount=30) David Wong (engineer from PMS ?) explains something on the mediaplayer:

That explains why a VPS3300 also has a EM8620 onboard.

Screen shape should be "2.35:1" and Aspect Ratio should be "16:9 LetterBox 2.35:1"
It should work with no problems.

I did try that but no luck, I also upgrade the firmware to 2.06 still have the same problem. I try to e-mail their support at Hongkong yesterday but no one reponse yet :(

If you sure selected "2.35:1" for Output->Screen Shape, and "2.35:1" for Image->Aspect Ratio and didn't use any zoom or crop control, then an anamorphic source should fill a 2.35:1 screen.

On the other hand, the problem maybe from the DVD player, please make sure in the DVD player the TV Type is at 16x9, instead of 4:3/Pan&Scan.

Please try a 1.85:1 or a full 16x9 1.78:1 DVD, and set Crystalio II Image->Aspect Ratio to the normal 16x9, and check if the image is correctly in normal 16x9 with left/right pillarbox on the 2.35:1 screen.

regards,

Li On

If you sure selected "2.35:1" for Output->Screen Shape, and "2.35:1" for Image->Aspect Ratio and didn't use any zoom or crop control, then an anamorphic source should fill a 2.35:1 screen.

On the other hand, the problem maybe from the DVD player, please make sure in the DVD player the TV Type is at 16x9, instead of 4:3/Pan&Scan.

Please try a 1.85:1 or a full 16x9 1.78:1 DVD, and set Crystalio II Image->Aspect Ratio to the normal 16x9, and check if the image is correctly in normal 16x9 with left/right pillarbox on the 2.35:1 screen.

regards,

Li On

Thank's for the response , the dvd player is set for 16x9,and in crystalio 3800 output 2.35 , screen size 2.35 I don't use zoom and crop. Still not filling up the screen , now I use the broken arrow movie (2.35 sd). I do have the black bar top and bottom ...thick one and it make the person short and chubby.Also try using the 1.85 it's almost the same bars on top and bottom. I also have calibrator isf certify coming to my home, and he can't fix it. I think he also pixel magic dealer . But I bought at av science.

It took them almost a year to get to this point. Since firmware 1.30 there hasnt been any development done on the MP anyways so I dont see any signs that they are going to put more effort in it. And there are more then enough problems with it: The interface is crap. Try fast forwarding and it desyncs audio or freezes up. Try a few resolution changes and it freezes the whole C2. 2 out of 3 USB disks(all different brands) are not recognized when connected. I have several .TS files that freeze the C2 when playing and I have to do a powercycle to get the C2 working again. etc etc
You should note that PMS is banning users from posting on their forum based on what they (users, not PMS) write about C2 on other forums. Don't be surprised if that happens to you, too. Having said that, I share your pain wrt C2. I feel the return of the dreaded car analogy!

So, you're looking for a nice Cabriolet, suitable for your warm, dry summers. It's your second car, a rare luxury, but you've decided to treat yourself. You find a nice model, which might suit you perfectly. The dealer points out that for some extra $$$ you get a model which has a super-fast folding hard top ("in case you're on the road that one day of the year when it rains") and a superb audio system for those long drives. You take the plunge, despite the clearly higher price.

Then the car is delivered to you. You take a few short spins around the hood, and it handles like a dream. You praise the car to the dealer and your buddies.

The next day you're off to work. It's a two-hour drive, so you decide to listen to some music. To your horror, you find that in stead of the promised multi-speaker sound system, there's an ancient 8-track player and a single tinny speaker in the console. Then the skies open up and you pull over, fiercely stabbing the button which is supposed to bring the hard top up, but nothing happens. You climb out and take a peek in the hard top compartment, and find that its empty.

You're off to see the dealer. Fuming with anger, you declare your grievances. Other salespersons and customers join in the conversation, and point out that "the car is very nice, and handles perfectly". That's not the bloody point, you try to tell them. "I paid extra for those features you promised, and they're not there!", you say. The salesperson assumes a condescending tone and explains patiently, like to a child, that the 8-track works perfectly and you get sound out of it. "Missing hard top", the salesperson continues, "... well, we figured you would never need it anyway and we couldn't get the bugger to work properly in the first place, so we left it out."

Then the salesperson slaps you with a restraining order, prohibiting you from entering the dealership or talking to their customers.

And then your buddies tell you to stop complaining and take it up the backside like a man.

I think your last statement sums it up pretty well... ;)

I think your last statement sums it up pretty well... ;)
So, Joe, in a situation described in the story, you'd just unzip and take it up the bum? Oh, hang on, you already have, right? ;) (<- the obligatory get out of jail free card)

I don't consider taking it that way and here's why. I use my crystalio II in more ways than the average consumer and I just don't have any problems you or others do. I use HDMI input 1 for HD DVD, 2 for Blu ray, 3 is used for either DTHEATER or XBOX 360 ELITE (depending on what I have my Onkyo TX1000 HDMI out set for) and 4 is used for a DirecTv HR20-100 BLACK unit. Then I use my component HD 1 input for a DirecTV HR20-700s and component HD 2 with my DirecTV HR10-250 TIVO (which has all of my adult material recorded)... I use the HDMI OUT 1 for my Sony Ruby, 2 for either my Wife's plasma in her bar or for another location. I also have the component OUT sent to my Ruby as well. I have it "wired" up like this and also use PiP and PoP quite frequently. I do not experience any issues at all! I would say I get pretty good use out of my crystalio II. Changing inputs is seamless. The picture is stunning on any and all inputs especially after I just used HD DVD DVE to calibrate for an even better picture. :eek: So if you still think I am taking it somewhere you may be right. I am taking it in my theater with a BIG smile on my face. Thanks to my one and only perfect crystalio II that is a miracle, walks on water and flies too! :D

Fair enough, Joe. We are obviously looking for different things in our scalers, is all. Glad to hear you're enjoying yours! :)

Thanks! :)

I too have no problems with my unit and Ihave never taken it from the rear either. None of my posts have ever been deleted from the C2 website, so maybe its just you.

I have no more worries, i have sold mine. Will be picked up monday.

I too have no problems with my unit and Ihave never taken it from the rear either. None of my posts have ever been deleted from the C2 website, so maybe its just you.

You better hope you will never get any problems, read the copied thread and its not about missing features. Its about the fact that it takes them 4 months to respond to a legitimate problem caused by their own design faults/decisions. My unit is now RMA and god knows when its going to be back.
You are happy now, just wait till they decide to change something that affects your particular hardware version(without mentioning one word about it)

If you dont want to read the whole mess, just go to the last answer form PMS


This is taken from the PMS forum, cleaned away the clutter

December 12
Flip
I havent seen an explanation yet from PMS but they changed something in the audio handling of the CII that really messes up my Pioneer VSX-AX2AV-S receiver. I had no problems with the previous firmwares but now I either have no sound or sometimes blurbs of sound. This is through hdmi to the receiver. Switching input sources a few times will produce this, sometimes just switching resolution will also trigger this behaviour. I can see the hdmi handshake happen but no sound after the handshake is finished.

Sometimes I can get rid of it by powercycling the receiver but most times I need to unplug the CII to get it working again.

This really is a showstopper and needs to be fixed

December 14
PMS
For the HDMI audio issue, does it occur on all 4 Input ports?

While viewing the HDMI Input, please bring up the "info" pop-up with the remote "OK" button. Please check if there is a "DVI label at the end of the Input source info. If so please try to change some config on the HDMI source to enable embedded audio link.

Pixel Magic Support.

December 14
Flip
The problem is not limited to the inputs, I have the same problem when switching resolutions inside the Mediaplayer. This is less frequent but I can reproduce it by rapidly changing resolution and somewhere between 2-5 times I lose my audio output from the CII...

December 23
Flip
I'm still having problems with firmware 2.00. It is less frequent now but switching inputs/resolution still causes audio over hdmi to quit working.

Anybody else tried the new firmware?

January 9
Flip
Bump

Any news on this?

January 11
PMS
Sorry, our engineer are at the CES so update will be a bit slow during the time.

Maybe we can add an internal audio "test" mode in a firmware update so we can better understand the issue.

Pixel Magic Support.

January 11
Flip
If that would help, I can run the firmware because I can reliably cause the audio over hdmi to stop working by switching inputs.

February 18
Flip
Still having the same exact issues with firmware 2.01

Is this going to be fixed?

February 27
Flip
I am getting a bit pissed about this:

AUDIO OVER HDMI IS ****ED. I LOOSE AUDIO OVER HDMI REGULARLY. I CAN REPRODUCE THE PROBLEM BY QUICKLY SWITCHING INPUTS OR RESOLUTIONS (ALSO IN THE MEDIAPLAYER)

Why is there *STILL* no response from PMS, This has been going on since DECEMBER.

February 28
PMS
Hi Flip,

You unit may have some hardware issue. Please email to info@pixelmagicsystems.com to arrange RMA.

Pixel Magic Support.

February 28
Flip
If you think that is the case, I will try that.

(cant really see how this is hardware related, earlier firmwares didnt show this problem)

March 1
PMS
Sorry, missed that.

Please export all your current Crystalio II setting. Download the 1.24 firmware from ftp.crystalio.com under C2 folder. Load the firmware and check if that solve your issue. If you can confirm the difference is in the firmware change, we can have a better idea on the fix.

Thanks in advance.

Pixel Magic Support.

March 2
Flip
Loaded firmware 1.24 and audio over hdmi keeps working, even with quick input/resolution changes. (I have only tested it for 30 minutes, but the things i tried would have messed up the audio with FW 2.01 for sure)

March 3
Flip
Still no problems with audio over hdmi with FW 1.24

March 6
PMS
Thanks for the feedback. We will look into the issue.

Pixel Magic Support.

March 7
Flip
When will this be resolved? FW 1.24 has its own problems that are not acceptable.

March 25
Flip
And another 10 days without a word of PMS, nice going. This kind of customer
service makes choosing my next VP so much easier.

March 30
Flip
And another week without a word.

March 31
PMS
Please try the 2.02 beta firmware as it's our current developement setup. If 2.02 bring back the audio problem we will look into any different in audio handling to the old 1.24 firmware.

Pixel Magic Support.

April 1
Flip
Quote:
Originally Posted by Flip
Still no problems with audio over hdmi with FW 1.24

Quote:
Thanks for the feedback. We will look into the issue.

Pixel Magic Support.
This was on March 6, so you havent looked into the problem at all and now ask me to load FW 2.02 while I allready said I was having problems in FW 2.01

Did you actually do something about the problem in 2.02 and "forgot to mention it" or are you just feeding me more ********??

April 10
Flip
And another 10 days without an answer.

Keep on digging your own customer service grave. As soon as the Radiance is out you dont even have to respond to me anymore.

Have a nice day

April 19
Flip
Lets see if we can get to 1 month without an answer.

April 20
PMS DavidWong
Flip,

Did you try sending back your unit to us for RMA?
I believe it is a hardware issue.
Sorry that I am new to this thread.

David Wong
Pixel Magic Systems Ltd.

April 20
Flip
Please:***READ***THE FREAKING THREAD BEFORE TELLING ME THE SAME THING AS 7 WEEKS AGO.

April 20
PMS DavidWong
I have read all 53 posts on this thread and found no clue that did user FLIP send us his unit back to us.

David Wong
Pixel Magic Systems Ltd.
Reply With Quote

April 20
Flip
Read post #29 #30 #31 #34 #38

March 6
Flip
Quote:
Thanks for the feedback. We will look into the issue.

And after that: NOTHING besides some idiotic remark from PMS about trying the "latest" FW.

April 23
Flip
If you would actually read the thread, you will see that it wasnt RMA'ed because the "Pixel Magic Support" was going to look into the issue because its firmware related. Interestingly they seem to have been doing NOTHING since March 6.

So David Wong, are you going to look into this or are you going to keep ignoring this problem?

April 24
PMS Michael Wong
Hi Flip,

Very sorry for the delayed reply, after reading the whole thread again, I understood you had a working 1.24 firmware, but the latest firmware didn't work for you.

We checked the firmware from Version 1.24 till the latest firmware, there are some minor changes for the HDMI output. Some of them are hardware related and some of them are for solving incompatibility problems.

Please give me your Crystalio II's hardware code so that I can identify your hardware and help you further with this issue.

You can get the hardware code under Menu->System->System Info. The 2nd line consists of 3 sets of numbers, copy it and give it to me, then I can study it.

One more question about the equipments that you are using. Besides the AV receiver that you are using, have you try any other HDMI audio devices ?

We apologize for the delayed reply.
__________________
Pixel Magic Support Team


April 24
PMS Michael Wong
Hi Flip,

According to the hardware code that you have given. We can identify your Crystalio II uses a different method for routing HDMI audio through the HDMI output port. In newer firmware, we have abandoned this method and used a better method to solve compatiblility problems.

New firmware will still use the old method when it detects an older hardware version, but there may be minor changes to the new firmware code that make the old method failed. So it is best for you to RMA the unit, so that we could update some internal codes which is not upgradable by USB firmware upgrade.

You can send a RMA request to sales@pixelmagicsystems.com, then we will send you a RMA code.

We can try to update our firmware to cater for this in future version, but it will take much more time and effort for you and us.
__________________
Pixel Magic Support Team

Flip did you ever consider the old saying you get more flys with honey :rolleyes:

you sir are trolling now, nothing less, there shouldn't be any wonder why you are having problems with PMS your actions speak for it all, rude and childish

my suggestion is to GET RID OF THE SCALER and move on :rolleyes:

something you should have did long ago

-Gary

And for the record: They deleted posts from me too about the mediaplayer and firewire complaints.

I copied most of the "audio problem" thread into my last post to prevent PMS from solving more problems by deleting them....

Flip did you ever consider the old saying you get more flys with honey :rolleyes:

Yeah, I did.
I stopped after trying that for about 2 months


you sir are trolling now, nothing less, there shouldn't be any wonder why you are having problems with PMS your actions speak for it all, rude and childish


Explain to me where I am trolling. The problem is legitimate and still not fixed
I could call you just as easily a shill who tries to peddle more products


my suggestion is to GET RID OF THE SCALER and move on :rolleyes:

something you should have did long ago

What do you think what I will do when its back or are you suggesting that I should try to sell a product that needs to be RMA'ed to someone else?

Really constructive Gary, thanks

I could send you my miracle unit that walks on water and flies and something tells me you still would find something wrong with it. ;)

Explain to me where I am trolling. The problem is legitimate and still not fixed

I could call you just as easily a shill who tries to peddle more products

What do you think what I will do when its back or are you suggesting that I should try to sell a product that needs to be RMA'ed to someone else?

Really constructive Gary, thanks

you are constructive, people are complain and bitch in the manner you are doing are NEVER taken seriously


Explain to me where I am trolling. The problem is legitimate and still not fixed


as for trolling:

going around to every forum you can find and trashing PMS, bringing their character in to question along with business practises and products, singling out a person who helps at PMS (Mr. Wong), talking to them like ****, then getting mad, then copying the whole thing bringing it over to another forum and posting it to try and stir up more trouble




What do you think what I will do when its back or are you suggesting that I should try to sell a product that needs to be RMA'ed to someone else?


my point was that it should have been sold and you moved on LONG ago


I could call you just as easily a shill who tries to peddle more products


come again?

a shill is a person who disguises themself as a over excited customer who is linked with a company selling products :confused:

-Gary

When the unit goes back for them to fix it you get it working back. Mine went that route with audio problems over the SPDIF output, and after i received it back, never that problem again.
That could be related to Flip his problem, as i got the problems after firmware update to the mediaplayer enabled code as well. I did not try to go back to pre mediaplayer code. It was gone for 3 or 4 weeks i think. (from Europe)

So they did fix it at least?

So they did fix it at least?
My unit works fine, except for the 1080i60 to 1080p24, but that is a problem in (all) Gennum chip(s) (according to PMS) PMS waits for a firmware update on that, so lets hope Gennum makes that happen.

I got an additional shelf for my 3300; unplugged everything, moved stuff around, and put it back in the rack. The first movie I watched (War of the Worlds) had a few audio dropouts about halfway through. I powered the unit down for the night.

I've watched two movies since without audio problems (including WOTW again). Seems like my unit just needs a day to get used to new cables.

I'm still on FW 2.02. Based on Flip's experience I'll archive FW updates, just to be safe.

as for trolling:

going around to every forum you can find and trashing PMS, bringing their character in to question along with business practises and products, singling out a person who helps at PMS (Mr. Wong), talking to them like ****, then getting mad, then copying the whole thing bringing it over to another forum and posting it to try and stir up more trouble

Which other forum? If you read my earlier posts about other issues in this thread you will see that I am not trashing PMS.



my point was that it should have been sold and you moved on LONG ago


So some other sucker gets the lemon?


come again?

a shill is a person who disguises themself as a over excited customer who is linked with a company selling products :confused:

-Gary

The only thing that doesnt make you an outright shill is the fact that you have the homepage of your company in your profile. You have a commercial interest in sweet talking the C2 and belittling complaints since you are a "fully authorized Crystalio dealer" and in no way is that clearly stated in your postings here.

The firewire drop was the last draw for me.

9 months of waiting for updates, listening to promises, getting broken promises, getting more bugs and finally seeing back-pedaling on advertised features.

I think the way they break their promises and mis-treat their customers is despicable. I hope they will learn their lesson and mend their ways. I am not going to stick around and wait for that to happen though.

I am happy for those of you who bought C2 for something that it does well in your set up. Be happy.

I have only been treated worse once in my life time by a company and that was a time when they didnt deliver the product at all (I never saw it, they basically ran with my money).

PMS & C2, good riddance. There a lot more companies out there who understand the value of honesty and after sales service.

I will never buy anything from PMS ever again again.

I am moving on. For good.

The only thing that doesnt make you an outright shill is the fact that you have the homepage of your company in your profile. You have a commercial interest in sweet talking the C2 and belittling complaints since you are a "fully authorized Crystalio dealer" and in no way is that clearly stated in your postings here.
Wow, I was never aware of that. Thanks for the info, Flip. I put Gary on my ignore list some time ago, then gave him the benefit of a doubt... but seeing that he's still unable to bring anything worthwhile to discussions here, I think he's back on the ignore list for good.

Actually, Gary has usually been a DVDO advocate (so to speak) and just recently picked up the crystalio II. At this higher end level it is like splitting hairs when comparing the pic Q of the different VPs available. I have had all and can say the crystalio II is still in my set up!

The only thing that doesnt make you an outright shill is the fact that you have the homepage of your company in your profile. You have a commercial interest in sweet talking the C2 and belittling complaints since you are a "fully authorized Crystalio dealer" and in no way is that clearly stated in your postings here.

1st of all marketing on AVS in posts is not allowed, if it was you would see that info in my posts ;)

2nd I have been a pixel magic dealer for all of 3 days now, exactly 3 :eek:
I have never seen a Crystalio, or even been in the same room with one

I have strong ties with DVDO and will never leave them for personal or professional usage, I am simply using common sense to see what the problem is on your end and it is as plain as day

Wow, I was never aware of that. Thanks for the info, Flip. I put Gary on my ignore list some time ago, then gave him the benefit of a doubt... but seeing that he's still unable to bring anything worthwhile to discussions here, I think he's back on the ignore list for good.


I find that hard to believe I would be on a ignore list, my post history should prove that point, I have been nothing but a help in this section or so I thought, that truly bothers me :( Guess I should send in my DVDO Beta testing badge

-Gary

I am moving on. For good.

thats what I have always told people to do with any scaler that gives problems, including DVDO or anyone, that is the best way to handle things and I have personally applied it in my setup many times and took a few less blood pressure pills in the process ;)

-Gary

When the unit goes back for them to fix it you get it working back. Mine went that route with audio problems over the SPDIF output, and after i received it back, never that problem again.
That could be related to Flip his problem, as i got the problems after firmware update to the mediaplayer enabled code as well. I did not try to go back to pre mediaplayer code. It was gone for 3 or 4 weeks i think. (from Europe)

You are probably right, I was sure they just needed to fix the firmware in that period so I kept waiting for a fix. Do you also have one of the earliest hardware versions?

You are probably right, I was sure they just needed to fix the firmware in that period so I kept waiting for a fix. Do you also have one of the earliest hardware versions?
Yes, very early i think. one of the 1st units to come to Europe i think.

To add my two cents:
I think its clear the responses Flip was receiving on his PMS thread were poor, took way too long and were not professional. I did make this comment back at that thread on PMS support forum too.

However it does seem PMS added few more engineers to review the C2 support thread as the level of responses there and the time it takes them to respond have improved!

On my end - I'm very happy with my C2 3800 in terms of how it works as a scaler / processor. It provides GREAT picture quality. Better than what I got with my DVDO VP50 which I sold on. However I do have a problem with the built in media-player that seems to be specific to my unit (some movies stutter big time while they don't on other 3800) so my dealer is trying to get me another 3800 unit now so I don't need to be without one while its being RMAed to Hong Kong. Regardless of that stutter problem - I am not very impressed with the internal media-player in terms of its UI, working only with NFS instead of upnp or other windows sharing protocols, limited format support. If I were to buy again, it would be the 3300 and not 3800.

But I dont feel screwed in anyway by PMS - in fact I'm very happy with the unit and what it does for me. It was a risk I took taking the 3800 over the 3300 and my dealer told me I'd be better off taking a dedicated media-player instead.

My two cents to summarize are - Crystallio 2 - great PQ, response quality on their support forum is getting better. 3300 more to the point than the 3800. I hope this helps people reading / considering getting a C2.

When I was given the option for the 3800 or the 3300 I asked what the differences were. One was the inclusion of an HD-SDI input and the other was the media player, I believe the difference was around $1000.

HD-SDI? I didnt know that even existed and what commerical products had SDI..NONE! SDI is an aftermarket modification. What components had HD-SDI..NONE! And the aftermarket modification wasn't even available if I wanted to use it. Again, use it on what I have no idea but, it was an option.

Media Player. If I was to go this route I would have chosen an external media player for about a hundred different reasons. Alas, I use my TWC internal media player and i am fine with that. I also have a server that I can stream video from but, I dont bother. For me, the choice was simple because the media option didnt interest me and the HD-SDI input was and still is something no one can even use because no such product exists. I can only imagine the types of problems people will be reporting when their HD-SDI product isnt recognized by the C2 but, thats a whole different story.

I will say it again, for those of us that bought the C2 3300 as a scaler/processor, there is nothing better on the market at this time. Most of us has ZERO problems and the C2 roadmap for updates and upgrades has been on track and the updates come about once a month. There are less problems with the C2 then any other scaler I have ever used or tested but, I have yet to see a 100% perfect scaler that someone doesnt have some issue with. Currently it is converting 60 to 24 on 1080 content but, i am certain if that isnt a chip specific limitation that the Crystallio guys will fix that too.

Stay away from the 3800 with media player and pull the trigger on the 3300 scaler only model, it is well worth it and on the cutting edge.

PS. If you think the Lumagen model is coming any time soon you are mistaken and when it does it will be riddled with bugs and problems for many more months. All of that and there is still a question if it can even throw off a better image or better picture quality then the C2. Too many ifs and way too much time to be without top level processing.

I feel the same exact way you do about the radience. I want the best today and do not want to wait until tomorrow! Even if it does have a 3-5% better picture of the crystalio II (which I highly doubt) it would still not be worth changing over to. I am completely happy with my unit, and I guess I am very used to it. If there is going to be a crystalio III I would check it out though... :)

I had a report that the D2 does 24p just fine ! as it uses the same VXP chip as the CII's I have no doubt PMS will finally get it right !

That's odd because my crystalio II takes 1080p/24 from my Pioneer and then I send it back to my Ruby at 1080p/48 flawlessly... :eek:

I can confirm 1080p 24 has some issues with the Crystalio but its getting better. Im with the others and believe it has something to do with the chip and PMS are at bay until it is resolved.

Joe

The Pioneer is made by Sony and is the same as the Sony except the addition of the Internet port.
I have word from the Top it outputs 24 instead of 23.97. This will be corrected in a future update. At present all animated discs have visible issues and all other drop frames.

You do not need to feed the C2 24 from the Sony or Pioneer as it will take 1080i and spit out 1080 24 or 48. It does so with the tearing problem everyone speaks about. It is luck of the draw as you may get lucky if you do not skip chapters or FF during a movie or hit a bad flag you may make it through a movie without having to manually reset it but for the most part you have to intervene at some point. Also if you compare slow vertical pans from the C2 verse another processor spitting out 24/48 you see a difference. Something is not correct on the C2.
That aside this is an outstanding VP that I highly recommend. It does so many things beyond expectations. The 24/48 issue is very close to being perfected. PMS offers monthly software drops adding new features and correcting bugs. Two months from now it will be even more powerful then it is today!! A top notch product with great support!

Stay away from the 3800 with media player and pull the trigger on the 3300 scaler only model, it is well worth it and on the cutting edge.



*Cough* HD-SDI *Cough* ;)

-Gary

Joe

The Pioneer is made by Sony and is the same as the Sony except the addition of the Internet port.
I have word from the Top it outputs 24 instead of 23.97. This will be corrected in a future update. At present all animated discs have visible issues and all other drop frames.



Don't you have this backwards Alan? I.e., I thought Pioneer made the Sony, not the other way around.

Don't you have this backwards Alan? I.e., I thought Pioneer made the Sony, not the other way around.
The current Sony Blu-ray player (BDP-S1) is made by Pioneer.

web

Don't you have this backwards Alan? I.e., I thought Pioneer made the Sony, not the other way around.
No, he's got it right.

Now Im confused :o was it Pioneer who made these?? Regardless, the players are not outputting 23.97. Sony will have a fix so Im guessing Pioneer will as well.

I must be lucky for the most part because since the last update the movies I have watched have been fine. I am running a beta version of their new update though... :)

Pioneer did make both units. :)

I must be lucky for the most part because since the last update the movies I have watched have been fine. I am running a beta version of their new update though... :)

Same here on the software version. You must have the golden egg:)
Ill trade you mine for yours:)

It has even been stated by PMS they are working with the chip manufacture on this. They have made no effort to covered it up. They have been honest and upfront. With each new update it is getting better and better, almost there.
Outside the minor 24/48 issue ( soon to be fixed ) I cannot fault this powerful VP and it keeps getting better.

Edit: I want to point out I have ran several movies with no trouble at 48, my above statement is not to discredit Joe. You can have a good run with 48. My trouble comes when demoing and switching between different source material or performing chapter search etc.

I thought Sony made both units also :confused:

-Gary

No, he's got it right.

I don't think so, but I don't know if anyone knows for sure.

If you read the Sony BDP-S1 Blu-ray player review, you'd have a good idea of what the Pioneer BDP-HD1 player could do. Because, strangely enough, they are identical. HDGuru found that the back panel, disc drive, menus, format support, and capabilities were exactly the same between the two players, down to the time it takes they take to boot and load a movie.

When asked, Pioneer said they manufacture the player itself, so does that mean they make Sony's as well? Is that the reason for their massive delays? Does Sony not even make their own Blu-ray players, something they've been pushing like crazy?

Hard to say. But that's the way it looks now. Fortunately for Sony, their version of the player is $1000 compared to the Pioneer's $1500. But for the extra $500 you get an ethernet port, a longer warranty, a more conventional black finish, and BD-R/RE recordable playback.

If you're looking to author your own discs or enjoy updating firmware over the net, the Pioneer seems like a better buy. – Jason Chen

http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/home-entertainment/first-pioneer-elite-bdphd1-bluray-review-verdict-identical-to-sony-220996.php

My Pioneer BDP HD1 works perfectly for 24 fps when I run it straight to the RS1. The RS1 reports vert freq of 47.96 and I see no stuttering at all.

When I run it through the D2 the RS1 resports 48 and I get a slight stutter every 40 seconds or so in the picture when playing a Blu-ray disc.

Randall

Feeding the Pioneer direct the RS1 should read 23.97. If it is reading 48 then the player or something is doubling the frame rate. 48hz done proper should read 47.95.

Randall

Feeding the Pioneer direct the RS1 should read 23.97. If it is reading 48 then the player or something is doubling the frame rate. 48hz done proper should read 47.95.


I've had the same experience as Randall. I feed 1080p24fps from the Pioneer to the Crystalio 2. Then I set the Crystalio to output 1080p24fps to the RS1. Everything looks fine...but in the service menu of the RS1...it says 47.95 hz. Something is not right.

The RS1 doubles the frame rate.

The RS1 doubles the frame rate.

I've had the same experience/observations as Randall and Harry, and I believe that Cal87 is correct about the RS1 doubling the frame rate.

I have a Toshiba HD-XA2 and am undecided about connecting it directly to a Pioneer Pro FHD1 or connecting it to the CII then outputting 1080p to the Pioneer.
Other than the ability to perform some image adjustments using the CII what are peoples experiences with a HDDVD or BlueRay players outputting 1080p signals and the CII.
Does the CII actually process the 1080p signal or does it just pass it through to the output ??

*Cough* HD-SDI *Cough* ;)

-Gary

HDI-SDI is another useless feature on C2 3800 and btw, not even guaranteed to work.

With the problems I had with my C2 on SD-SDI I wouldn't be surprised if the HD-SDI was a little problematic to work with, that is if you ever get a single HD-SDI enabled output device to begin with.

To me the HD-SDI was equally useful feature on 3800 as the broken media player and the firewire connector that did nothing.

Does the CII actually process the 1080p signal or does it just pass it through to the output ??
It processes the signal. I do gamma correction in the CII.

The HD-SDI Input works fine on the Crystalio II VPS3800. I saw it with broadcast equipment HD-SDI feeds (big HD Cam and D5 master tape playback system) in AV show a few times.

regards,

Li On

I've been trying to run 1080p24 from my Pioneer Elite Blu Ray through the Crystalio2 to my JVC RS1. When I run direct and skip the Crystalio....no judder. When the Crystalio is in the chain, i see judder every 40 - 50 seconds. Has anyone found a fix for this problem?

I've been trying to run 1080p24 from my Pioneer Elite Blu Ray through the Crystalio2 to my JVC RS1. When I run direct and skip the Crystalio....no judder. When the Crystalio is in the chain, i see judder every 40 - 50 seconds. Has anyone found a fix for this problem?

Harry, those of us who have the Anthem AVM50/D2, RS1, and Pioneer Elite are experiencing exactly the same thing!

Harry, those of us who have the Anthem AVM50/D2, RS1, and Pioneer Elite are experiencing exactly the same thing!

Rob: Is it a problem with the Genuum chip? Is there a workaround? Harry

Rob: Is it a problem with the Genuum chip? Is there a workaround? Harry

No idea. Anthem is working on it. They have a JVC projector and ordered the Pioneer Elite BD player in order to attempt to figure it out.

Or maybe the latest BETA version donnyd! :rolleyes:

what will happen with a blu-ray player connected to the C2? Can you force Blu ray players to output 24 hz to the C2 in hdmi ? For instance i cannot even force my PC ( Nvidia gtx8800 card) to output 24 hz to the C2 Only this strange 63 hz that the C2 is " telling" the PC

what will happen with a blu-ray player connected to the C2? Can you force Blu ray players to output 24 hz to the C2? For instance i cannot even force my PC ( Nvidia gtx8800 card) to output 24 hz to the C2 Only this strange 63 hz that the C2 is " telling" the PC


I don't know for sure, but since it has HD-SDI inputs i think (suppose) it can handle without problems 24fps input.

I have an issue with C2 that folks on pmsforum doesn't seem to care about.
I've discovered the "magic" of the 0-255 or "PC Level" video out. With certain sources, expecially SD i think the difference is something to explore.
Now: when i output 0-255 levels to my vpr (Sharp z20000) in hdmi component out (both 4:4:4 or 4:2:2), using sdi or internal player input i have a great overall image but with some noticeable error in it. For example white charachters like the ones in the Media player menu or in movies titles look strange, as someone applied a photoshop emboss filter on them (sorry: i can't explain it better). Also, sometimes very high lights are wrong rendered. I've discovered that lovering blue and green from the C2 colour setup can help to get rid of this thing, but i don't think this is normal.
Has anyone ever tried PC Level 0-255 output on hdmi component out with C2?
I need some feedback, please.
Thanks everyone,

Luigi

The C2 can accept 1080p/24...

Joerod
I know but a possible problem is that the c2 must first get a 24fps signal from the source

for instance sony playstation 3 refuses to send 24 fps to the Crystalio as it does not "recognise"the C2 as an acceptor of 24 hz ( in hdmi) . Suppose blu-ray players follow the same protocol? I hope not ( all in hdmi)

Joerod
I know but a possible problem is that the c2 must first get a 24fps signal from the source

for instance sony playstation 3 refuses to send 24 fps to the Crystalio as it does not "recognise"the C2 as an acceptor of 24 hz ( in hdmi) . Suppose blu-ray players follow the same protocol? I hope not ( all in hdmi)

I've got an LG BH100 connected to my CII and it outputs 1080p/24 to the CII without any problem for both BR and HD DVDs.

Joerod
I know but a possible problem is that the c2 must first get a 24fps signal from the source

for instance sony playstation 3 refuses to send 24 fps to the Crystalio as it does not "recognise"the C2 as an acceptor of 24 hz ( in hdmi) . Suppose blu-ray players follow the same protocol? I hope not ( all in hdmi)

Again: is a known issue between PS3 and C2 as well as others display/vpr/vp.
With Pioneer Blu-Ray C2 accepts 24fps. Is the PS3 that doesn't allow the user to send out a 24fps but "only" an auto signal. Is something like an "handshake problem". New PS3 firmware will fix it (that's the hope).

I would think it would to. My XBOX 360 ELITE can't send 1080p to my C2 either. MS is working on that. The C2 has accepted 1080p from many sources for me so this was the first one it declined... I have to blame the ELITE on this one. I send the ELITE straight to my pj at 1080p anyway using the DVI input... That still looks good anyway... :)

Joerod, since you are an advanced user, would you do a little test for me next time you'll power up your vpr and C2?
It's very simple: go to the internal Media Player and without reproducing anything change video level out from "Video" to "PC" and look at charachters on screen how (and if) they change, then please report on this forum. It will take you only 1 minute and gave me some help on how to handle the issue i'm experiencing.
I'll be very grateful to you if you could do that.
Thank you,

Luigi

I will do it tonite when I get back! :)

I will do it tonite when I get back! :)

Thank you very much! :)

No problem... :)

what will happen with a blu-ray player connected to the C2? Can you force Blu ray players to output 24 hz to the C2 in hdmi ? For instance i cannot even force my PC ( Nvidia gtx8800 card) to output 24 hz to the C2 Only this strange 63 hz that the C2 is " telling" the PC

It depends on the Blu-ray player. The Pioneer elite can output 24hz to the C2 in HDMI....but unfortunately, the amout of judder is unacceptable. Therefore, I continue to use 60hz.

I use 60 as well but it has been well documented the Pioneer HD1 send it at exactly 24 not 23.97...

Has anyone checked their color decoder after adjusting greyscale with the Crystalio 2 offsets and gains? I've been doing some careful measurement of Y of the primaries and secondaries.....and I'm finding that the luminance of the primaries and secondaries is way off. And I'm seeing fairly dramatic differences between inputs. I believe this abnormality may be introduced by the Crystalio........but this will require some additional testing.

Has anyone else been measuring the luminance of the primaries after they have been processed by the Crystalio?

Has anyone checked their color decoder after adjusting greyscale with the Crystalio 2 offsets and gains? I've been doing some careful measurement of Y of the primaries and secondaries.....and I'm finding that the luminance of the primaries and secondaries is way off. And I'm seeing fairly dramatic differences between inputs. I believe this abnormality may be introduced by the Crystalio........but this will require some additional testing.

Has anyone else been measuring the luminance of the primaries after they have been processed by the Crystalio?Yes, I have also noticed this when using Tom Huffman's methodology. I have not done any additional testing to better identify the issue because I was waiting to get a new light engine installed. (Tech just left no more than an hour ago.) However, I do not expect that the light engine problem would have impacted relative luminance. I'll undertake another round of calibrations in a day or so and will report if I still see the problem.

if luminance is off the way it is in the C2
and you dont know it because you have not measured it, and the greyscale is spot on and the saturation in colours seem very ok to the eye

how will you notice this "way-off" luminance while watching movies?

and if you happen to have by chance a JVC HD/RS1 with the first firmware, where the color saturation slider only seem to effect luminance is it possible to correct "back" the C2?

I'm also not quite clear on what "way-off" luminance might mean.

Recently did a calibration of C2 based system that has both PDP5000EX (FHD1 for the US crowd) + Sharp 21000 (US: XV-Z20000).

didn't notice anything abnormal during the calibration regarding different inputs, nor anything regarding calibration.

Everything was spot on and results were fantastic. I really liked the image.

I have never noticed or detected "way off" luminance either. I like the image I have so I am not going to try and achieve it anyway... :)

I'm also not quite clear on what "way-off" luminance might mean.

Recently did a calibration of C2 based system that has both PDP5000EX (FHD1 for the US crowd) + Sharp 21000 (US: XV-Z20000).

didn't notice anything abnormal during the calibration regarding different inputs, nor anything regarding calibration.

Everything was spot on and results were fantastic. I really liked the image.

Oferlaor: What I mean by "way-off" luminance....is that after calibrating grey scale.......and then carefully measuring Y for each primary and secondary.....they do NOT follow the following standards for Y:

Color Definitions (HD)
-------------x--------y-------Y
White--------0.313---0.329---1.00
Red----------0.640---0.330---0.213
Green--------0.300---0.600---0.715
Blue----------0.150---0.060---0.072
Cyan---------0.225---0.329---0.787
Magenta------0.321---0.154---0.285
Yellow--------0.419---0.505---0.928

So I guess my question to you is whether you carefully measured the luminance (Y) of each color with either an accurate colorimeter or light meter. And if you did (presumably on 75% color windows and a 75% White) was Red 21% of White? And was Green 72% of white? And was blue 7.2% of white? If the answer to these questions is YES....then luminance is spot on. If some of the measures are off by more than 5-10%....then maybe the picture looks great, but the color decoder is off and some colors are too bright or dim relative to others.

And I think objectivity requires actual measurement.

I have never noticed or detected "way off" luminance either. I like the image I have so I am not going to try and achieve it anyway... :)

Joerod: With all due respect, (and I'm glad you "like" your image), we're talking about something a bit more objective here. Many people "like" images that are "way off" and that is subjective.

If I recall correctly, you also didn't notice when the Crystalio firmware was incorrectly detecting an HD source as ITU601 format instead of ITU709 format.

I believe that objective testing with software, a colorimeter, (or in this case, a light meter), is essential. Otherwise, you may have errors that your eye will not detect

Many of these effects are subtle and not dramatic to the eye. I'm sure you will say....."but if I can't see it...so what." Bottom line, is many of these factors are additive, important, and when corrected, the picture will indeed improve.

I agree, but if they are so subjective I have to measure and then measure again to try and find something "way off" then what is the point? I don't read or hear from others saying their images through the crystalio II are way off. And I am very satisfied with my image so I see no point in searching to see if my colors are off 5%... :eek:

Hey Joe, has your C2 learned to walk on water yet? :D

Just kidding, buddy :D

And it flies to! :D

I agree, but if they are so subjective I have to measure and then measure again to try and find something "way off" then what is the point? I don't read or hear from others saying their images through the crystalio II are way off. And I am very satisfied with my image so I see no point in searching to see if my colors are off 5%... :eek:

joerod: As i said earlier, I'm glad you like so much about your C2 and your picture. But you are weighing in on discussions that have to do with objective measurement with colorimeters and light meters.

If your satisfied with your image, great. But its possible that you don't know what you are missing in terms of objective ISF calibration.

For what it's worth, I like the way my picture looks too! But I don't like to know that the luminance of the primaries is not following standards.

I know how to measure my levels. But sometimes I trust my eyes and if what I see is pleasing then I know it is time to just sit back, relax, and enjoy the show! :)

Joerod: did you make that little test i was asking yesterday (video/pc out levels comparison on media player screen)? Just curious to understand if i have an issue with my unit or it's a normal behavior of the C2.

Luigi

it is normal. You cannot use PC levels black to white in 0-255 steps to video sources or input set to 16-235 levels. blacks will wash out and also contrast is wrong

it is normal. You cannot use PC levels black to white in 0-255 steps to video sources or input set to 16-235 levels. blacks will wash out and also contrast is wrong


Sorry: i don't get it. If i use 0-255 levels on output i must have a "correct" image, even if the source is 16-235. I mean: blacks, contrast, colours will have to be re-calibrated but the image should have no errors.
I'm talkin' BIG errors here but due to my bad knowledge of the english language i can't explain in words. Best thing is doing the little test i was talkin':
INPUT Media player screen, no video reproduced
OUTPU HDMI component (not rgb) switching from video(hdmi) level to PC level (0-255)
Simply look at the charachters on screen in the 2 ways. For further investigation put something with very high lights/contrast.

Luigi

BEST way to explain: show First image hdmi/video level second PC Level click on thumbs for greater image.

http://img458.imageshack.us/img458/6301/dscn5336ye0.th.jpg (http://img458.imageshack.us/my.php?image=dscn5336ye0.jpg)

http://img163.imageshack.us/img163/5564/dscn5337it2.th.jpg (http://img163.imageshack.us/my.php?image=dscn5337it2.jpg)

http://img91.imageshack.us/img91/4342/dscn5335oy3.th.jpg (http://img91.imageshack.us/my.php?image=dscn5335oy3.jpg)

http://img57.imageshack.us/img57/6312/dscn5334sq1.th.jpg (http://img57.imageshack.us/my.php?image=dscn5334sq1.jpg)

http://img57.imageshack.us/img57/9450/dscn5340lg9.th.jpg (http://img57.imageshack.us/my.php?image=dscn5340lg9.jpg)

http://img91.imageshack.us/img91/2153/dscn5339mz1.th.jpg (http://img91.imageshack.us/my.php?image=dscn5339mz1.jpg)

Any toughts? :confused: :confused:

Sorry I promise I will do it today. I got in late last night. And just to let others know my unit with the latest firmware version (2.07) is not perfect. I have BLACK screen flashes (1 to 2 second intervals) every 45 minutes or so. So the quest for the perfect crystalio II is still going on. :) I am hopeful that a newer firmware they are releasing soon will fix it. If not I will just go back to 2.06...:)

no this seems different, however if you dont have it when pc levels are used for pc and videolevels are used for video, then it is not important or relevant. if you have it also when the settings are correct set for the appropriate input then contact Pixelmagic in their forum PLUS the pictures

no this seems different, however if you dont have it when pc levels are used for pc and videolevels are used for video, then it is not important or relevant. if you have it also when the settings are correct set for the appropriate input then contact Pixelmagic in their forum PLUS the pictures


The strange thing is that in hdmi inputs if i set the input level to pc level (even if the input level is not actually pc level but video) the "defect" goes away. However in sdi and media player (as well in others analog inputs) there's no way to "force" input level (at least i've found no way to do it). This confuse me :confused:

I know how to measure my levels. But sometimes I trust my eyes and if what I see is pleasing then I know it is time to just sit back, relax, and enjoy the show! :)

This is getting silly. I was posting about precise measurement and accuracy of color decoding. I just don't see the relevance of whether you find the image "pleasing" to be of great pertinence to that discussion.

We are all well aware, Joerod, of how spectacularly happy you are with the C2 and your setup (with the exception of the black flashes you are experiencing).

Now back to the questions at hand:

Has anyone else actually measured Y of the primaries with either a colorimeter, spectrophotometer, or light meter of signals passing through the C2 after using the C2 to adjust grey scale?

I'm not looking for visual opinions about whether the picture looks ok, good, or great. I'm trying to confirm from a second source whether the Crystalio might be introducing some color decoder errors.

if luminance is off the way it is in the C2
and you dont know it because you have not measured it, and the greyscale is spot on and the saturation in colours seem very ok to the eye

how will you notice this "way-off" luminance while watching movies?

I believe many of us can get used to fairly dramatic deviations from the normal standards.....when we don't even know what the picture would look like if these deviations were adjusted out. I've "thought" my high-end audio system and my video system were very fine, only to find out later, that they could be improved upon. A good example of this is when I added dedicated power lines to my system. Sounded great before.....sounded better after. I didn't know what I was missing until I did it.

Some are satisfied when the picture looks good to the eye....others seek objective measurements. I'm finding with careful measurement that the Crystalio2/RS1 combination is showing the following deviations from expected HD standards:

Red ---------3.8% high
Green -----10.6% low
Blue ---------7.7% low
Cyan --------9.8% high
Yellow -------1.9% low
Magenta ----1.2% high

Will the picture look better if can adjust these parameters? I can only speculate....but I hope so.

......and if you happen to have by chance a JVC HD/RS1 with the first firmware, where the color saturation slider only seem to effect luminance is it possible to correct "back" the C2?

I was hoping so. But as you can see, cyan and red are high.....and Blue and Green are low. When I lower luminance as you suggest, cyan and red improve....but blue and green become unacceptably low. Conversely, when I raise luminance, blue and green improve, but cyan and red become unacceptably high.

Also, the RS1 color control is not totally pure.

..

Red ---------3.8% high
Green -----10.6% low
Blue ---------7.7% low
Cyan --------9.8% high
Yellow -------1.9% low
Magenta ----1.2% high

Will the picture look better if can adjust these parameters? I can only speculate....but I hope so.





"Cyan (from Greek κυανός, meaning "blue") may be used as the name of any of a number of a range of colors in the blue/green part of the spectrum. In reference to the visible spectrum cyan is used to refer to the color obtained by mixing equal amounts of green and blue light or the removal of red from white light. As such, cyan is the complement of red: cyan pigments absorb red light."

As the pj has only 3 panels R,B and G then cyan must be a mix from the green and blue panels only
Strange Both blue and green are really low Cyan is a (pure) mix of blue and green so how can that mix be highest high?

"Cyan (from Greek ??????, meaning "blue") may be used as the name of any of a number of a range of colors in the blue/green part of the spectrum. In reference to the visible spectrum cyan is used to refer to the color obtained by mixing equal amounts of green and blue light or the removal of red from white light. As such, cyan is the complement of red: cyan pigments absorb red light."

As the pj has only 3 panels R,B and G then cyan must be a mix from the green and blue panels only
Strange Both blue and green are really low Cyan is a (pure) mix of blue and green so how can that mix be highest high?

Yes indeed....i noticed that....and rechecked it several times. It makes no sense. And this is one of the reasons I think the crystalio may be introducing something very strange.

When Tom Huffman and I used an Accupel generator straight to the projector, we did not see this unusual phenomenon. In fact, unless something strange is going on, one should be able to check the color decoder with RGB alone.

As I mentioned earlier, these measurements were taken with a CA813 on a tripod facing the projector in the middle of 75% color windows.

What I mean by "way-off" luminance....is that after calibrating grey scale.......and then carefully measuring Y for each primary and secondary.....they do NOT follow the following standards for Y
The last time I calibrated gray scale (I think back in January), using the CII's test patterns to my LCD display and measuring with an EyeOne Display2, I got these resulting Ys:
R .230
G .747
B .075
C .807
M .305
Y .943
But I didn't capture what they were before calibration, sorry. I expect I'll be having another go at it some time this summer.

Has anyone checked their color decoder after adjusting greyscale with the Crystalio 2 offsets and gains? I've been doing some careful measurement of Y of the primaries and secondaries.....and I'm finding that the luminance of the primaries and secondaries is way off. And I'm seeing fairly dramatic differences between inputs. I believe this abnormality may be introduced by the Crystalio........but this will require some additional testing.

Has anyone else been measuring the luminance of the primaries after they have been processed by the Crystalio? Yes, I have also noticed this when using Tom Huffman's methodology. I have not done any additional testing to better identify the issue because I was waiting to get a new light engine installed. (Tech just left no more than an hour ago.) However, I do not expect that the light engine problem would have impacted relative luminance. I'll undertake another round of calibrations in a day or so and will report if I still see the problem.I have retested and do not find a significant "color decoder error" introduced by the C2.

In my original testing, I compared the measured relative Y intensities (RGBCYM to white) to the standard luminance ratios expected for Rec 601. (I calibrate my main mode to Rec 601 and another to Rec 709.) Based on the discussion in the RS1 thread and the calculator provided by GregR, this was wrong, especially considering how the CMS on the Samsung HL-Rs works.

The Samsung CMS allows one to move the coordinates of the primary and secondary colors around. It does this thru some sort of color mixing scheme. As a result, the CMS has to be turned off to measure/test the color decoder when using color & tint controls and the blue filter. But, with the CMS off the primary and secondary colors are no longer in the adjusted spot-on standard coordinate locations.

Initially I forgot this and measured the ratios with the CMS on. This yielded errors in the -30% to 80% range. After remembering I needed to turn CMS off to measure/test the color decoder, I reran the ratios (CMS off), compared them with the standard ratios and got errors ranging from -6% (red) to 17% (Blue).

Based on Greg's info concerning the need to use different Y-ratios as a function the x,y coordinates of the primaries and gray and using the calculator he provided, I recalculated the Y-ratios when the Accupel generator was fed directly into the HL_R and when the Accupel generator was fed to the C2 then the HL_R. I got virtually identical results for coordinates, Y-values and ratios.

Accupel to HL-R Directly via HDMI
__________Calc'd Y__Measured
Color______Ratio____Y Ratio____Error(%)
Red..............0.184........0.1835.........-0.28
Green...........0.725.......0.7688..........+5.69
Blue..............0.091.......0.0975.........+6.67
Cyan.............0.816.......0.8433.........+3.24
Magenta.......0.275.......0.2694.........+-2.10
Yellow...........0.909.......0.9072.........-0.19

Accupel to C2 to HL-R vis HMDI
__________Calc'd Y__Measured
Color______Ratio____Y Ratio____Error(%)
Red..............0.184........0.1832.........-0.41
Green...........0.722.......0.7653..........+5.66
Blue..............0.094.......0.0968.........+2.89
Cyan.............0.816.......0.8404.........+2.90
Magenta.......0.278.......0.2687.........-3.46
Yellow...........0.906.......0.9083.........+0.26

I only ran the above tests once so I can not say whether there is a statistical difference between the errors with and without the C2.

With the Accupel generator connected directly to the HL-R, I also compared the error in the ratios when the color was set using the blue filter vs. minimizing the error in the Red ratio as suggested by Hufffman. The errors were generally smaller using Tom's procedure.

Color_______Filter______Tom's Method
___________Error(%)___Error(%)
Red.................7.49............-0.41
Green.............9.47............5.66
Blue................13.09..........2.89
Cyan...............6.53...........2.90
Magenta.........3.31...........-3.46
Yellow............1.92............0.26

FWIW. YMMV.

Uh oh, another C2 that walks on water... :D

thx for revealing

Joerod: what about that little test i was asking for? Did you make it? Let me know.
Thx,

Luigi

Doing it in about one hour... :)

Uh oh, another C2 that walks on water... :DNot exactly... I'm still unhappy with problems that the C2 introduces on the low end of the gray scale (I have actually gone back to the 2.06 Beta firmware to play around with the color temperature controls on the output side that were left out of 2.07), the inability to move the gamut as required by different input sources, the inability to use Faroudja technoloy on Component 1 input (I know it's a hardware limitation, but I'm still not happy!) and really wish PMS would add some critical calibration patterns to the C2 (SMPTE color bars, 75% white, pattterns with color steps for each primary over the PC or video digital range in 5% or 10% steps, and provide a set of properly labelled gray windows for digital use that match the expectation of most calibration software on the market (i.e., 0 IRE to 100 IRE, 10% steps and no pedestal setup). Overall, my C2 is an pretty good swimmer, but still working on the "walking" part.

I know, I agree about the good swimmer though. :) Everytime I give my C2 a compliment others around here like to post about how my unit must walk on water... Now I am heading to my cave! I will do the test now as well... :)

Harry Brandt,

never measured it that way...

I don't measure primary luminance, only luminance on whites (for gamma).

Okay, I just did your test. When I switch to PC I do notice slight changes in colors. It is very hard to tell but they are there. I doubt if it is just your unit... I prefer Video anyway so this is by no means a big deal to me... Hope this helps some... :)

Okay, I just did your test. When I switch to PC I do notice slight changes in colors. It is very hard to tell but they are there. I doubt if it is just your unit... I prefer Video anyway so this is by no means a big deal to me... Hope this helps some... :)

Thanks Joerod, this helps but actually i was asking a different thing: go to the MEDIA PLAYER and without reproducing anything change from VIDEO to PC level and see the chareachters on screen how (and if) they change. Also: you must be in hdmi out component colour space in rgb this doesn't happen.
Look at screenshots i've posted.

Not exactly... I'm still unhappy with problems that the C2 introduces on the low end of the gray scale (I have actually gone back to the 2.06 Beta firmware to play around with the color temperature controls on the output side that were left out of 2.07), the inability to move the gamut as required by different input sources, the inability to use Faroudja technoloy on Component 1 input (I know it's a hardware limitation, but I'm still not happy!) and really wish PMS would add some critical calibration patterns to the C2 (SMPTE color bars, 75% white, pattterns with color steps for each primary over the PC or video digital range in 5% or 10% steps, and provide a set of properly labelled gray windows for digital use that match the expectation of most calibration software on the market (i.e., 0 IRE to 100 IRE, 10% steps and no pedestal setup). Overall, my C2 is an pretty good swimmer, but still working on the "walking" part.

Nice Summary. I'd add that it concerns me that the C2 seems to add banding artifact to grey and color ramps. In my downstairs system, without C2....those patterns are very smooth. In my upstairs system, with C2......I get those nasty bands.