Here is my current setup, which I intend almost solely to use with HD, 99% of which will be HD-DVD/BR, not cable. About the only cable HD I plan on viewing is sporting events, which critical viewing will not really apply to.

Fujitsu 50" plasma (most recent version)
HDMI connection straight from Toshiba HD-A2

Am I right that for this setup and the predominantly HD-only viewing that I'll be doing, that products such as the Crystalio II, Lumigen, etc have really no value to improving the PQ of my setup?

About the only thing I stiill ocassionally think I might benefit from, even with HD-DVD, is mesquito noise reduction, but even then I think that might be minimal considering how low the compression is on the 30GB HD discs.

Am I right that these products almost solely exist for the benefit of DVD playback?

Well the fuji greyscale, at least on UK models, is only adjustable in global rgb values. Unfortunately the red green and blue gamma's are not the same so you cannot get a flat greyscale. Lumagens 11 point calibration will be able to sort this out. Also you may find that the downscaling on one or all of the outboard scalers may be superior to that in the panel. I would expect that for sports 1080i broadcasts, although not critical, you would see an improvement with the off board processors.

It would also not suprise me to find that the de-interlacing of 1080i film source material would be superior in one or all of the off board scalers. It certainly is for SD.....

I think the sensible thing to do is to try a processor once you have the rest of the sysem in place. Only then will you be able to make an informed decision.

Gordon

Ok, so the de-interlacing of the 1080i coming out of the Toshiba HD-A2 into my Fuji might be done better by a CII or a Lumagen?

By the way, I have everything in place, my Fuji I've had almost a full year, and my Toshiba I just got yesterday.

Can you explain more about the grayscale. You are noting that the Fuji cannot provide a flat grayscale, but the Lumagen can correct that? But my understanding is that there was no way to defeat the internal color processing of the Fuji, or am I missing something here?

I'm not going to buy anything just for sports broadcasts. My main interest is critical viewing of films.

And where does the Flea/Mesquito fit in? Will it do anything to help HDMI HD-DVD signals? Or will compression artifacts be so negligable in this format (especially 30GB discs) that it won't be worth the investment?

Yes I'm sure either of those devices will improve 1080i de-interlacing over that in the display.

You can actually defeat some fuji processing if you are willing to forgo a few pixels of resolution. It is possible to address the Fuji's at 1360 x 768 @60Hz, pixel for pixel. This does seem to bypass some colour processing as well. I am not sure what though.

I'm going to try to attach couple of images here. First is the measured greyscale response of a 50" 58US. This shows the non-linearity of the RGB levels from dark to bright part of the greyscale. As there is only a global adjustment in the panel for greyscale you have to decide where you want your error. The second image is the same panel with an equalisation curve applied that is done in the clients Lumagen HDQ scaler. You can see that it's now all as it should be. We forget the readings below 10ire at far left....

The best place to remove noise is BEFORE it gets in the source. Once it's there all you are going to do is give up detail. There will, I am sure, be instances of poor HD transfers or ones with loads of noise. It could be that the noise is there for effect of course (Miami Vice). I'm not the greatest fan of noise reduction as although it can remove noise it usually takes away too much detail for me at the same time. You need to suck it and see yourself

Are you certain that color processing can be bypassed at all in the Fuji? Here is a quote from an official Fuji technical trainer which is from an email he sent to me in response to a question I asked of him over a year ago, he makes it sound impossible to bypass color management.

"You can use an outboard scaler; however, no signals bypass the internal
video processor. The AVM-II processor will scale non-native signals. It
will not scale native-rate signals presented by an outboard processor.
However, other functions of the processor remain in place (color space
management, analog-to-digital conversion, and so on.) The p50xha40 and
p50xt51 are identical in this regard."

My interest in color processing is that I still see a bit of false contouring in my Fuji, even on HD-DVD content with superb transfers, such as "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang". I see it not nearly as much as I do in DVDs, but a bit is still there in some dark scenes with fleshtones, and on some gradients with skies.

If I could bypass color management in the Fuji, could an outboard processor correct for this?

Or am I still seeing some after effects of compression? I am leaning at this point towards the issue being from the Fuji, but I can't be certain.

Yes you can never compltely by pass the panels own processing. However I am pretty confident that some AVM processes do not appear to be implimented when fed 1360x768 to panel. There is a definate different "look" to the image when you go in this way.

Gordon

Interesting, it would be nice if Fuji would tell us exactly which processes are disabled. It sounds like it's not enough to go on.