Darbee vision darblet - Page 87

My Darblet will arrive tomorrow, and will be hooked up to a Sony XBR52-HX909, a local-dimming LED display. I'll have a report later this week.

Nice TV!

Thanks. I am on the edge of my seat waiting to see how the Darblet influences what is already a pretty good picture!

I am using one on my Sharp LC-70LE735U and am very happy with the results. When I switched outputs the other day and the Darbee was not in the chain my wife remarked "Was is the picture fuzzy now?"

Just got my Darbee and really enjoying the improved apparent sharpness on a 152" acoustically transparent screen at 15.5 feet viewing distance, especially on full blu-ray rips.

I am still figuring out my permanent setting, but I am down to choosing between Pop at 40% and HD at 60%.

Equipment: Popcorn A210 -> Denon 4311 -> Darbee -> Epson 5010

My projector isn't overly sharp without it, but it seems materially better now. You guys with razor sharp DLPs must be in sharpness heaven when you add the Darbee.

No HDMI handshake or colorspace issues whatsoever.

Update: I decided to purchase another Darblet, thinking it would have more current firmware, and it works just fine with my Netgear NeoTV550 and the Pioneer PDP-5020FD. I have not yet tried this unit with the Lumagen, but I am assuming the "Lumagen fix" is incorporated in this more current unit. For your edification, here are the details for the unit I just received from Solid Signal (AV Science was out of stock):

Software: 2.8.2214
Firmware: 1.3.21

Mark

It should have been physiology. My typo kinda invalidates my cred as an editor, doesn't it? (Though I also have problems with my physiognomy which my wife is generous enough to overlook. )

You're not alone. I don't have depth perception issues, but I do see color hue slightly (only slightly) differently with each eye.

For the non-projector posters above, I could clearly see the Darblet improvement even on my 47-inch, 1080p LCD TV, so I wouldn't say that it's a product primarily for front projectors.

I got my Darbee six days ago and I've had some time to try it on a range of content:

On my 1080p Mitsubishi HC3800 projector, I've watched Batman Begins, The Dark Night, and Babe: Pig in the City (ugh) on Blu-ray. I've also watched two episodes of Breaking Bad, 720p video files through my PS3.

On my 720p Acer H5360BD projector I've played Skyrim and Minecraft in 3D through my PC.


In all cases, the Darbee provides a noticeable and welcome improvement. I'm using it in HD mode 55% most of the time and I find it brings out the details, especially on faces. Judging by my eyes only, the Darbee'd image simply appears to be the true image vs the degraded original. My conscious brain knows I've in fact got that reversed, but luckily for my eyes I don't have a philosophical objection to the process! I have nothing bad to say about the effect.

Economically speaking, the Darbee has been an excellent treatment for a recent flare up of my chronic upgraditis. For the price of the Darbee, everything I have is upgraded. My Blu-rays, my PC's graphics, everything. The fact that it upgrades both of my projectors is also huge to me. They share the same screen, same AVR, and now the same Darbee. I just switch out the projectors' respective cables at the Darbee's HDMI out at the end of the chain at a convenient location in the room (same as how I switched between the two before, except I used a spare HDMI splitter to manually plug and unplug). My upgraditis has cleared up nicely, and hopefully I've relatively cheaply bought myself another 6 months until the next episode. However, while I want to show the Darbee off to my friends, I'm afraid it might induce upgraditis in them. One man's cure is another man's poison. Apply with caution.


On another topic, my understanding (and I've read the white paper) it that the Darbee is intended to put the stereoscopic 3D depth cues you'd get with two images into a signal 2D image. I wonder what merit the Darbee has then (biological, philosophical, etc) when using it with 3D material. When viewing stereoscopic 3D, the depth is all there plain to see as it should be. With the Darbee engaged, it would seem then that you're doubling up on the depth cues. Your left eye gets an image embedded with depth cues it would have seen with two eyes, and the right gets the same. So in 3D, the Darbee is trying to give you something like what you would have seen with four eyes? It doesn't seem like that should be right, and yet it clearly looks better anyway, so I'm left a little curious.

Thanks for pointing this out. I found the Nvidia setting a month ago and completely ignored it due to previous negative experiences with "edge enhancement". So tonight I decided to try it out and I have to say it is AMAZING! So much more detail and clarity with virtually no distortion and the image is so much sharper than what the Darbee is capable of pumping out.

I'm currently riding at 50% Nvidia with 40% Darbee POP and the image looks razor sharp with a nice dimension of volume to people, objects and distant backgrounds. Turning both settings off reduces the image to a fuzzy flat haze that I still can't believe I used to watch.

If you currently run video through a Nvidia chipset this setting is worth checking out.

JUst recieved my Darbee today. Got it hooked up into the system. Oppo 83/Sat box - Oppo HDMI switcher - 25ft cable to Sony HW30, inserted the Darbee after the 25ft cable right at the HW30. I would say also that it is a welcome improvement all around, set it at various settings but settled on 47 on the HD mode, didn't watch too many different samples, some HBO(720p), some Blurays(5th Element/Dark Knight-1080p/24 (4:4:4)). For the money it's worth the improvement you get, well at least on my setup. I'll play with it some more later and try diferent modes.

Darblet review by Kris Deering is up on Hometheater.com. Just a heads up.

With reviews like that I wonder if I got a defective unit or something.

Greetings everyone

I'm hoping to get some feedback on a very unique and different situation regarding why I'm considering buying this product.

I have a defective 2010 Samsung PN50C6500 plasma. Long story short- Samsung refused to refund/ exchange it from day1 saying that it was within spec and have been stuck with it ever since. It suffers from an extremely noisy picture in all presets as well as dithering that I'm forced to watch it with Dynamic contrast set to high and digital and MPEG noise filters set to medium to get any kind of usable picture out of it. Of course this is to the determinant of shadow detail and artificial sharpening not to mention overall picture quality.

Would the darbee help me with my situation? The Home Theatre review says it won't hurt but I wanted to get thoughts/ opinions from some owners here. Iam looking to purchase the Panasonic 65ST50 in the next couple of months so the worst that could happen is that I get to use it with that set instead.

Thanks!

The review stated:
This is not entirely correct.....the unit does output whatever colorspace it sees on its input but according to the Darbee folks it processes in the RGB domain. IOW, 422 and 444 are converted to RGB for processing and then converted back to 422 or 444 prior to its output.

It does extremely well on a Elite 70X5. Very noticeable increase in depth and detail on good PQ BDs and Cable. Love it.

I am using an Epson 5010 projector fed to a Darbee then fed into a Visio Wireless extender then fed into a Denon 2312 receiver. On power up sometimes I get a green tinted image. For you guys that have Epson 6010/5010 projectors, are there any setting that I can try to change to avoid the color space problems. I have looked thru all the menus and could not find anything that can be adjusted. Thanks in advance!

Excellent review by Deering. It would have been nice if Kris had included a few split-screen shots to show the effect to his readers however.

As was noted in the review, having the Darblet default to a high Full Pop setting makes a poor first impression. Shipping these with a default of Hi Def 50% would be much more likely to put a smile on the face of a new owner. (50% is still a bit high for my taste, but at least it's in the ball park.)
Edited by henrich3 - 8/23/12 at 6:17am

Likewise the 60" Elite.

Very happy.

Does the issue occur if you direct connect from the receiver to the Darbee to the projector without the wireless HDMI?
This would help isolate the issue.

*I have a 5010 and have made no changes to make the Darbee work. I have no sparkles, image flashes or green or pink.

From what you have posted, I believe you are seeing the Darbee "effect" but I will tell you, IMO, the "effect" is like a 10-20% PQ improvement.
No jaw dropping, the veil is lifted or blown away observations.
Just an incremental PQ improvement that is noticeable but not dramatic.
It's like when you upgrade projectors every 1-2 years. You will see about a 10-20% PQ at most but not a night/day difference.

+1
But definitely worth the cost and the stupid ergonomics and firmware upgrade hassles.

Ive had my Darbee for about 6 weeks now & only had time to watch 10 movies with it,the last one was The Dark Knight & still no problems(knock on wood).My Darbee has not been updated with the new firmware,has anyone else not had theres updated? My system is Pany 4000 projector,Onkyo 5507 pre-pro & Sony 790 blu-ray.I contacted Darbee & they said that if theres no problem that updating is not needed.I think Darbee does improve the pq about 30% I have mine set on hd 60 % I like the Darbee & for the cost its worth it.

Most definitely.............................NO..........

If from day one it was that bad as you described, how could they not swap it out for you? ....it would seem. Or let your credit card company know it was defective, or Amazon or the "dealer". That's really too bad....I would be going nuts and then on warpath.

On my RS40 I would sy 10-30%, but that is close to your assessment. Day and night- no, but $270. is a bargain for that much improvement. Hey if it holds off on an upgrade for a year or 2 its a huge savings, AND when you do upgrade you STILL HAVE the Darbee to use with the new unit.
Still a no-brainer for me!
Tony

Unfortunately I don't have a long enough HDMI cable to test this easily. I do suspect it has something to do with the Visio extender. I also have another problem that I have noticed with 3D signals. When I switch from a 3D signal to normal the image on the projector is doubled or magnified. I can fix this be switching back and forth between HDMI signals. Have you tested any 3D signals with your Darbee and Epson 5010? Thanks for the feedback!

The Darbee folks know better than us if you would benefit from the firmware upgrade...that being said, the majority of the changes in the firmware have been to resolve compatability issues with certain product lines (Lumagen Radiance products being one). The only overall change that may be of interest is the change in increasing;/deceasing the darbee "effect" went from digit increments of 5 to 1...for more focused tweaking.

From an earlier DarbeeDr post:

"The Darblet will always process YCbCr 4:4:4 internally, but converts the video back to whatever format it was originally, after processing. This is intended to make the Darblet as transparent as possible when inserted into any existing HDMI chain, while maintaining the highest quality of the internal mathematical calculations."

You haven't been following along....
I asked this question in post 1975:


And Dr Darbee answered it in post 2030:
Aligning the columns for clarity this says:

This is why I elected to set my Radiance to output RGB since doing that avoids two colorspace conversions in the Darbee when fed 422 or 444.
Edited by Geof - 8/23/12 at 9:40am

Edited by sparky7 - 8/23/12 at 10:05am

Received My Darbee earlier this week and I must say I'm impressed. I'm using it on a Panny PT-AE900 ( gf won't let me upgrade until this one dies). I'm in HD mode running at 65% and it really helped out with the soft picture the Panny's are known for....it's like a new projector now!
I just have one issue with the Darbee. After I shut everything down the blue led still stays lit even though it's not being fed a signal...no biggie....just wanted to know if anybody else is having the same issue?