Why can't HTPC's best most stand alone players? - Page 2

I'm curious by how you define "better".

Do you mean better as in "sharper" ?

Do you mean better as in the colour more closely matches expectation? If so, how are you calibrating your sources... did you perform a calibration with proper light meter?

Do you mean better as in it handles motion better? Handles de-interlacing better? etc. etc.?

Don't get me wrong, not knocking what you have concluded or the effort you have expended to provide us with your feedback, I too would like to one day have the time to do a great deal of testing, but I still think it would be nice to know what metrics you are comparing.

Yes better is a subjective way for me to describe overall PQ in term of sharpness, vibrant; greater color dynamic range; smooth motion handling; pop/image depth; greyscale etc...I didn't pay any attention to de-interlacing because i use my projector only for blu ray movies.

I have not calibrate my projector because it's still relatively new and from what's written by various credible reviewers this model is very good at its cinema mode when new.

All my testing has been subjective...I'm hoping to learn more about calibration and HQV 2.0 benchmark so I can do a more objective testing in the near future. With two young children (and a wife) time is an issue for me right now.

Cool. Again, don't take my post as trying to put your contribution in a bad light. I'm just sceptical with terms like "better" that aren't quantifiable. When it comes to the human visual system, we respond to greater brightness, we also prefer the one that is sharper, more saturated, punchier contrast etc.. Many manufacturers know this and deliberately "tweak" their devices to provide this "pop". Given that the HTPC has a great deal of flexibility, it's hard to definitely say that it is either better than or worse than "X". Even just within MadVR, you can change the chroma/luma up/downscaling settings.

A long while back, before fullHD etc. on my lowly 1024x576 projector running DVDs with ffdshow scaling, lanczos4 had an amazing amount of pop and contrast and if you put it next to the normal output, you would be wowed, but it had some ringing that was noticeable if you cared about that stuff. But if I were a salesman trying to push my product, I'd put a lanczos4 scaled copy of an 3D animated movie next to regular TVs and expect quite a few people to prefer it on first inspection.

BTW, I'm worse than you, I have the tools for basic calibration, but have yet to get around to doing even that for all the displays in my house (admittedly there are quite a few)