Your processor has arrived - Page 2  

Chu,

It will probably not do progressive inputs, but that isn't really that bad.

HTPCs with software DVD players are not so hot good at deinterlacing that well and get stuff like jerky pans. What they _are_ better than most anything else is scaling, since video card makers have had to have scaling engines on their cards for a long time.

DScaler is a very good deinterlacer but it hampered by the quality of the analog inputs. You need a special card like KBK's modified ones or a professional Falcon card (which not many people have) to get something approachable of what video processors have.

With this, you can use a good quality interlaced player without SDI (or with ) and use the onboard deinterlacing (or software deinterlacing with DScaler.) Then the HTPC scales everything.

The problem was before, to get a satifactory image out of the DVD player, you really needed to get it SDI modified and an SDI Silk card. People in the HTPC forum tend to be rather cheap and not many have that :)

I don't understand why you would use a stand alone DVD player with this new board inside an HTPC, Isn't one of the reasons film looks so good on HTPC is that the path is digital all the way?

I would think that the HTPC with an internal DVD player would provide the best solution.


LJG

Terry

Use an sdi dvd player and get better results than using an analog progressive signal into the card.

As mentioned if you have a projector with DVI input you will have an all digital path with Faroudja de interlacing at a fraction of cost to its compitition. This is the only Faroudja based solution offering a digital input.

Wow! The scaler wars just got hotter. Very interesting... Mark

Hmmm.... The card can take in SDI as well so it can accept a digital 480i stream as well. In addition, I did mention somewhere that we may offer a DVD MPEG decoder card that would feed into the Holograph for deinterlacing. This would in effect put a DVD player inside your HTPC and allow you to use the Fli2200 or Dscaler for deinterlacing.

As to your comments about HDTV inputs - sure that would be cool. But not gonna happen at the TBA price point. 480P may or may not happen. But if it does it will be both analog and DVI input for 480P over DVI.

Hope that helps.

Tom

Since this card has DCDi onboard why on earth would I want to pump the video through DXVA or DScaler?

Because you might end up liking DScaler's or DXVA's deinterlacing algorithm better, that's why. And even if you don't now, you might later---DScaler and DirectX are evolving; the hard-wired DCDi implementation on the card is stuck where it is. One could also conceive of scenarios where, say, animation is better with DScaler and live film is better with DCDi... Anyway, having the choice is a great thing. If you never use DScaler again, that's OK with Tom!

Maybe Key Digital will lower their price on their upcoming HD LEEZA!!!!!!!

Otherwise, HTPC for me!!!!1

JEff

The adaptive de-intelace on video cards will have to come a long ways before they beat DCDi. The product I work on supports adaptive de-interlace via DXVA and while it looks better than any of its competitors it's still nowhere near as good as DCDi. But technology marches on so I guess it's always possible.

My hope for this card is that we will FINALLY get a very clean analog input for the PC. I tried KBKs card, it was OK, better than the others, but nowhere near as clean as my off-the shelf gear.

One final thought : TEST THIS WITH THE JVC S9800 SVHS deck and insure it does NOT suffer from the AGC flicker issue that plagued the iScanPro, Omega-1 and CS-1. That would be embarassing.

-Ian

One reason would be to use a DVD Changer. With SDI out on a changer you have all digital path to hundreds of movies without getting up. :)

Seriously, I and my family can't be trusted to properly handle discs, put them back in their case, etc. A changer is our only hope. This *can* be done with a PC-DVD jukebox but it's way way over my budget. ($10k+)

Ken

ianken,
Well, if you say so, but again the key is that people have a choice. Some say DCDi softens the image a bit, so perhaps there's room for improvement. And DScaler is significantly better than video card deinterlacers; some say it's reasonably close to DCDi.

Hi Tom,

Thanks for the GREAT work! A few questions:

The FLI2200 as I remembered has a Red issue such as the "mouth-eating effect" and/or the "red-flicker" on Red color. Is this issue now fixed generally or your card has special design to avoid the issue?

On the analog video input, make sure the ADC handles Marcovision properly which is always a big issue with the BT8x8 input card and many other old video processor such as the first generation iScan Plus.

The DVD card addon is a killer. Bring it on ASAP. Just make sure the MPEG decoder has no chroma bug!

I'll use it for analog source (Laserdisc) and my Panny DVD player in 480i analog feed. I think I may pass the SDI mod and wait for the direct DVD addon.

Now where is the power buy? :)

regards,

Li On

PS: is there any upgrade path such as maybe to the FLI2300 in the future?

thebland,

Do you have HD sources?

sspears

Then, indeed, you would not be one of those people who says DCDi softens the image. Nor am I. But I've seen it said here in this forum.

But no matter, I used it only as an example. The point is that as DScaler or other deinterlacers improve, people may end up preferring them over DCDi either sometimes or always. If that time ever comes, it sure will be nice to be able to disable DCDi and keep all the other great features of the card.

I am an unabashed "HTPC-aphobe" & require the assistance of the learned (& a brother that's a Softy) to keep my regular PC usable.

The perfect use for Tom's Immersive card for me would be to mate with the MOVI DVD Player that Alan posted about in the Special Items forum.

One of the gurus behind MOVI agreed that this could work & may indeed be a future option.

This yields an HTPC with an embedded OS , that the PC "challenged" like myself can't screw up!

Someone above pointed out that this will represent the only Digital input option to utilizes DCDi. So let's assume that beyond the people that developed this card , not many people can comment on how it performs.

I am well aware that Key Digital will show a new algorithm at Cedia, Clearmatrix Pro , as will *** with Pixel Perfect ( Vigatec, I do not know about, but wanted to include to be pc) and that they all promise & should deliver better performance. In the here & now , most post that I have read seem to indicate that there is not yet an equal to DCDi for non-film sources.

And yes I would love to be able to watch non-film sources in relative quality!!

That makes this a pretty significant development. Thanks Tom.

BTW: Tom & the Immersive people are a joy to deal with. I have a modded SDI output Denon 3300 & found their service to be first class.

In my case this is on a GF4 440MX. The adaptive de-interlace is pretty good. Due to, uh, driver issues I have yet to try it with a current generation ATI part. Same goes for GF4 TI4X00.

Another reason to use this new card with an extneral DVD player is one a lot of HTPCers don't really put a priority on is ease of use. You could build a REALLY cheap PC, add this card (who knows how much $$$, I'm guessing close ot $1K) and set it up as a dedicated scaler.

If the input is clean then DScaler, a killer app, will have finally found the killer hardware for it's killer app. Even if you only use DScaler for sapect control.

Now I'll get that fancy HTPC case on order....

OfEr,

I do have HD sources.

What is your thinking?

Jeff

What rates can the 480i signal be scaled to, or does the 2200 just scale to 480p?


What process is involved to scale the image to 960p for those with 9" front projectors and finally how does the chip and HTPC process compare to Faroudja 3000, or Faroudja NRSplus(1024) process of scaling to 960P, or 1024.

LJG

LJG, i think it only deinterlaces. Your video card will be responsible for the scaling.

Tom,

I posted this question earlier but it was missed in all the excitement.

I am currently using a HTPC with Theatertek and an ATI Radeon. How will the picture compare if:

1.) I use an external DVD player feeding a 480i component signal.

2.) I use an external DVD player feeding a SDI signal to the scaler card.

I would love the ease of use factor without Theatertek but only if the quality would be the same or better.

Gary

Well, you PAL people will be happy to hear the engineers - all of them in fact - that worked with me on this are British. Needless to say they have a vested interest in PAL compatibility! :)

With that said, this is a good time to thank Paul Chambers for his friendship and contributions to this product. And more importantly, for introducing me to Chris Coley and Spencer Shanson that brought the card to life. Thanks guys!

the bland,

If you have HD sources, will you be routing them separately (I cannot see how this card can be used with HD).

Tom, specs pllllease...

Thanks are also due to Tom, for picking up the ball and running with it. It took vision and conviction to drive this forward, just on the basis of the conversations we had. It's easy to sit back and talk about this stuff in the abstract, it's a whole different ball game to take an idea and turn it into a product, plus the packaging, marketing, support, etc.

In my opinion, the end result is a killer product (though I may be slightly biased :) ) and I think Tom will do very well with it. For me, this was the missing piece for my HTPC.

For the curious, Chris and I first worked together at Philips on the DVX-8000. Chris worked with Spence at ReplayTV (and had worked with him before that). I used to work at TiVo, and am the 'proud father' of the original Philips Pronto (TSU-1000). All three of us are English ex-pats, two of us with front-projection home theaters.

Paul

the bland,

as oferlaor mentioned, since this card doesn't appear to handle HD sources, if you want deinterlace, scale and switch HD sources, it'll have to be done through some other means. This card will be the Killer card for all DVD, DSS, cable and any other SD source. However for anything 720p 1080i, the HD leeza would be able to switch and scale those appropriately. It'll also deinterlace and scale SD sources as well, but who knows how it'll compare to the holo3d. It'll be a tough call if you had to choose one over the other. The question is, what do watch more often HD or SD material.