Your processor has arrived - Page 3  

I am also semi-computer illiterate. i turned on my htpc (built by KD4) about six months ago and haven't touched it since. nothing to adjust, no crashes, nothing. I just use my dvd player like i always did(sdi). This card will be a replacement for the sdi silk i have. and i assume an sdi-silk killer. don't be afraid of an htpc, they can work as smoothly as a scaler. and with this card several input issues are solved.

Tom, can this input hdtv from my dtc-100 or is there a bandwith issue. can a passthrough be made to send it straight through to my video card. sorry, i don't know much about the hdtv signal. This has been one sticking point with my htpc. i don't like the hi-pix.

Hi Jeff

This is a great card and great for every user who wants to go with HTCP solution. GREAT JOB TOM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

HD Leeza (1 box) is positioned to compete against all 5 Faroudja scalers, NR, DCS, 2200, 3000, 5000, for 1 low price. Our marketing plan calls for X number of units for the year and with 240 custom installers Nationwide, and with the kind of responds i have been getting from installers, we will accomplish the goal in 8 months.
Thank you

PS. Jeff go for the card!

thebland,

I love your trying to get KeyDigital to lower their prices before the product has been officially released, reviewed, or have an official MSRP...

What will they lower their prices to?!

Immersive hasn't announced pricing either...

Hopefully, at Cedia we will be able to compare prices, compare the merits of each product and be able to rationally decide which product is right for any particular system.

Michael, is Faroudja still in the box business? It looks like Genesis has decided to go out of the box business (why else would they be selling chips to competing products like the Holo3DGraph, and the Dune-F).

I think that pretty soon you will be competing only against Vigatec, you*know*who and Focus Enhancements.

I think Genesis decided to suck the Faroudja portion of their business for all it's worth.

James,

As was said, this won't be taking HDTV. I've got an RCA DTC-100 (well not working yet but hey) and I plan on running VGA straight to my projector for HDTV sources and s-video into my HTPC or video processor to scale the normal definition stuff.

You want this card doing the deinterlacing of standard definition stuff anyway, since the DTC-100 is pretty bad in that regard.

Carl, that's a good solution. I think that this basically resolves RGB drivethrough.

Tom, will you be showing this at CEDIA?

Is it possible that Faroudja is selling their current technology because they have something else coming out in the near future that will be superior the current technology? Or did they realize they can make more money selling their technology than creating their own scalers

yeh, that's what i was thinking i will do. just didn't want to have to buy another input card and cables for the PJ. (and run them 25' through the ceiling)

For what is it is worth - as far as I know Faroudja is still making scalers. I was given a license to use the DCDi logo for this card as I successfully argued that the HTPC market is not Faroudja's normal demographic.

you got that right.

*laughing* No, I don't think the HTPC bunch is the typical "write a check for the 25,000 processor" crowd ..... :D

I think Genesis is keeping Faroudja making boxes, but sees that its profits will be larger if they can sell 1 million chips at 50/each rather than 1000 boxes at 10,000 each ...... they'll try and do both at the same time, that's my guess.

Tom, mazel tov -- great card!

Cheers

Michael, is Faroudja still in the box business? It looks like Genesis has decided to go out of the box business (why else would they be selling chips to competing products like the Holo3DGraph, and the Dune-F).

I think that pretty soon you will be competing only against Vigatec, you*know*who and Focus Enhancements.

I think Genesis decided to suck the Faroudja portion of their business for all it's worth. [/b][/quote]

Hi Ofer,

Faroudja is in the box business. They just introduced DCS box.
Thank you

Hey Michael,

The DCS seems like two products stuck in the same box. It looks like a tiny incremental step over the NRS. Whereas Faroudja regularly released new boxed products that showed off its technologies (NRS, then the release of the FLI2200). The FLI2300 is also a very tiny incremental step and not a groundshaking one like the FLI2200.

What I'm sensing, since Genesis took over, is that they're going to move the scaling/deinterlacing chip development over to the Genesis side (big mistake, IMO, as the Faroudja engineers have proven themselves much better over the years). Now that they have the Faroudja technology in future products (mass production/chip products), I sense that they're milking the Faroudja portion dry.

They'll keep making small changes (the DCS is alot of work for their marketing people, less so for their engineers) until the market no longer sees Faroudja as a market leader.

Tom,

That's fantastic! I think the design, with the internal deinterlacing chip right on the board is a fantastic design move!

Tom, one more question:

In addition to selling the card to HTPC integrators, will any of the integrators be selling this as essentially a scaler?

Originally when I saw the spec I thought that DCDi would make DScalers deinterlacing largly redundent, then I remembered something. Vigatec were unable to get 72Hz to work smoothly with the F-Dune. DScaler on the other hand does 72Hz extremely well thanks mainly to the Judder Terminator software. So if like me you have a CRT projector, you will want to run DScaler sans DCDi for film based DVDs. This makes DScaler support very important rather than an after thought. A fudged version of DScaler isn't good enough, especially is its not version 4. What steps if any are being taken so that the cards support is addded to the standard program?

Jeff

Hi Stacey and Tom:

___I would assume the PQ from an SDI modded player of choice --> SDI input of the Holo3Dgraph --> DScaler --> Radeon would be superior to that coming from the Component output of a progressive scan STB (player of choice) into the Holo3Dgraph --> DScaler or HW Algorithm --> Radeon but you two are the only ones that may have seen the HW up close and personal? Would there be any chance for a few Bjoern Roy type zoomed in stills with a 3 or 4-megapixel digital camera from a 30 degree angle so as to not get in the way of a few particular scenes or even better, a screen shot using DScaler’s screen capture utility similar to the ones linked below? I would love to see these images in a side by side either linked into the forums or placed on Immersive’s web site directly? It couldn’t take all of maybe an hour or two to produce and publish the stills and I am sure many would be interested in seeing the stills of the following scenes with cropped zooms if possible using the two different methods of input:

Take a look at the upright columns of scene 1 from his “The Patriot†SB review comparing SB to std. release.

http://home.t-online.de/home/bjoern....riot/02_c1.jpg

Also look at the camera tripod gear/ring of scene 1 from his “Vertical Limit†SB review which also compared a SB to a std release.

http://home.t-online.de/home/bjoern....imit/06_c1.jpg

___Not that you can lock down the exact images nor scale to a 1920x1080p image and crop similarly using either Photoshop or ACDSee, but I would be very interested in the differences between the two types of input devices in a side by side similar to that shown above myself.

___On another note, I have access to some early DX9 betas as well as the Radeon 6118 DX9 compliant betas for XP and 2K and 9050 DX9 compliant beta’s for Millennium. I would assume Stacey has access to both DX9 and Radeon driver beta’s that are even further along in development and would have something more to add in regards to display quality improvements many will hopefully receive using the latest DxVA enhancements with fully DX9 compliant drivers, an almost completely DX9 compliant card (an R300 cored 9700 probably), and a Holo3Dgraph card. In other words, if either of you have anything more to add along the lines of future improvements, this is probably the perfect time and place to pass along these upcoming improvements ;)

___Good Luck to the both of you and thanks in advance for any additional details that you can provide.

___Wayne R. Gerdes
___Hunt Club Farms Landscaping Ltd.
___Waynegerdes@earthlink.net

Hi Jeff. I have one Dscaler team member involved now and are trying to contact John to make sure that Dscaler is at the current 4.0 level when we ship. I've spent a fair amount of money including the FPGA in the design so that the card would be versatile and we can route signals around with little effort. In short - I love you guys man (an American commercial...not sure if it airs in the UK). :) Dscaler support has been important to me since day one thus the selection of the CX23882. I hope to hear from John soon.

Tom,

Any information regarding video latency?

Sorry to be such a pain in the a$$, but any preliminary specs would be really appreciated!

What are your plans for CEDIA?

Hi Wayne!

Cool tests. Sure I can give those tests a go. But right now I need to find time between phone calls, emails, and PMs to get ANY info I can up on my web site. :) Then I'll need to buy a 3-4 megapixel camera and the SB version of Patriot. ;)

My guess on the outcome is that you will be very surprised at how good the analog inputs look on this card. It pains me to say that since I'm incented to push SDI to a degree - but the analog inputs across the board (component, s-video, composite) are simply the cleanest you'll have ever seen on your HTPC.

Nice to hear from you again!

I'll have to measure latency but it is minimal the last I was told. I have a Denon 5803 and are pretty sure that the lip sync delay is at default right now - as in none - and I can't really discern anything. I'm sure there is latency, but I'm having a tough time seeing it. I suppose as we add features to the FPGA and/or software that the latency would increase though.

I'm trying to get specs up on my web site. I've discovered this past year that I'm a bit of a web-site development dyslexic - but I need to get more info up and will soon.

Yes, I'm showing at CEDIA. I'm showing with Crystal View (formerly Vidikron) in booth 308 Hall B. We'll have stacked 9" CRTs and some other goodies so do drop by if your coming stateside.

Tom,

It's really tempting, this year! I'll have to see if I can scrape up any excuse to drop by en route somewhere else...

What is the advantage of this card to SDI Silk? Only more options or better PQ because of the other ( Philipps) chipset?
regards Jürgen

I have always stated that if someone could put an F chip on a PC card they would be a millionaire, Tom congratulations go and kick ass with this thing. I just saw an ad for it in one of the HT mags and it looks great.

I have some questions for Stacey or Tom.

Stacey wrote "the moth-eaten problem is in the 2220, not the 2200."

That's good news but, why hasn't F switched over to the 2200 chip yet? I have seen an NR released just last week that suffered from the moth eaten red issue. My real question is does anyone other than Tom have the 2200 chip and why hasn't F used it in their own boxes?

Next question is for TOM. Have you figured out a way to correct the issues with F's cross color suppression problems as noted in both of our scaler reviews? Just wondering if you fixed it or maybe it was corrected in the new 2200 chip or maybe nothing can be done, just wondering.

Final question is related to refresh rates. It has been stated that the F algorithyms cannot function at 72hz and that all attempts to do so have failed and resulted in shuddering and image tearing. Can this card do 72hz and if so, how have you overcome the "inherant" problem F has when used at 72hz?

I can't wait to see this thing, it's about time someone got smart.

ericbee, I thought that the 2200 is what has been used in several prog. scan DVD players all along, such as Panasonic's RP-56 and the Skyworth 1050. From what I've seen, the 2220 is mostly an optional add-on video procesor for the 2200. The recent press release for a new chip was for the 2300 series.

Jürgen,

First, the fact that there's a Faroudja deinterlacing inside is a big benefit. The component input is also only on this unit.

The SDI silk card relies on DScaler, whereas immersive is going to try and bundle different pieces of software - so each person can use their own.

SDI silk is a completely open system - source code for the drivers is on the website and it is completely customizable (but it requires some work from you). I think that Immersive will try and come out with a completely integral solution.

With the Holo3DGraph, you can basically pick and choose which software you would like to use - Dscaler, their own stuff, or something else. You can select which deinterlacing algorithm you want (onboard, upcoming DirectX 9 extensions or DScaler).

Not sure about pricing (I've no idea what the price is for either unit), but it's worth checking out.

However, since Immersive has been rolling out SDI modded players - they can probably come out with a very nice bundle (DVD player + card, or an entire HTPC + modded DVD).

Another difference is that Immersive will sell through integrators. Not quite sure how Silk is sold (could be do it yourself or prebuilt systems, not really sure).

So, you basically have alot more choice now regarding the type of solution you can build or purchase. More choice = better for us consumers.

No problem Tom, I have the camera and the dvds, so I only need just one more thing......! Please send it to my address at....!:D
Paul

Can someone explain the hype to a newbie?

As I understand it:

- This card is a video capture card, so I can use my Radeon 8500 without having to upgrade to an All-In-Wonder
- Deinterlacing is hard to do, and software DVD players don't do a great job. This card implements the DCDi algorithm in hardware, which is better.
- This card does all the processing in the digital domain, and outputs digital video.
- MPEG decoding is hard. This card may have on-board decoding, which will reduce the load on the processor. (But won't help with DiVX and other encodings.)

Questions:

- Is there some other benefit I'm missing?
- How big a difference does the all-digital processing make?
- So does this mean that an All-In-Wonder inherently does an A-D and D-A transformation?
- Will software deinterlacers ever catch up, thereby making the hardware implementation unnecessary?
- Given +1GHz CPU speeds, why not just do all the scaling and deinterlacing in software?
- What hardware and/or software does this card replace? (external hardware scaler, software scaler, TV capture card, MPEG decoding card, more?)
- Newer DLP projectors have on-board DCDi. Why do I need this card if I'm already paying for DCDi? Or asked another way, does this mean I can look for a cheaper projector without on-board DCDi?
coppit

Hi Tom:

___Looks like an excellent card and by all means, go purchase “The Patriot†in SB, it’s worth it!

___Stacy, given most will be using the card to view film, I believe it would be best to view film close-ups. The screen shots Bjoern used would be perfect candidates for discerning small details that would not otherwise be seen from 10’ +. The reason I mentioned the Digital camera was that I don’t know of any DScaler algorithms and/or cards that can handle native progressive signals just yet? Just another neat trick that this card can perform and a native screen capture using DScaler would be the best bet if it is available on the Component inputs as was already mentioned. It would simply be a great way to discern the difference between the two inputs is all.

___On the second item … Stacey, what are your thoughts on the upcoming DxVA/DX9 compliant cards/drivers/SW as far as future display quality improvements in conjunction with a Holo3Dgraph carded HTPC solution?

___Thanks again.

___Wayne R. Gerdes
___Hunt Club Farms Landscaping Ltd.
___Waynegerdes@earthlink.net