Has anyone seen the Lumagen Vision or Vision Pro? - Page 3  

Patrick,

These units appear to be a tweaker's delight. Any luck on getting some units out for review (esp. to the hometheaterhifi.com guys such as sspears)?

-Jon

Is the Vision(Pro) shipping yet?

Jon- we're planning on contacting hometheaterhifi next week regarding a review. Tentatively we are set to be reviewed in a home theater magazine in an April or May issue.
PAGZ- yes the VisionPro & Vision are both shipping. We have been approved for credit card processing but its not quite online yet. In the meantime if you wish to pay by check we will cover the shipping (normally $25).

Patrick Harkin

Greetings,

Alright...I did have a careful look at the effect of the Vision on Resolution and Y/C delay.

As far as I can tell... the Vision has no detrimental effect on those, better it can help solve Y/C delay problems.

I enlisted my 2 young kids (arguably with much better eyesight than I) to double check that what I saw was no figment of my imagination nor the result of too many hours spend staring at CTR monitors..

On the resolution side, as I stated before, the 6.75 MHz pattern of the AVIA 200 TVL test pattern was clearly visible. Vertical resolution extended well beyond the 500 mark. My conclusion is that the Vision does not affect the resolution of your sources.

On the Y/C delay side, the Vision has what they call the "Chroma Phase" adjustment , which essentially helps you get rid of the problem. I used the Y/C delay test pattern from both the Avia and Video Essential DVD's. For both DVD players I used, I ended up setting the CPHASE to 3. The resulting pattern was almost perfect.. with, maybe, just a very small red delay...I needed to have my nose on the screen to see it...but the kids did agree with me. I could be that having smaller steps for that setting would help?

Since both DVD players I used required the same amount of calibration and since I do not have any reference, I can not tell where the delay actually occurs, but the flexibility of the Vision makes this a non issue.

I do have a problem with the Vision... but it will be of no concern to most of you. The top (yes only the top) of the PAL image from my Satellite receiver is seriously cropped. I feel increasingly confident that this is not a setup problem.

As Jon put it, the Vision is a "tweaker's delight" and so far I am very please with my decision to buy one (even with the cropping mentioned above). At its current price (USD 999), it is indeed good value.

Just my 2 cents,
Cheers,
François

Patrick,

I would love to order the vision, but, I don't think you guys ship to where im stationed at. Well the website only specified us and canada. Any way I'm stationed in Germany, and I have an APO address (military address) and a regular street address (since I live on the economy). Any chance you guys will ship overhere?

François:

Here's one that I think a closeup digital photograph would be nice to show off.

The sidewise resolution wedge in the 200 TVL test pattern, at 480p and a few selected higher output resolutions. I think that the analog computer screen would give the best results. There is always some moire above about 350 lines of resolution, and it is very difficult to describe in words.

Thanks.

Allan

Allan,

I'll see what I can do to get you a picture.

Cheers,
François

Hi,

I took pictures of the monitor while displaying the 200 TVL pattern from the Avia DVD.

It was the first time I was taking digital picture on a monitor... So the camera was a little too close to the screen and the resulting images are a little fuzzy.

Anyway.. for what it's worth... (The files are not small.)

The sideline resolution can be seen at
http://www.auroratech.com/tmpimg/h-resol.jpg

The YC delay at

http://www.auroratech.com/tmpimg/yc-delay.jpg

The links will become inactive in a few days...

Did I misinterpret anything?

François

François:

Exactly what I was looking for. Thanks so much.

Allan

Francois- I sent you a note on a fix for the PAL video problem you ran into but wanted to post it here too. We did have a bug with PAL video in the rev 020403 firmware (press menu,0,9,0,3 to check version). The symptom was the first 60 lines of video are cropped and in its place video from the bottom of the screen is displayed. To patch it manually do the following.

Enter service menu: (press menu,0,9,1,0)
goto misc->regs
for reg:0 set addr to: 63a, set data to: 60a7 (to enter numbers use
arrow keys to inc/decrement, not numbers on remote)
then press enter

Now if you reselect the input the register patch will be applied and you
should have the top part of PAL video coming in correctly.

Don't forget to save your configuration which includes the patched register
(menu, save->save)

cheers,
Patrick

Allan,

You are welcome.... Out of curiosity, what do you make of the pictures?

Patrick,

Cool....I will try this later on today. I do remember that my soft rev was dated Feb 4th...And the description would fit my problem.

Also knowing the access to the service menu is always cool.... Now if we could have a description of all the codes/functions ;-)

Cheers,
François

François:

I would say the chroma delay is negligible the way you have it set. I estimated +0.03 for red, -0.03 for green, +0.03 for blue.

The resolution looks excellent.

Allan

Greetings,

It looks as though the fix Patrick gave does work... The only thing is that in order to get the top of the image with PAL DVD's I have to set the output aspect ratio to 1.85:1 instead of 16:9.

So with this.. my last real issue with the scaler has been addressed.

Cheers,
François

Edited: Changed "input aspect ration" to "output aspect ratio"

frawau,

Can you post some screenshots of movies, etc. that you've scaled with the vision.

I'm impressed with their customer service so far. Resolution does indeed look good. May be the best bang for $1K around.

I have to say, it certainly looks like there's no point in buying an IScan Ultra unless you need the additional inputs and only need 480p.

-Jon

Pagz,

A screen shot taken using the (Avia/VE calibrated) PJ or the (uncalibrated) monitor? I would think the monitor would be easier.. and faster.

Any particular movie/scene you'd like to see?

Huey,

I agree with you. The are very very nice to deal with and very responsive.

Jon,
What I concluded when I bought the Vision... unseen. I hoped for a great scaler at a reasonable price.. So far so good.

Regards,
François

I have an 1999 Mitsu 65803 HDTV which will not accept a 480p signal, so I have become disenchanted with the 480i DVD playback. But my HD images are stunning. It sounds like for a grand I can upgrade my system, including my C-Band signal, to run through the HD input without having to buy a whole new RPTV. My limited research says this is the best unit at this price point out there. Does anyone here see a problem using the Vision as my solution for this?

MR: I would say that this Lumagen is precisely what you need. When the TV has an inferior de-interlacer, you can't go wrong with a Silicon Image chip. And the Lumagen's scaler to 1080i completes the picture.

You won't be able to take advantage of a progressive DVD player. But the progressive player loses its edge over an external de-interlacer in this situation. The progressive player has an all digital path from MPEG decoder to de-interlacer, but has to go analog on its way to a scaler elsewhere. The DVD player has to go analog (and interlaced) to the Lumagen but the path from de-interlace to scaler (inside the Lumagen) is all digital. Both go analog to the TV.

(I am surprised that your HDTV set doesn't accept 480p.)

papaek,

You wouldn't happen to by anywhere near NYC, would you?

-Jon

MRinDenver,
we actually have a 1999 Mitsu WS-73903 73" rearscreen HDTV that we use the Vision on and it looks great.
These Mitsubishis actually have a service mode 480p but it disables all other features (like 1080i, 480i) so its quite user unfriendly.

-Patrick

papaek,

If your interrested in doing a shoutout against an NRS, let me know.

-Jon

Does the scaler do 960 p resolution?
Thank you Joey Calda

Joey, it's programmable in scanline increments from 480p-1080p (as well as 1080i). So it would do 959p if you asked it to.
-Patrick

Patrick:

To help me better understand the usage of adjusting vertical resolution in scan line increments, could you tell me which is the best explanation:

1. Doing programmable vertical resolution does not change the horizontal refresh rate or total scan line count. Deviating too far from the last choice of vertical resolution preset becomes illegal, for example the number of active scan lines cannot exceed the number of total scan lines.

2. Following the last vertical resolution preset, doing programmable vertical resolution also adjusts the total scan line count by an equal amount. Since the number of scan lines in the vertical retrace interval is different for, say, 720p (30) versus 480p (45), doing preset 480p followed by programmable 720 does not equal the standard 720p. Instead I should always do a vertical resolution preset first and use programmable vertical resolution for fine tuning only.

3. Doing programmable vertical resolution adjusts the total scan line count by an equal amount at first except if I choose an active scan line count close to that of a different preset, the total scan line count (and horizontal refresh) jumps so the vertical retrace interval is correct for the nearest preset. This would make programmable vertical resolution of, say, 720 synonymous with choosing preset 720p. It would also require that, to create a custom resolution of, say, 719p with a nonstandard vertical retrace interval of 50 scan lines (46.14 KHz for 60.00 fps), the horizontal refresh rate has to be entered after the vertical resolution programming is.

Thanks.

Allan

Allan, by scanline increments I mean that the user isn't limited to just 15 preset modes between 480p and 1080p. Of your 3 choices #3 is the closest. Timing for modes that are non-standard (.ie 703p) are interpolated between standard modes, rather than jumping to the nearest standard mode. Yes, entering "720" in the "vres" command is exactly the same as pressing the 720p button on our remote. You could adjust the horizontal refresh rate after setting a non-standard mode if you needed to adjust the timing for your display.

-Patrick

Anyone know how to contact sspears to see about reviewing a Vision? I haven't had much luck finding contact info for hometheaterhifi.com or Stacey.

-Patrick

Patrick,

I tried to get in touch with him as well. IDK what else to do, short of posting a message with "SSPEARS - please read!" which isn't really a nice thing to do...

-Jon