DVDO VP30 and Panny Plasmas..Anyone getting NR? - Page 3  

It's fine to discuss it, but the point I was making is that if you can't actually *do* it for all practical purposes you're left with HDMI/DVI. Thus the problem with using a VP into the panny digital blade if you can't get 1:1.

I think we're both getting at the same thing really.

Can you post your settings?

Yeah but maybe you can do it, based on the previous post here. I'm not willing to give up so easily because my experience has been that the PQ is significantly better with a VP 1:1 mapped to the PDP. I'm comparing it to a very good dvd player (Denon 5900) running directly to the PDP via DVI. I don't want to exaggerate but the difference in my PQ between 5900 to PDP and now my Denon 3910 SDI modded to VP to PDP is significant. I don't think I could go back to a life without an external VP. These issues just get worse with a larger PDP and a 65 incher is in my future. :D

Oh! I thought you were already locked in with your display. You have other options, you know. I'll PM you.

I am locked into my display, which is a 6th gen and I'm using a current gen VP. I'm looking to the near future. I'm selling my 6th gen Panny, moving to back to the US, planning on buying a 8th gen 50 incher, have recently purchased a digital Mosqutio and will purchase a new gen VP whenever they hit the market. So there will be an issue with HDCP. Life is complicated! :D

Hi - add me to the list of people who can't get NR when running the VP30 through HDMI into a Panny 8th Gen. I have the 50PHD8UK, with a TY-FB7HM HDMI blade and can certainly read 720p and 1080i, but no amount of configuring on the advanced settings seems to get me any picture when trying to match 1:1. I've certainly tried all the posted settings in these various threads, but, as previously noted, many of them are for the HD+, not the VP30; or for a DVI connection, not HDMI (although I would have thought those would be identical). I'm a bit frustrated as this is clearly a selling point on ABT's part. If anyone's been able to make this work, I'd be hugely grateful for the settings - but it sounds like no one has... If I ever get it to work, I'll be sure to post.

notanewbie: Thanks for the confirmation that I'm not nuts! I'd happily try it with a DVI blade but I don't really want to drop another $145 for a new piece of hardware, given that I had to pay extra for the HDMI blade already. I think I'll wait a bit and see if DVDO comes up with any solution (or at least a response!) and/or if anyone else has any luck. Meanwhile, I'll keep fiddling. The PQ on the current settings (outputting 1080i) is still awfully good, so I'm not really suffering... If in a month or so the HDMI seems to be a complete no-go - and if someone can absolutely confirm NR through a DVI hookup, then I'll bite the bullet.
Best,
EN

Got this from DVDO

Panasonic 50†Plasma Display (continued)

(TH-50PHD8UK on DVI) w/ TY-42TM6D DVI card (w/HDCP):

H Shift 292
H Size 1366
H Front 22
H Sync 112
H Back 292
H Total 1792
V Shift 3
V Size 786
V Front 3
V Sync 18
V Back 17
V Total 806

Can someone confirm this settings? I have not received my DVI blade yet.

I sent the below message to Panasonic via their web support and received a response to contact a Plasma Engineer for support.

-----------------------------------------------------
Model: TH-65PHD8UK
Issue: I am considering buying the TH-65PHD8UK Plasma but will not do so without knowing that I can feed the panel from a video processor its Native Resolution of 1366 x 768. Can the exact timing parameters be provided to me via email so I can set my Lumagen VisionPro HDP Video Processor up to output the timing to TH-65PHD8UK via DVI or HDMI. I need the following parameters: VTotal = ?, VRes = 768, Vsync = ?, VFront = ?, HTotal = ?, HRes = 1366, HSync = ?, HFront = ?.

I currently own an NEC 61XM2 61" Plasma and NEC tech support sent me a spreadsheet with the VESA timings needed to achieve Native Rate and I am hoping Panasonic is willing to do the same as this will make my purchasing decision final.

Thank you in advance.
-----------------------------------------------------

Response from PBTSCSERVICE@us.panasonic.com:

Hello,

For personalized assistance with this Panasonic Plasma product please contact the Panasonic Plasma Engineers at:

800-524-1448 then press OPTION 1 on the voice menu.

Regards,

Panasonic Technical Support
-----------------------------------------------------

It's worth a call...

it should be noted that I was successful on a 65PHD7. Please do not assume that the combination of the HDMI blade on the PHD7 and the 65PHD7 is the same as the HDMI+PHD8 versions. They are, in fact, quite different.

On paper, the PHD7 was not supposed to do NR either (the fact that I did it, took about half a day worth of work in research) but was more "luck than brains" (an old Israeli saying).

There's a stronger chance the DVI blade will work with NR than the HDMI.

I think it's worth mentioning here that the problems with NR through the HDMI blade appear to be specific to Panasonic's implementation not due to HDMI itself.
There should be no problem with NR at these resolutions through HDMI. It may be a simple oversight in design on the part of Panasonic or it could be some compatibility issue with the VP30.

Are you sure about that? You already hinted earlier that the DVI blade would support more resolutions than HDMI. But if I look at the official Panasonic blade technical specs, the DVI and HDMI blades officially support exactly the same resolutions.

madshi,

That was my experience in the past. Keep in mind that the 7 series had two different DVI blades. One was identical to the HDMI one, and the second (which was more for HTPC applications) had quite a few more resolutions that it was compatible with. It took some real digging to find that info for the 7 series, but that's how it was with the 7 series.

I don't really have any experience with any of the PHD8's yet.

Sorry, can't help you as I have neither the VP30 or the 8UK. As I stated earlier and in my message to Panasonic, I have an NEC 61XM2 and a Lumagen VisionPro HDP. Without official NR support, I will never purchase a Panasonic as my main display for use with a VP.

Between this and your other thread, I have to say this is the display mfg. responsibility to provide the timing info. Again, I do not understand Panasonic's position on this. This is not a major trade secret, but a major design flaw!

FYI, my NEC has a NR resolution of 1365 x 768; however, due to the design at the time of release NR is actually achieved at 1360 x 768 based upon the standard VESA timing. Hardware and software limitations force the use of a timing divisible by 8. In the newer NEC's, hardware and software have been updated and they do in fact support 1365 x 768; however, it is not documented in their manual or model info sheet, but if you contact them they are happy to provide the timings.

Panasonic's refusal to provide the info necessary in inexcusable. Sure there is a possibility there is something on the DVDO side also related to software or a timing issue with a chip etc. as tolerances in different production runs do vary, but without having official timing info from Panasonic, there is no baseline to establish where the problem is.

Bottom line, the burden is on Panasonic to provide the info. Keep calling Panasonic until you get an answer. If you can not get an answer or this remains unsupported consider another display if you have to have NR support.

Here's a test that should at least confirm if NR can be achieved on a 8UK with the HDMI blade. You must have a fairly new Laptop with an ATI or nVidia Display Card and DVI output. With the laptop off hook it up DVI to HDMI; turn the 8UK on and set it to the proper input; turn on and boot the laptop; If the HDMI card is outputting the proper EDID info the Graphics Card will autimatically sync to the optimal resolution. If you boot successfully and it is full screen, check your display properties to see what resolution is being output. If it is 1360 x 768 or 1366 x 768 it accepts NR. At that point, someone should be able to read the timings via powerstrip or monifo or similar.

That's quite interesting, I didn't know that. AFAIK, there are no new DVI blades for 8G. So the 7G DVI blades should still be the same. I only know the TY-42TM6D. Does the other one (the one for HTPC) have a different label? And you achieved 1:1 pixel mapping with the HTPC DVI blade? Thanks...

Not only that, but I'm not sure based on what the reports have been if anyone has gotten true 1:1 with DVI or HDMI with these displays. NR seems to be pretty common, but every report I've seen of NR over DVI has also had some indication to me that the person wasn't acheiving 1:1. It's always "the h-line pattern looks good, the v-line pattern just looks o.k.", or "I had to put an extra two pixels resolution in to compensate for not filling the screen" or "I had to adjust the output size to provide 2 pixel overscan" and on and on. If you read between the lines (pun intended :) ) it's probably not 1:1.

NR and 1:1 over analog yes. NR over DVI yes. NR and 1:1 over DVI I'm not convinced.

Depending on the DVI and/or HDMI receivers used and how they were implemented by Panasonic I would say there is a chance the two cards could accept different resolutions. They probably have a table/list of acceptable timings for the input side of these cards. I would not assume that the same engineers at Panasonic who made the DVI card also made the HDMI card - as such, the input list of resolutions may vary from card to card.

If someone has an HTPC and a DVI-to-HDMI cable it would be interesting to see if they could get the Panny to accept NR. My guess is that this is not a DVDO issue at all though, but rather, Panny electing to keep HDMI limited to the basics (480/720/1080i).

It's possible to have NR without the possibility to get 1:1 pixel mapping - at least through analog. I'm not sure about DVI. When I set up my 50PHD8 with my iScan HD+, I had no problems at all to get NR, but in order to get NR + 1:1 pixel mapping, I had to change some timings. There was no way to get 1:1 pixel mapping with the default timings.

However, I'm absolutely sure that Ofer did achieve 1:1 pixel mapping + NR. He wouldn't have talked about having achieved NR with a Pany plasma if it wasn't 1:1 pixel mapping.

Ofer did it through HDMI and RichB did, as well. However, both did it with a 7G Panasonic and RichB is using a Lumagen, I believe.

Again, the Panny HDMI card may have a different input resolution list than the DVI card. Obviously, if the Lumagen can do it (or an HTPC) though then it is the VP30. From what I am reading here though there hasn't been any confirmations of NR with your exact display and HDMI card, has there?

Sort of my point. A 7G is not an 8G. An HDMI card is not a DVI card.

Perhaps if somone can confirm use of an 8G with an HDMI card fed by a Lumagen at NR then we'll be getting somewhere. Right now its a mixed bag and I am still leaning toward the 8G and/or the 8G's HDMI card as being the culprit until someone proves me wrong. DVDO and Lumagen give you so much granular control over timings that I just cannot believe it is the scaler....but who knows.

Feeding NR successfully doesn't necessarily mean 1:1 is possible. Feeding NR still should provide excellent PQ but won't completely bypass the internal scaler of the pdp.
By definition, 1:1 means feeding exactly NR not one pixel more/less and exactly zero overscan on the output side. H-line and V-line patterns should be perfect one-pixel wide rows with no distortion/moire patterning on either test pattern. I've never seen a report where someone has satisfied these criteria through the Panny panels over DVI. There also seems to be a general consensus that NR over DVI is somewhat tricky/difficult to begin with.