Anthem D2/D2v/AVM50/AVM50v/ARC1 tweaking guide - Page 556

I'm a NEWBIE to FW 1.33 and ARC.

So far so good but I don't have that much time on THIS configuration.

I was wondering what kinds of media adapters people are using with their D2/AVM-50?

I am planning on getting a digital media adapter to play media from a central Netowrk Attached Storage (NAS) server. I know someone posted on the ReadyNAS which looks quite good.

One thing I've noticed about media adapters (or streamers) is they seem to do deinterlacing and processing themselves - expecting to be connected to a TV. For instance, I haven't been able to find good support for sending out native resolution (e.g. 480i for one media file, 720p for the next).

Of course, we who buy a D2/AVM-50 want to do all the processing in the Anthem world.

Any experiences and suggestions? I am really looking for devices that use a NAS as their storage instead of having a big HDD inside.

My avm-50 just stopped working. I have sound but zero pic. I tried different HDMI cables. I get pic when I hook up dvd direct to tv.

None of my inputs from vcr sat blu hd-dvd or cable gives me any pic.

I cant even get anthem menu on the screen. I have tried unplugging unit and turning back on.. still nothing.

Any ideas?

I'd be contacting Anthem asap. Sometimes my video doesn't come on when I first turn it on and I have to power off and on again to reboot things, but it eventually will come on.

I am not an electrical engineer, (Certainly not limiting responses to EEs only!) and need to know if what I have done to my D2 will have left a scar......

Well, I didn't do it directly to my D2 or any of my equipment for that matter but here's the story. Setting up for Halloween, I pulled out my copy of spooky music and sound effects to play on my zone two Boston Acoustics outdoor speakers. It was working superbly. (just in front of the outdoor spkrs I hung my animatronics 6' white gauze ghoul with red LED eyes, all lit up by black lights. A little over the top for the less than 3 y/o crowd but my teenage daughter loved it as did her 5 friends who used our house as a staging post).

In addition, I have a Van de Graaff generator set up at the front door to demonstrate my re-animation techniques; only for the stout of heart.

Having tested the set up ahead of time, everything worked great, individually. Trying to run the D2 and the static charge generator together was a NO-GO however. Last night, with the generator already on, the D2 simply would not complete the start up routine. It would power up and immediately power off. I was unable to ascertain the cause of the D2 annomaly last night, (and so no spooky music), but this morning I had the D2 running some mood music and flipped the static charge generator on to show a friend who stopped by to pick up his daughter after the sleep over. THUMP, (what was THAT???), and Thump again, and again. I shut off the generator, said good by to my friend and investigated. Sure enough, the D2 was cutting in and out but only while the generator was on.

I'm not testing it ANYmore. I know the cause of the D2 mis-start was related to the static field created by the generator, but why wouldn't the D2 start? and why does it cut in and out when I turn the generator on? The generator and the D2 are separated by at least 35 feet. One of the french doors to the theater was always open but the two items are in separate rooms. Admittedly, the genterator is one of the large models producing between 240k to 400k volts, and I run it turned up High! (BEWARE, don't get too close! Even with a grounding electrode placed close to the generator to aid in the production of small lightning bolts, it'll jump to anything that ventures within the attack zone.)

Is there some sort of protective cicuitry in the D2 or am I killing it slowly? or BOTH To restart the D2, I have to flip the switch in the rear and wait a while. When it restarts, all SEEMS fine.

mark

Make sure you have a good set of Saved User and/or Installer Settings and then do a Reload Factory Defaults. Use the Front Panel display for this. Now power cycle the Anthem using the remote and also using the back panel power switch.

If you don't have video after the Reload Factory Defaults and power cycle, use the Front Panel to go into the Setup > Video Output configuration and manually adjust the entries in there for your display. Try 480p output resolution (not 480i) as that is the simplest output resolution for both the Anthem and your display.

If you have both HDMI and Component cables connected, try video from both of them to your display. Make sure you have your display set to select the correct cable input.

Select an input on the Anthem that has nothing connected to it, and see if you can get any of the Anthem's on-screen displays to come up (volume adjustment and so forth). If so, use the Video Source Adjust / Patterns menu to verify that you can get clean video from the Anthem's internally generated patterns. If you discover you can get that stuff but not the Setup menu then the problem is in the S-video path inside the Anthem. (The Setup menu is an internally generated S-video source.)

Hook up your computer and reload the V1.33 firmware. Don't skip any steps. Make sure you Reload Factory Defaults before doing the firmware install and that you don't have any powered HDMI connections during the firmware install. After the firmware install, do another Reload Factory Defaults (do *NOT* load your saved settings yet), and test again to see if you can get video from the Anthem's internally generated on-screen displays at 480p resolution.

If you still don't have video after the firmware install, power off and disconnect everything from the the Anthem -- you are going to have to do this anyway to get it serviced. If possible, take the Anthem to a different TV. Take a flashlight and carefully check the HDMI sockets on the Anthem for any sign of pin damage. Also check the ends of the HDMI cables you are using. If you find damaged sockets, *STOP HERE* as plugging a new cable in may just damage the end of the new cable.

Connect up ONLY power and either an HDMI cable or a set of Component cables to the TV (preferably a different TV) and see if you can get video now using the Anthem's internally generated on-screen displays. If possible use a fresh cable. The idea here is to completely eliminate anything strange going on inside your TV and also any possibility that there is a shorted cable connected to the Anthem that might be screwing up its video output. If you get video then we can isolate what's going wrong in your normal setup. If you don't get video then your Anthem definitely needs service.
--Bob

Odds are your Van de Graaff generator was putting enough load on the power circuit that the D2 saw low wall voltage. You may have also induced a significant ground loop via some of the cables attached to the D2.

Low voltage is not going to cause damage (the D2 will just shut down), but a big enough ground loop might cause damage.

If the D2 appears to be working fine with the generator turned off, then you are probably OK.
--Bob

Hmmm, D2 is plugged into one of several dedicated A\\V circuits and house has 400amp service. I am certainly not disagreeing with you, just after the critter.

Re: the ground loop, are you suggesting the static field could have caused a ground loop in the interconnects, that is, between the outer shield and the D2 case? When I built the equipment alcove, I should have built it as a Faraday Cage.

Thank you for your reply. I guess it's rather a mute point now, I'm not going to try that again, and it sounds like from what you say I'll never really know if any permanent damage was done....maybe Anthem can tell me when they make me my D2v2

mark

The fact that it wouldn't power up when the generator was active is pretty good evidence that the power supply rejected the input voltage. Since the voltage was almost certainly low (vs. high) the odds you did any damage are minimal.

I suppose it's possible the generator put enough garbage on the line that the D2 rejected the input FREQUENCY.

And yes, I was thinking the generator (which is a radio transmitter of course) may have induced power on the cable shields that caused the D2 to go into some sort of protect mode. But that's not likely to have happened during the power up sequence so this scenario is less likely than that the input power itself was corrupted.
--Bob

Check out the Popcorn Hour. Low cost and handles most of the video codecs.
I have had good luck streaming from a HP Media Smart Home Network Server or my desktop via wired network with HD video. You can use it with or without a built in HDD. They update it regularly via internet or via plugin USB drive. You can select output 480i,
720p,1080i,1080p and others. I have not tried low loss audio formats yet. It also has built in torrent software. Check it out on AVS thread.

Hello to all:
I have a D2 with the latest software that is hooked up to a Pioneer Elite PR0 1540HD and an Elite Pioneer Blu-ray player BDP05FD also with the latest software via new high speed HDMI cables.
When I set the video out on the D2 to 1080p24 (which the PRO1540HD claims to accept) the video performance on a blu-ray DVD seems to be jittery, dragging and weird acting when showing high action scenes. When it is set to 1080i, this does not happen.
Any recommendations or insights would be highly appreciated. Thank you..

Last I checked, it can't play SD or BD ISO's though... HTPC is still the way to go for HD content.

The way things are going, the 1.2 FW with internal DTS-HDMA decoding for our 05D's will be released one or two days before we decide to send our D2's to Anthem for the v. 2 upgrades!

I know from other threads that there is a setting, or perhaps a combo of settings, in the Pioneer plasma that have the unexpected effect of disabling its ability to handle 1080p/24 input properly, but I don't recall which settings these are. Check in the appropriate thread in the plasma forum here, or perhaps someone who owns that plasma in this thread will chime in. However I believe the result of such improper setting is that the display won't accept /24 input at all rather than accepting it and displaying it with stutters.

The other thing to keep in mind is that some Blu-Ray discs -- most commonly the "live concert" style discs -- are not recorded as 1080p/24. They are 1080i/60. If you force 1080p/24 output for those you will always get the stutters as there is no good way to convert true video rate content (/60) to film rate (/24). To avoid this you either need to set up two Video Output configurations in the D2 (one for /60 output and one for /24 output) and select the proper one on the fly, or you need to use the D2's "Frame Lock" feature found in Video Source Adjust > Output for each input source device. Frame Lock = Auto will switch the D2 output from 1080p/60 to 1080p/24 as appropriate to match the current input frame rate.

Finally, you need to make sure you have your Blu-Ray player set to output 1080p/24 to the D2 for discs recorded in 1080p/24. For the Pioneer player that likely means you need to turn on a "Source Direct" mode, and there may also be another setting to specifically enable /24 output. To see if this is working, play a movie and bring up the Video Source Adjust menu on the D2 (press and hold the "7" key on the remote) and then go to the Info panel. The video input line in that Info panel should say the D2 is receiving 1080p/23.97 input. If it says the D2 is receiving 1080i/59.94 or 1080p/59.94 then your player is not set correctly. The D2 will not properly convert /60 input like that to /24 output with the current D2 firmware even if the original content is in fact "movie based", and if you force it to try then, again, you will get the stutters. My guess would be that this mistake -- improper output settings from the player -- is the most likely cause of your problem.
--Bob

I have searched this thread but am unable to find a definitive answer as to whether or not the issues with the Anthem D2 and the Apple TV via HDMI have been resolved via firmware update son either end. Any info?

I haven't tried this in a while but the last I heard this was still not working.

I wonder if this will be solved in the D2v2?

Thanks - I actually saw that one in the media streamer threads, and it looks very capable, but - since they don't publish a manual - it APPEARS that it does not support 480i, only 480p?

At least that was what another owner had posted. Do you have the A-110? Do you use it 480i out?

In fact I don't who will be first. But I know that soon we will be able to compare decoding in the player or decoding in the D2.

Not without the D2v2, right? Is there any more news on when this will be available?

I have the A-100 and use 1080i out as my Qualia 004 only accepts 1080i.
The A-110 has HDMI 1.3 and adds lossless audio formats, internal SATA HDD and external USB 2.0 features

I have almost zero 480i original sources. Most of the items I am streaming from the PCH are MKV. The PCH manual is on the Wiki page.
I recently found Playon and am downloading Instant Movies from Netflix via the PCH. It is not HD but the D2 makes it as good as an up rezzed SD DVD.

Read this from the PCH Forum.

From PCH Forum
08-23-2008, 06:41 PM Post: #21
spawn Moderator

RE: Pass native resolution of files without scaling


The point I was trying to make is - that it seems as people in this thread really dont understand what they are requesting with "passing native resolution".

The pch is not a dvd-player which only have to output SD 480/576 i/p - its a media player which can play many media types which have been resized and cropped to all kinds of non standard resolutions. Like the many resolutions Heartware mentioned - but not restricted to those, any non standard resolution would also play.

Requesting a "pass through of native resolution" doesnt make sense because
1. you cannot output non standard resolutions, you can only output either standard video resolutions or standard pc resolutions.
2. your scalers would never accept these non standard resolutions if they were indeed outputted, your scalers only support input of standard video resolutions (and possibly some pc resolutions depending on scaler used) like those being outputted today.
3. The NMT/PCH allready output non scaled for all standard resolution files and for all files with standard horisontical resolution.

Pass through of native resolution only makes sense if native resolution are in fact a standard video resolution like 480i/p, 576i/p, 720p, 1080i/p - and in these cases the PCH allready do output non scaled - but many times native file resolution are not standard resolutions in the case of the PCH.

Thus for all the files which have non standard resolution, the pch would allways need to output these files at a standard video resolution. This is normally no problem, as a file with for instance 1280x544 would just get added black borders to fill the resolution to 1280x720 for 720p output. This means no scaling is actually being done in the PCH and you allready have what you ask for. The same for SD if horisontical resolution are kept standard and only vertical resolution are cropped.

The PCH only does any scaling if the resolution are something non standard - like 640x242, then it would need to scale to 720x480 before outputting at 480p. But if it were not scaling as people here suggest, then your scalers would not accept the input anyways making the request for this redundant.

So basically - everytime the PCH need to scale a file before ouput because the file has non standard resolution - then your scalers would not accept the resolution if the PCH did not scale it. And everytime the PCH do not need to scale because the file are allready in a standard resolution, or only needs to add black borders, then your scalers are allready receiving a non scaled output from the PCH. Ergo either way the request for passing "native resolution" doesnt really make sense.

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As for deinterlacing in case of SD DVD material - which is different from "passing native resolution" - I understand why you would like to be able to ouput the interlaced signal for deinterlacing in your Reon scaler. And I dont see any major problems in implementing a possibility to do so in the NMT.

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As for automatic switching of ouput resolution based on file resolution (which really has nothing todo with the "passing native resolution" request ) - it is not simple to implement because as described the NMT/PCH are not restricted to playback of a few standard resolutions like your common dvd-player, but can play any file of any resolution (more or less), this plus the risk of outputting something not supported by the monitor leading to black screen if it switches automatically and the different possiblities in the connection types, does make this request difficult to implement. But if it is to be implemented (and this is still being investigated by Syabas to be done if possible), I fully agree with Heartware on the method to do so.

--------------------------------

As a defense of the NMT/PCH I would also like to point out that the way this works with fixed output are the same as any other player works - other players also do not autoswitch between several resolutions (except for the minimal switching between PAL and NTSC SD possible in some dvd-players). Other players, bluray players, media center PC's, digital tv receivers etc. works the same way by outputting a fixed output and connection type of the users choise. Therefore I dont really understand why the scalers should be especially useless with the NMT, you should all have the same issues with all other types of devices attached to your scalers.

My reason for these comments - is to make it more clear what is really being requested in this thread - is the request to "pass through native resolution" (not really possible or usable), or is the request in this thread for "automatic switching of standard outputs based on file", or is this thread about adding a 480i/576i output mode to allow for external deinterlacing of these specific resolutions ?

I know I had asked this awhile back in the thread, but is there any more info on the ETA of the D2 V2 or AVM 50 V2?

Thanks!

Nope. Still nothing new to report.
--Bob

Thanks Bob!

If I have 1080p, 1080i, 720p and 480i (for example a SD-DVD iso) and I wish to play all of them in turn, it seems that the way most or all of the media streamers are designed is that I would have to pick 1080p as my output, and then anything else then 1080p is deinterlaced and/or upscaled in the media streamer.

I understand there may be intereptations of what 'native resolution' means. For me, a good example is the Tivo HD. If you set it to Native, it will output 480i, 720p or 1080i (here in NTSC land) - the three flavors of ATSC digial broadcast, depending on the source material. To say that players don't do this is incorrect.

Just curious if anybody has any insight on when the new firmware will be available?

I am still experiencing a hiss when HDMI audio signal is briefly lost and it is supposed to be fixed with the next version.

It would also be nice to get the new settings editor

No idea, but this "hiss", which I've only had since getting ARC is very annoying. I contacted Anthem on it and they informed me that they are aware of it, but they are too busy with the production of the new models to deal with it right now. This was Nicks response:

"Not yet - getting AVM 50v and D2v finished before we can work on other things including the AVM 50 hiss."

No firm news yet.

Believe me, the problem of the sudden and repeated dropouts relies/relied purely on the D2. I have made all kind of tests to verify this and finally connected the source directly to the displays (Plasma TV and Projector) with the result that no dropouts happened anymore. But as soon as the D2 is in place these dropouts happen...

next my dealer changed the video boared, but even this did not help since after one hour of running the dropouts were there again...So my D2 went back to Canada (where it still is) and I got in the meantime a AVM-50 for replacement, which works fine so far...

Now I am still waiting for getting back my D2 and some information regarding this problems...

Maybe I just received for good luck a "Monday" piece of equipment (actually this is already the second time for replacement/repair, before was an unsolved power problem...)

I had cause to send an email to Anthem in reference to the new D2v2 and it's HDMI audio abilities. As part of the response it was mentioned that the D2v2 is due out by year's end.

I'm in the market for a new Processor, probably late February, so for me timing is right. The Statement D2v2 is on my short list.

Your timing cannot be more right

Get a demonstration of the current D2 from your local dealer that will already give you a good feel of its sound quality and its audio/video performance.