Anthem D2/D2v/AVM50/AVM50v/ARC1 tweaking guide - Page 109

I have just purchased a D2 and was wondering if anyone has any pointers since I do not have enough time to read all 108 pagesin this thread. I must say that it is an amazing product and cannot see my system without it. I have a benq W10000, an Oppo 970hd and a SA8300HDdvr.

Thanks,

Jeremy

Hey Bob: If I thought I could consistently ... or more often than with D* ... receive 1920 X 1080i or 1280 X 720P from Comcast, I would switch tomorrow. In my area I've heard more negative comments about Comcast than D*. But mostly about analog SD and not enough HD content. So what to do?

I hadn't thought about the D* receiver being required to de-interlace and scale the HD-lite before it feeds it to the D2. Bummer!

I was hoping there was some way to pass the signal, untouched, to the D2 no matter what resolution the D* receiver encounters. This messes up my intention of how the whole process ... with the D2 to the rescue ... will work with the STB or the DVR and D* or Comcast for that matter. I guessing Comcast has HD-lite also.

You're not saying that Comcast consitently sends out full 1920 X 1080i or 1280 X 720P are you? I 'm not sure how to verify what my Comcast does with the HD resolutions?


The S3 TIVO ("The world's first THX-certified, dual CableCARD DVR") only works with cable and OTA. The H20 is only a D* receiver only. The HR20 is a D* DVR. At $800 and being THX certified, I'm willing to bet the S3 has a better de-interlacer and scaler than the HR20. But does that really help the situation ... if HD lite is invloved?


It sounds like the same situation would be needed if I switched to cable, except that the D3 should have a better deinter/scaler and perhaps Comcast HD will be less compressed than D*. Maybe no HD-lite. Our Comcast is also alledgedly adding HD channels in the near future (5-7 channels) but with a bastardized (from the days when AT&T screwed up everything) 750 MHz system, I have no confidence in them.


I only watch local channels OTA which is significantly superior to D* in PQ and SQ. HD-NET consistently has the best PQ. I intensely dislike artifacts, especially on bigger screens.


In my area Comcast is in the process of a full analog to digital conversion. It should be complete by Spring. The roll-out will take longer. However, Comcast will continue to use the old MPEG-2 rather than the newer MPEG-4 compression standard. This contributes to their tight bandwidth limitations. Apparently their next priority is to free up bandwidth for local phone service ... to compete with SureWest. Generally, with the exception of the members of this forum, people don't care much about PQ. Somtimes I feel like giving up the quest for greater PQ.

Very odd. I think we would have heard more complaints if this was common.

I suspect you are losing the SECOND handshake that happens when the HDMI connection needs to re-establish itself, as for example after a resolution change. The first covers video and HDCP, and the second covers audio. If you are hearing a delay of a second or two before audio starts up AFTER video starts up when changing between SD and HD channels on the Tivo for example, then that's the second handshake.

But except for that annoying delay, I've not heard of the audio actually failing to start while video just plays normally. Again, I would think we'd have had a ton of complaints on this.

Have you tried simply switching away from the offending source and back again?

Have you upgraded your HDMI cables already?

By the way, if you are seeing such a delay when changing channels on the Tivo (for example), my recommendation would be that you switch to optical audio. Optical will give you the same quality as HDMI for audio from that style of device and you won't have that extra delay before audio starts up.

Of course that's no help for the PS3.

Another possibility is to turn off the Auto Digital option in the Anthem's Setup / Source Select. It is, I suppose, possible that the Anthem is getting confused as to whether or not there actually is any incoming digital audio, and thus it is mistakenly switching to the unused analog audio jacks.

But of course it is not supposed to make that mistake. You may need to work this one with Anthem directly.
--Bob

Jeremy,
Well I'm afraid the best pointer is to read all 108 pages. (grin!)

Actually I'd suggest you read the first post in the thread and then start reading the rest of the thread from back to front. That will skip over at lot of the initial confusion in the thread as well as info that's old due to software updates.

It would be nice if Levesque or someone collected links to the typical newbie-focused suggestion posts embedded in this opus and copied them into the first thread for folks just starting out, but that hasn't happened yet.
--Bob

Dobe,
I haven't heard of anyone except DirecTV and possibly Dish doing "HD-Lite". The reason is very simple. The stuff coming off the cable has to work with a variety of cable-ready receivers that the cable providers don't control -- cable cards in the S3 for example, or in people's TVs.

DirecTV can do it because THEY control the receivers. And so they can put in the special processing stage to re-constitute HD-Lite back into what people are led to believe is real HD. The original DirecTV receivers had a secret key combination you could press to get it to display what was actually coming in on each channel at the moment as opposed to the "nominal" 720p or 1080i. Pretty soon, DirecTV realized folks were posting those results on forums like this and thus DirecTV was getting the horse laugh. So they "upgraded" the software to remove that feature. Now folks figure out the same thing by hacking into the HD-DVRs to see how much disk space is being used to record a given channel over a given period of time. They can run but they can't hide.

So really the only thing you have to fear from HD over cable is that they've boosted the compression -- or that the signal is so weak that your cable receiver can't keep a good lock on it. Right now that doesn't seem to be the case for most cable providers. Mind you, the signal they get from the original source station might ALREADY be damaged or over-compressed. Many local stations are still trying to figure this stuff out. They can't even re-broadcast network feeds properly some times. But the cable version usually matches the off air version -- for HD channels.

It's all the OTHER channels that the cable guys compress the heck out of if they are having bandwidth problems. I've seen some digital SD channels over cable that are utter crap -- way worse than the worst I've ever seen from DirecTV.

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

From all accounts the S3 does a very nice job of both video and audio. Yes I suspect it is likely better than the H20.
--Bob

I too have the same problem. However, it only happens with my Tivo S3. When the S3's HDMI acts up, I always lose audio and sometime lose both audio and video to a blue screen. I could simply be changing channels and lose the handshake.

I always get a short, high pitched "chirp" when changing channels.
Very annoying.

I have yet to try Bob's idea, and buy another cable, but will. I currently use a 6' Monoprice cable. All my other HDMI connected devices are connected with Monoprice cables, but the S3 is the only one causing a headache.

Mark

Well, within 108 pages there are tons of valuable pointers. I would echo Bob's point to just read the first page as background, and then start skimming backward looking for things that interest you. Whatever question you have has probably been asked and answered, maybe multiple times.

Since you have an Oppo 970, the best way to set it up is 480i out to the Anthem, using HDMI for both video and audio. This uses the Oppo as just a transport with NO processing (turn off EVERYTHING in the Oppo). That way the Anthem does all processing (which is the reason we all bought it, right?).

I have no ideas on your other equipment. The best quality is when you can send out 1080p from the D2, but I don't know if your display can take that. You might be limited to 720p (which can be incredible as well).

So sending 480i via HDMI from the OPPO 970HD to the D2 gives great results because the 480i signal is in a purer state as it leaves the OPPO.

Sending an overcompressed (bit starved) 480i signal from a D* or cable receiver via HDMI to the D2 is less likely to produce great results because the original source has been damaged by over-compression (bandwidth limitations) introduced by the satellite or cable company?

Precisely.

Here's another point to consider that may help set this in your mind. Not all DVD discs are created equal. Some discs contain movies that have ALSO been over-compressed! Once again, if you play a DVD with a crappy transfer there's no way the Anthem or any other system can undo the damage that's already been done.

Now there are lots of ways a studio can screw up a transfer of film to DVD, but most of those are simply mistakes. [By the way, there's a whole forum here dedicated to people who like to talk about the quality of particular DVDs. You can find a list of "reference quality" DVDs there -- DVDs with exceptionally good transfers.]

However some such problems simply arise from confusion in the studios about their target market. For example, should colors and black levels be set on the DVD disc assuming the DVD will be played on the lowest, and far too common, denominator TV in the typical household which hasn't a clue how to set it up, or should the levels be set for the knowledgeable few who have good TV setups and know how to calibrate them? What's the poor marketing guy to recommend? Yup. And that's one of the reasons that the first release "full screen" disc versions of hot new flicks are often so bad.

Unfortunately, over-compression of the DVD transfer is often done DELIBERATELY simply in an effort to free up space on the disc -- to cram both widescreen and full screen versions of the movie onto the same disc, or to include "extras", or simply to keep the movie from lapping over onto an additonal disc. Studios know full well that buyers assume the release with the most "extras" on it *MUST* be the best release of any given movie.

Here's a post I made quite some time ago on this:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...&&#post4966784

There are additional details following that post.

So the bottom line is that you can't undo damage that's already been done. All you can do is keep from doing *MORE* damage. And letting a scaling DVD player do de-interlacing or scaling usually introduces new damage. As does letting scaling happen multiple times before your screen lights up. As does letting the typical 1080p TV do the de-interlacing of 1080i HDTV into 1080p. As does letting SDTV-style color space encoding be played using HDTV-style color space math. Etc., etc. And these are precisely the sorts of things the Anthem DOES RIGHT for you.
--Bob

Thanks for the quick responses. I will set a side some time at night to start reading through all of this. So audio is good through HDMI with the D2? I have been told to only use it for video and run coaxial for sound.

Jeremy

My recommendation would be to use optical or coax digital audio connections for audio for everything EXCEPT FOR HD-DVD or Blue Ray players. For those, you will definitely want to send the multi-channel, high bandwidth PCM audio over HDMI.

For the other devices, optical or coax will produce IDENTICAL quality to HDMI audio, but is somewhat less troublesome.

[I should add that for some SACD or DVD-Audio players you will need to use multi-channel analog audio connections since you can't get the full bandwidth over optical or coax, and they don't support that audio over HDMI.]

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

For video setup, here's a link to my post earlier in this thread where I tried to collect the wisdom of the ages all in one place:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...&&#post9277613

Hope this helps!
--Bob

Can you "video select" with an AVM-50. In other words, can I listed to a CD, or another source (media server) while having a football game on processing through the AVM-50?

Yes, "simulcast" is what you are referring to. Simulcast is available with all paths, with an exception to HDMI. You can't use HDMI audio from another source while watching video.

You can mix audio from any non-HDMI source with video from any source. You can do this either by setting up an "input" for just such viewing, or by using the Simulcast function via the Anthem remote to mix your already existing inputs -- see the Anthem manual for details on Simulcast.

For example, I have my "CD" input set to produce audio from the player and video from my cable TV box since I don't need to see on screen menus from the player. I have coax digital audio setup from the CD player and HDMI video from the cable box. Then I can listen to CDs either with the display on or off according to whether I also want to watch something.

You can not mix audio coming in on any HDMI cable with any other video except the video also coming in on that same HDMI cable.
--Bob

[quote=yatchaks]I too have the same problem. However, it only happens with my Tivo S3. When the S3's HDMI acts up, I always lose audio and sometime lose both audio and video to a blue screen. I could simply be changing channels and lose the handshake.

How well does the Tivo S3 work (when working). I've been thinking about getting one for it's native rate capability (I assume that's what you are using), and increased storage capacity. I would probably just use component and digital audio out.

Bill,

I am using the native rate, and it works extremely well.

Previously, I had a Moto 6412 (provided by Comcast). The Moto software was very glitchy and a constant headache.

IMHO, Tivo software is second to none. There is noticable improvement over the Moto 6412 with 1080i/720p material, and an even bigger improvement with 480i.

No regrets here, I love it.

Mark

Mark,
Were you using DVI from the 6412 and HDMI from the S3? The conversion from YCbCr to RGB in the 6412 for DVI probably has problems -- clipping blacks and whites for example as well as color space problems.

And if you were using Component out the analog video output stage of the Motorola aint great either.

Motorola has nothing to be proud of in its cable boxes and the software issued by the cable providers makes it worse.

The S3 is certainly better engineered hardware, and the software is pretty spiffy.

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

Bill,
Component video and optical audio from the S3 should work very well with the D2. We have a number of people here using the S3.

The HDMI audio dropout problem just brought up needs to be sorted out, however.
--Bob

I'm a newbie (with a big grin) that has read all 109 pages of this great thread and want to give thanks to all of you, with special emphasis to Bob, Levesque, and Drhankz. My D2 (from Audigon) arrived Friday with ver1.0 and with fear I upgraded to ver1.11 but it went without a hitch and I'm living with a gorgeous 1080i picture and awesome audio as a result of all that I learned from this thread.

I am using a 9m Better Cables HDMI cable to a Hitachi SX5600 PJ and having no problems geting 1080i out HDMI(1m BC) from my SA 8300HD DVR; however my PS3 will only output via component cable, but still a gorgeous pic. I'm in visual/audio bliss but still awaitng my pre-ordered XA2 and JVC-RS1. I will wait until then to figure out my HDMI connection problem with the PS3. Good Luck to all!!

Yes I get that, and then audio will pop on. Slightly annoying but easy to live with. My problem is the audio not popping back on.


This has only started happening to me when using the second audio zone in my setup, which also makes it additionally complicated to get the unit to fully shut down to get the audio back, as the pre-amp will not power down if Zone 2 is up, even though I only listen to audio from zone 1.


Yes. It works about 1 out of 4 times.


I think I was the one that started the better HDMI cable trend in recommending what William Phelps recommended to me, about 75 pages of posts ago. Always started with the best.


I don't see that. The problem with the Anthem is too few optical hookups and too many components that use them. It is a good point that I should only need the PCM through HDMI for HD DVD & Blu-Ray where the codecs are use there.

This is already set, unfortunately.


Doing the bitstream audio to the tivo is a good start. THANKS

Welcome to the HAPPY D2 Club and a HAPPY NEW YEAR!

I just got my D2 and am of course still in the very beginnings of setting everything up (so many options). DVD from an Arcam DV79 and Sat work fine via HDMI. However, when I call up the OSD, after a short while it flickers and then disappears in all inputs and just the blue overlay (or the black, the color does not matter) appears. The status display always works. The D2 is hooked up to a Fujitsu 42 inch panel with HDMI at a 1080i/60 scaler output and the picture is really good. I tried adjusting the D2 video settings but that does not bring back the OSD. Also I have a Replay DVR - still treasured for its Commercial Advance - which also only shows the blue screen. If I wait a few hours the OSD might come back for a while. My apologies if this issue has already been addressed in this threat. Thank you very much for any help on this.

Has anybody come up with a fix for the 1080i input problems many are having or are we all still waiting on Anthem? I sent Nick an e-mail with the problem a few days b4 Christmas, but he was on vacation and I haven't heard anything back from him yet.

The last word we had here, attributed to Nick last week, was that the engineer(s) they needed to fix the problem wouldn't be back at work until tomorrow, Jan 2.

There have been a couple folks here who reported things they did to make the problem go away, but noone else with the problem was able to make that work for them.
--Bob

First, for your Replay DVR, if you are connecting it to the Anthem via HDMI or DVI, try setting HDMI Repeater = NO in the Anthem's Setup / Source Select menu for that input. This will make the Anthem pretend to the DVR that it is directly connected to a TV.

For your OSD issue, we had one prior poster report a situation where the Setup screen wouldn't stay visible. It would come up, waiver for a while and then vanish. We never heard that he found a solution for this, and he may have just given up and gone to other hardware.

However, sometime after that exchange, I stumbled across the writeup in the manual for Setup / Displays / Main OS Color and Z2 OS Color. According to the V1.1x manual, using these to the change the default (blue) background color used by the Anthem may help some displays sync up properly with the Setup menu.
--Bob

As a long time engineer - don't expect a fix in 8 hours.

Until they determine the root cause of the problem and
then engineer a fix and test it - the fix will not be ready.

Some problems can take awhile to get implemented and
distributed.

Engineering might even have a higher priority like NEXT
WEEK's CES SHOW [GRIN]!

I ran some comparisons in my system and found no detectable difference between HDMI and digital coax in terms of the final audio output.

So I recommend HDMI merely for the convenience factor. As BobP said, you will definitely want it for HD/BluRay. I like the minimalist cable approach (as long as no quality is lost).

I know there are some who believe that HDMI audio (and video) is intrinsically inferior to other connections. Apart from HDMI software issues (HDCP, handshaking) I have not detected ANY signal degradations.

I too have received my D2/P5 and am very happy with the results. I'm no expert and the picture on my Pioneer PRO-730HD is significantly improved whether I am using the 8300 SADVR or my Toshiba Hd-DVD. I have HDMI from the cable box and the DVD player to the D2 and a HDMI to DVI connection to the TV. As predicted by Bob, the picture is significantly improved using the RGB video output. RGB extended (no idea what that is!?) does not look better than regular RGB.

I have some questions: there is a soft hum coming from the P5--is that supposed to be there? I hear no speaker hum. Do I have a ground loop problem? Is this important? Will it "hurt" the amp? I can not hear the hum from my listening position and the sound is otherwise spectacular coming through my M&K 5.2 set-up. Also, still not able to get an analog sound signal from a non-HD channel coming through the cable box; I thought I went through the set-up as advised in the manual. Any thoughts? The screen says it is receiving "Analog-DSP" but I hear nothing. Thanks and Happy New Year!

This exactly mirrors my sentiments except when switching between HDMI audio sources and losing audio "lock". I had a hassle just last night but we'll see if moving the HD S3 Tivo to bitstream optical helps in the switching issue.

Please ANYONE post if you have lost HDMI audio in switching between two sources and what you had to do to get HDMI audio back.

Thanks,
Tim

There's allot of stuff here that may take a few contributors to answer all of them but in answer to the P5 'HUM" problem the answer is a definite NO, NO WAY, NAADA......etc. I can't believe how quiet both the P5 and P2 are! I suspect a ground loop but Levesque may be able to walk you through a proper diagnostic process to determine the problem. In fact at reference levels with no active content running through them I can't tell the amps are even live except for the blue lights being on...... For me that level of quiet is almost a religious experience. Bob Pariseau can always be counted on for suggesting a disciplined approach to eliminating obvious mistakes that may be affecting your performance. After you have conquered your floor noise problem I will suggest some 'reference material' to try through the toshiba HD-DVD model???? are you unable to go HDMI to HDMI on the Pioneer. I for one have had very poor luck trying the HDMI to DVI (from the HP z558 to the D2) with a very expensive cable. Actually poor luck may be an understatement.....I can't get it to work at all so I have reverted to Component. This works but I believe with less than stellar results compared to just about everything else.......and there is allot of everything else that is spectacular! BUT the M&K's really do sing don't they. Imagine what it will sound like after proper calibration!!!!!!!! No more Viagra for me!!!!

Peter

Thank you very much for the quick reply. Unfortunately, the Replay is pre-HDMI and outputs from it are either in S-Video or Composite. In either case, the Replay picture and the OSD come on for a while (there is some flickering with the OSD sometimes but not major) after I turn on the D2 with some hours interruption and then the overlay screen appears. I tried changing the color but that does not change the result. I have also turned off all the video processing in the display, though the input resolution from the D2 is of course not the native resolution of the panel. Just wondering, does anybody have a Fuji 42 inch with the D2 which works fine?
Is this unit broken then?