Lumagen RadianceXD - featuring Gennum VXP (!!) - Page 3

Hi Mark,

Is that true that the present Gennum cannot be ugraded via firmware? (What does not being a gated chip actually mean? )

God bless..

Mark

thanks! now this makes it stand out since the realta based VPs so far have limited NR capabilities on HD.

Gated chip are chip with the actual logic define by a downloadable software. The FPGA being the more popular one. With such a chip you could develop specialized high speed logic that is totally reprogrammable. DVDO is using FPGA in their new VP50.

I don't know what Gennum is using but some manufacturer are using ASIC what custom logic chip that are hardwired and therefore non reprogrammable.

So is lumagen the question is how many of them (3 i am guessing) and what do they do, im sure it does the scaling and calibration.

Daniel.

JP told me but I do not remember. I am sure there is enough large aray field programable gated chip capacity built in to do most anything. If Lumagen develops algs that do something better than the Gennum algs do, I am sure they will be put into the programable gated chips and the Gennum algs abandoned. Initially, I suspect the Gennum deinterlacing, noise reduction, and detail enhancement algs will be used. Most everything else will be Lumagen proprietary in those gated chips. Gennum's Viper Applcation Builder software will be used to interface and customize the Gennum algs.

This would be a lot of flexibility but it add to the cost.

We need to open one.

Hey madshi, I agree that having the Gennum chip on a daughterboard is great as you can always upgrade to the latest and greatest Gennum chip. But taking this further, we get the following possibilities:
1) Your current daughterboard contains a Gennum chip. If Lumagen produce a hardware upgrade with boards containing either a Realta or Gennum chip, you can choose what you want.
2) If you don't feel like upgrading to the next Gennum, you can choose to skip an upgrade and go for the next one. The one downside I see with this is if you cannot skip upgrades, but let's see.

Cheers.

HI madshi,

I think that would be great if Lumagen allows us to choose to use their scaling or the scaling and detail enhancement on the Gennum.

God bless...

mark

Someone here skipping a chip upgrade? Like a drug addict with a little money skipping a hit?

Lumagen not using it's own scaling? Not a chance. Lumagen's press release says it will be using its own ringing free scaling. So I guess Lumagen will be using its own detail enhacement should that feature be included.

I agree with Mark's statement, Lumagen's scaling is second to none - it would be a real deal breaker not to use it for something like detail enhancement. It would be making a compromise in order to implement another compromise...

I very much doubt they would do that.

Maybe you will be able to choose what scaling to use, they seem big on providing a lot of options in their current firmware. Pretty much what htguy1 suggested, if you choose detail enhancement on, you get gennum scaling, otherwise you get Lumagen scaling.

HI

I can't think of a better way to prove just how great their scaling is than to go head to head on the same machine and let the customer person see it for themselves. I also am pretty certain that their scaling is unsurpassed, and this would be the proof. Plus people tend to love to have options to play with.

God bless...

Mark

How EXACTLY are you judging scaling quality? What patterns or tests are used? Is there an objective measure of scaling quality or is completely subjective?

So what do you do, buy a CII now or a VP50 or wait for the XP in Jan/Feb to come out with the potential of having inter changeable chips and upgradeability???????????

So no one knows? Then how are statements made that scaler A is hands down better than scaler B? Or that the scaling in prduct XYZ is far superior than anything the competition has to offer?

Bob,

They must be using the Sencor scaleometer and getting perfect readings .

Good question and one I've often wondered how quality of scaling is asessed. I can only guess that it is a matter of features and results that make everyone rate Lumagen so well. Better control?

I have seen devices that do poor scaling but I still don't know how one measures the quality of say Lumagen scaling against DVDO?

I would suggest waiting on the C2 since it is still going thru growing pains. A big one is the 1080p 48hz struggle. They are still working on a firmware fix for that. I am intrigued by the VP50 and plan to play with one of them. Then eventually I will get the Radience XG and compare. That sounds like the best way to go for now...

Thanks, madshi, for taking the time to explain things to me. The reason I ask is that I have been able to detect very little (if any) differences from one scaler to the next, including my HTPC, which theoretically has some of the best algorithms available, especially when ffdShow is used. To take your points one at a time:

- how sharp is the image? - At 120" screen size, I have found virtually NO difference unless the scaler is of particularly poor quality, like the one in the Optoma H-79. Every other scaler I have seen, including the ones in upscaling DVD players, is identical in this regard.
- how much mosquito noise is visible? I didn't know this was directly related to scaling and instead thought this was caused by MPEG encoding. I also thought it was directly controlled by noise reduction and was related to the amount of tradeoff one would be willing to accept - that is, the more noise reduction, the less mosquito noise but also the softer the image.
- how much EE is visible? Here is an area in which I have been seeking the Holy Grail, but so far I have not found it. In standard DVDs, I can't get rid of it no matter what I have tried, but I have admittedly not had the pleasure of seeing a Lumagen unit at work. If Lumagen has actually solved this problem and gotten rid of EE, then I will gladly purchase one of their products, but I have my doubts at this point, as NO SCALER I have ever seen, including the expensive Teranex VPs I've seen at shows, has ever accomplished this feat.
- are any jaggies or other artifacts visible? I thought those were deinterlacing artifacts, not scaling artifacts. The only such scaling artifact that I was aware of was "line twitter", something that again very seldom is a problem even with low cost solutions.
- overall subjective PQ impression - Well, yeah, I am always concerned about overall PQ, but I am trying to nail down what parts of the PQ are directly related to scaling and what parts are related to deinterlacing, optics quality (sharpness), and display technology (mosquito noise vs. low level dithering).

I'm not trying to give you a hard time , madshi, but rather to find out what specific attributes are directly related to scaling. My theory here is that a lot of people are mistaking some of the other problems and artifacts inherent in video processors and displays and simply blaming these problems on "scaling", when "scaling" as a single concept is actually very much the same from one unit to the other.

Now maybe the problem is that I just haven't seen the Lumagen scaling, and maybe they know something that the HTPC guys and Teranex don't know, so I will reserve final judgement until I get a chance to evaluate the Lumagen scaling for myself.

So one question still remains - Is there some specific test pattern or video clip that will clearly demonstrate the superiority of one scaler over the other? You know, some sort of grueling scaler torture test that one scaler will fail while another passes, much like the HQV disc does for other aspects of video reproduction? Right now it seems like people just look at image quality in general and then proclaim one scaler to be better than another, unless of course they are using the term "scaler" when they actually mean "video processor", as that term would incorporate many more parameters than simple scaling alone.

Scaling is not deinterlacing. It is not edge enhancement. It is line multiplication hopefully without ringing. AVIA PRO has several useful test paterns for measuring degree of ringing etc. I'll post the pattern numbers after I look them up again. Spears on Secrets makes reference to a test pattern he uses.

Thanks, Mark. Now that's what I'm talking about!

I thought a very simple test is the multiburst pattern ? They are supposed to be black/white/black/white strips. See on your projected (upscaled) screen whether it's still clearly black/white/black/white, and not white/darker white/lighter black/black/etc, and they are still one pixel width. I know the VP30 does not give me perfect strips, whereas the lumagen does.

Yes. That's a good test. Stacy, I believe, uses a multiburst pattern for this.

That's why I keep suggesting that DVDO needs to improve its already good scaling and hoping it does. But they have such a cool name for their present scaling and have sold it, on a ASIC chip to, for example, to D&M holdings for use in some of Denon's better DVD players, I think they may be happy to rest where they are as to scaling. That would be a pity.

You can yuk up a processor up all you want, but deinterlacing and scaling is the heart and everything else is fluf. ABT has the deinterlacing, so does Gennum and Silicon Opyics. Lumagen is the scaling champ, but it doesn't yet have high quality motion adaptive deinterlacing. It will soon.

It is all coming together for us and hopefully soon we will have video processors with ring free scaling, extremely good film and video deinterlacin, all sorts of NR that makes PQ overall better, and providing enough tweaks to keep an ISFer chained to a display under calibration.

I think I've finally found the 'uber' VP I'm willing to throw some hard earned dollars at with the RadianceXG. This is great news indeed.

In my experience modular designs haven't always worked out ideally and end up being more expensive in the long run. Unless you can guarantee the physical interface between the motherboard and daughterboard will never change for future (ie unknown) chips/specifications...let's hope that's the case here. It sounds like they've designed it for at least one future spec in mind though (16-bit processing) which is good.

Now what is the projected MSRP?

UA:....from last paragraph in first post...... $3499

Gordon

Thanks My brain automagically stops reading after I see a lot of marketing speak...third paragraph from the bottom....

You have to keep your brain in gear when reading marketing speak, often good laughs there. Now start reading some techno babble and one would think most here's manhood is challenged.