Next Weekend: First VP Shootout: Vantage-HD vs. VP50 vs. Crystalio II VPS3300

Dang - I'm hoping your sig is wrong and you live in Iowa - I'd love to see that. Willl be awaiting your results...

awesome! by any chance some Lumagen guys can join ? That will be the maga thread of the year!

The problem with adding a Lumagen is that the competitive deinterlacing that will be in the Radiance is not in the current models. We would be comparing old gen to new gens. When the Radiance comes out, that will be the time to do a shoot out that includes Lumagen. I can hardly wait to get one, hopefully as a Beta tester.

I really hope I get a replacement VP50 by Friday. Of course, if one doesn't mind the stripes, it is otherwise working fine. On a football green field, the stripes are barely noticeable. However on red and blue backgrounds, ugh.

My screen is a 4 way masked 1.78 110"D Stewart Studeotech 130. Room is totally light controlled amd black.

Please call me at 240 876 2536 if you are coming. I live at 22200 Zion Road, Brookeville, MD 20833. Brunch will be served. Come anytime Sunday morning and stay late. The lake we live on is really pretty this time of year. Lots of wildlife. There will of course be beer and soda besides the food. It won't be a party because we have serious work to do. But there will be good food and drink.

^^ What are the Lumagens lacking in deinterlacing compared to the other models mentioned? With recent firmware the Lumagens have per-pixel motion adaptive deinterlacing like the rest.

You guys please please please give us (the unlucky) some in-depth reports after your shoot-out.

Man, some people have ALL the luck...

Mark,

I'm thinking about adding a VP at some point (soon?) and interested in observing this shootout. Since I live so dang close, I should make the effort. What time this Sunday are you meeting?

You posted your screen info, but didn't mention anything about a PJ or sources. I forget if you have a Ruby or something else. I know that you sell Sony, just not sure what you have in your HT. I have a Ruby, Toshiba HD-A1, and HD-DirecTV, so I'm most interested in seeing how much an improvement a VP would make in my HT. Let me know.

Here are a few thoughts about what you could do in the shootout:

(1) Deinterlacing tests, scaling should be turned off in the VPs here (should be done by display instead).
a. How good is SD film deinterlacing?
b. How good is HD film deinterlacing?
c. How good is SD video deinterlacing?
d. How good is HD video deinterlacing?

(2) Scaling tests, deinterlacing should be turned off in the VPs here (should be done by source device instead).
a. How good is SD upscaling?
b. How good is HD downscaling?

(3) Noise reduction and detail enhancement tests.
a. How good are the algs doing what they're supposed to do?
b. How big are the negative side effects?

(4) Deinterlacing + scaling + noise reduction + detail enhancement at the same time.
a. How good is SD film PQ?
b. How good is HD film PQ?
c. How good is SD video PQ?
d. How good is HD video PQ?


You can do the tests 1a, 1b, 2a and 2b with the Lumagen HDP. All other tests would be unfair. But the mentioned 4 tests should be a fair comparison test for the HDP, too. Especially a scaling only comparison (test 2) would be VERY interesting IMHO. I'd love to know how Crystalio II scaling compares to Lumagen scaling.

I wish I could come over for the shootout! Too bad it's a bit too far away from Germany...

P.S: Test (4) is especially interesting because AFAIK the Realta works differently compared to all other VP chips. If the Realta only does deinterlacing, it spends more processing power on the deinterlacing algs. If it's also doing scaling + noise reduction + detail enhancements, the Realta has less processing power left for deinterlacing. All other VP chips are running all algs totally independent of each other, AFAIK.

Madshi. Why not just turn it off and NOT have it done elsewhere?

Guys. I have a HIGHLY HIGHLY modified Electrohome 9500LC ULTRA. It does up to 1200p 72 hz, no sweat. It is a CRT. It has NO internal video processing (no internal scaling or deinterlacing) and it only accepts RGBHV in. I run it mostly at 1080p 59.94 and watch a lot of football (video). I do watch some films. My DVD is an old Denon (DVD 3300?) with SDI out.

I do not have a HD-DVD. I will be getting the Sony and Pioneer Elite BluRays when they come out. I can transcode any component to my long RGBHV run or any processor can do the transcoding.

The DVDO and Lumagens have no noise processing or detail enhancement etc. The new Lumagen wil have such features.

Well, even better, of course!

However, you can't scale without deinterlacing first. So at least for a pure scaling comparison, all the VPs should get the same deinterlaced video stream and then apply their private scaling algorithm. Otherwise you can't really check the quality of the scaling algorithms seperately from the deinterlacing algorithm.

I would use a static test pattern to test the degree of ringing for the scaling. Sure, one would have to deinterlace from 480i to 480p first, but since there would be no motion, all the deinterlacers should be about the same.

Yes.

Mark- This is exactly what I need right now! A first hand critical assessment of what the best in video processing can do. I'm within striking distanced in PA, but need a pass from my wife to make it in person. I'll let you know closer to the weekend. My projector is a Panasonic AE-900 (720P LCD). Any need for one of these for the shootout?

Good job Mark, can't wait to hear the results..

BTW like you I am a HD sports fanatic so Video based processing of 1080I and 720P is of importance

I am sure this isn't going to go all that smoothly. Lots of different things to hook up, no set methodology etc etc. But we will have fun and learn how to do it better for the next shoot out.

If someone is coming from a distance, we do have a nice guest room for say Saturday night. We have had shootouts and meets at my house before. It's a nice place to visit and a nice place to live.

Hopefully I'm not stretching the limits by posting an answer to flyingvee.

For film sources, I would put the "old" Lumagen's against any of these boxes. We have proprietary "no-ring" scaling. No one else does (that I know of). We also support 24, 48, 60, and 72 Hertz output with correct cadence and stay in film lock exceptionally well. The Lumagen's also have a long list of calibration features.

The newer video processors do have some advantage for video (diagonal filtering) and noise reduction (temporal noise reduction for SD source for Silicon Optix based units verses our spacial noise reduction). These are not in the Vision series but will be in the Radiance series.

I personally look at film processing as my benchmark, but I know others prefer to look at video. You might want to consider us and our value compared to these other processors.

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So Mark, while I know you don't like the SiI504's video deinterlacing, I would think that we rate being in your shoot-out.

Nice pj - would be worth a trip just to see your 9500LC. With your display there won't be qa whole lot of masking of limitations in the VPs - if it looks good on your rig, chances are it will be just fine on 98% of what is out there. And as you say, no internal scaling, dl, or any other processing - while methodology will probably be argued for weeks after, you should have an excellent idea of which processor does what by the time you are finished.

Tho I will have to agree with c722 - I'm curious about the current Lumagen's performance, if for no other reason than to see exactly how much the new units have progressed. I realize you would only want the very best for your rig, but for those of us with funky old 8" units, if the Lumagen were to give, say, 90% of what the new ones do, for a fraction of the price, that too would be of interest.

That is really great. Where else but on this forum. This will be appreciated by many.

Thank's Jeff

Darn - Sorry this is going to be Sunday. I have guests coming in from Fla. plus I need my VP50 for the Ravens game. Otherwise I would either attend or loan you my VP50 in case yours isn't working well. Instead, I'll have to watch the game on my C3X thru my VP50 and hope to hear MOST of the commentary.

...and that includes 1080i60 "film" ?

C722: In answer to your question above....YES. As Jim says, the current Lumagen range can hold it's own with film source and can also do cadence locked 48,60,72Hz out for these sources.

Gordon

I've compared Lumagen, Crystalio and Vantage before and the Lumagen had 'em for cadence detection (especially 2:2 for us in PAL land) and is the better scaler IMO. Stick it in the test and be amazed at what a processor almost half the price of the others can do.

VP50 has a couple reported issues of bad cadence detection at least for 2:2 material over on AVForums. Since it uses any:any detection it may affect other material too. Might be worth holding back until a firmware update can be released for it (assuming the firmware update is going to help)

I already did my own very similiar shootout a couple weeks ago. It should be fun. With overall picture Q I already know where I would place my bet...

OK. Will include the Lumagen too. I have an older one but it's on loan to a customer whose dwin transcanner went south. JP doesn't know it yet, but he will be 2 day airing me one today.

Still don't have a replacement VP50 yet either. Couldn't get thru to their customer support yesterday. Hopefully its in transit.

To be fair, so does the Lumagen. In particular, users are reporting that it's a bit over-zealous in locking to a 2:2 cadence. That approach may work fine with film-sourced material, but with video the result is that it gets a lot of false 2:2 positives which cause combing and/or stuttering motion. Based on the user reports I've seen on the AVForums board, the VP50 is much better than the Lumagen processors in this respect.

By all means you should include the Lumagen in the shoot-out, though. It reportedly has excellent scaling and it should be interesting to see how it compares as it's substantially less expensive than the others. If I'd question anything, it would be the inclusion of the VP50 unit which is known to have a manufacturing hardware defect (assuming that Mark's replacement unit does not arrive).

- Dale Adams

I'm very pleased that we'll have a Lumagen on hand. I would have considered the event incomplete without it.

Any chance of adding in one of the newer less expensive VP to the comparison? I'm really curious to see how the new KeyDigital Isync holds up. HT Mag recently compared it to the VP30, but that was a while ago. Just a thought as I'm in the market for a new VP and of course would love to spend less.

I would try and get a Lumagen HDQ... Then you can compare the 1080i deinterlacing...