Scaler w/ Noise Reduction?

I asked the same thing a little over a week ago here along with emailing the question to Jason of AVS and basically got the answer "no" . For a $2500 budget I guess the best thing to do would be to combine a VP30 w/ an algolith flea. The VP30 w/102D works well for what it was intended, deinterlacing and scaling, particularly regular DVD's and SD broadcast, but you are correct in stating that it does nothing for noise reduction. I still have a good deal of mosquito noise, especially on the more compressed channels on Directv but jaggies are nonexistant thanks to the VP30.

I'm finally getting a high def. receiver this week so I'll be interested in seeing for myself how bad or good the VP30 handles 1080i since it uses a field scaling technique. I sent 1080i from my Oppo DVD player and it looked fine to me so I don't know if the field scaling will even be a concern for me.

I have seen posts like this one where people have stated that the VP50 improves DVD's and SD over the VP30 but I would imagine it's not regarding noise.

This thread gives a glimpse of a device that will do both, but is not quite available yet and the price is in the mid to upper 3k range.

If you don't mind me asking, how well did the flea work?

Only the Gennum or Realta based units currently include noise reduction. The DVDO and Lumagen units have none. The Realta-based VantageHD can be had for not too much more than 2.5K. Give Jason a call. This is a particularly good unit for noise reduction. Based on our tests, it did a better job than a Gennum unit of reducing noise without compromising detail.

I don't understand, I thought that the Crystallio II is a good example of an all in one VP, it does great scaling as well as noise reduction, due to the Gennum VPX chip.

Tom, are you saying that the VPX in the C2 is not as effective as noise reduction as the Realta based product?

Has anyone done any comments on the CII noise reduction features?

I am about to pull the trigger on a CII.

I'm the owner of the CII that I believe Tom is referring to. I find that even on the lowest noise reduction setting, the image becomes too soft-- too much detail is lost.

How well does the VantageHD perform with SD signals and traditional DVD's? If it performs as well as my VP30 w/ 102D and has the flexibility of being able to zoom and pan like the DVDO VP's I'd be interested also.

Prior to owning a CII, I had a VantageHD for about 5 months. I thought it did a fantastic job with tradition DVD's. I fed it a 480i HDMI signal from my Pioneer Elite 59avi. With SD signals its again going to depend on the quality of the signal to begin with. For example, some of Comcast's SD signals are broadcast in analog-- they look like crap to begin with and a video processor is going to improve the image but it still looks like crap in my opinion. Other digital SD signals if they are not overly compressed look pretty good.

I like the NR feature on the crystalio II. I keep it at the lowest level then increase sharpness a little more than normal. That is the sweet spot that is most effective in my set up. The NR stops any noise in the picture without softening it for me on the lowest setting.

there's really no competition today to the algolith solutions for MPEG noise reduction. For regular noise, the other solutions work quite well.

I don't think at this kind of budget you are going to get any noise reduction that is worth having (although the Lumagen ability to strip out a bit of mosquito noise during upscaling makes for a very clean image). It's really C-II and beyond, or go back to dedicated noise reducer.

Lot's of contradictions in this thread. Is the CII capable of doing mesquito and BAR NR equal or greater to the Algolith products?

Has anyone actually done a side by side comparison?

I find it hard to believe it can't, it's a $~4-5k MSRP product, exactly what is so mysterious about mesquito NR?

It definitely CANNOT. The CII doesn't even have any algorithms targetted at compression noise reduction.


Mosquito noise reduction can only be done by a complicated algorithm which needs a lot of processing power. The Mosquito has a whole big processing core which does nothing but compression noise reduction. The CII just has one general purpose video processing chip from Gennum which is not yet targetted at compression noise reduction. The next revision of the Gennum chip (which is not being used in the CII) introduces its own version of compression noise reduction algorithms, but this chip is not yet available, and nobody knows how it will compare to the Algolith algorithms.

Ok, but am I wrong or doesn't the Crystalio site feature a little blurb about noise reduction. It seems like pretty confusing advertising on their part, they should be extremely explicit in a product such as this.

Careful. "noise reduction" is not the same as "compression noise reduction". There are different kinds of noise. The CII *can* do analog/random noise reduction. It just can't do compression noise reduction.

How good is the Flea in the noise reduction area? I am thinking of picking up a component Flea (pretty cheap now) to put between my Comcast box and a VP50, as it is the noise on SD that is the biggest problem.

Thanks.

What benefit do any of these processors have for an HD-DVD signal over HDMI into a Fuji plasma? That's what I'm trying to figure out.

I still see a bit of noise in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, but it's so slight that I am not sure if it's compression based or just film grain? It may even vary by scene. What is the solution in such a case? Flea? CII?

I'm amazed at what a poor job these companies do at explaining their products.

Not much I'd say. The 5 HD-DVDs I've seen have no compression noise to speak of.

I was reading various threads about the Algolith Flea and it started to sound like it would be a good addition to my VP50 for noise reduction. I did a little more research and discovered that Algolith is no longer in the consumer home theater market and has discontinued the Flea. Is there any other alternative solution for a stand-alone noise reduction unit? Since I already have a VP50 that I'm pleased with, I'd rather have a Flea-like solution instead of buying a whole new integrated video processor with noise reduction. Any help?

Algolith is no longer developing home theater products, but you can still buy the Flea from them directly (http://www.algolith.com/en/support/l...cts/index.html). Or you could try Jason Turk here at AVS.

Thanks. I sent an email and received a reply about price and was told that there are no returns. I guess I'll have to think about it a little more and read some reviews since there isn't a minimal risk way of testing it myself. It sure would be nice to have one feed into my VP50 though...

The algolith Flea is the only processor that reduces actual mosquito noise induced by crappy SD signals or bad M-peg encoding for SD DVD's. This processor improves the image in fine gradients only, and does not clean up the picture without other factors, when coupled with a good scaler it's dynamic range stretcher can boost contrast levels to near HD, mimicking the bright and detailed contrast in images, it's fine detail enhancement also helps clear up blurred SD signals also, which suffer due to data loss or compression.

If anyone is interested I have a brand new never used Mosquito. I have no need since My TV's are all now HD. If you are interested send me a PM. I will make it worth someones interest.
Thanks
Jeffrey

I got my flea from cpat, for an incredible price, I dont think I would sell it unless I got double what I paid for it.

Despite what its intended to do, I use it with blue ray and hd dvd if film grain bothers you, it will also suck up the grain and leave a clearer picture just like regular broadcast.

I consider it an extention of my projector, and it instantly improves the picture of everything i throw at it. As long as settings are kept low no detail is lost, but any type of artifact, noise, or grain some/most of it will get removed and at no loss of detail. Again as long as settings are set low.

Lumagen has mosquito noise reduction for both SD and HD video. The mosquito noise reduction is part of the proprietary "no ring" scaling. This is a feature of the HDP, HDQ and Radiance video processors.

Best regards,
Randy Freeman

Is there anything like the flea for similar price that handles 1080p/60?