Quote:
Originally Posted by
Avliner 
When I bought my Oppo DVD player, DCDi was considered among the top of the line...what's happened in the last 2 years?
DCDi hasn't been considered "top of the line" for years. However, Faroudja has held the price/performance crown for a long time. Arguably, they still do.
Around this time last year, you had to spend $3000+ to get a DVD player with Silicon Optix HQV processing. Last fall, Denon released the first <$2000 DVD players with technology -- the $1500 3930ci and $850 2930ci (ReonVX) -- that are now considered the best DVD players on the market, at any cost. Both deliver superior output compared to the Faroudja solutions, but also cost 4-7x as much. Faroudja is arguably still the performance champ when it comes to 1080p DVD players costing $250 or less.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
dmcdayton
I've noticed quite a few derogatory comments about DCDi.
Can someone summarize the differences between the Reon and DCDi?
I'm also very interested to know what's wrong with DCDI video chips though.
Genesis (Faroudja) never really re-engineered their architecture for high-definition signals and 1080p displays. Instead, they've adapted older SD designs for HD. They've done this to preserve backward compatibility with older solutions, as a means to minimize implementation costs. In contrast, the ReonVX is a much newer architecture built from the ground-up for high-definition displays.
Genesis' DCDi solutions in the market today do multi-field, per-pixel,
motion adaptive video deinterlace for 480i signals, but not for 1080i signals. Further, Faroudja solutions in the market today cannot reliably detect film-sources in a 1080i signal, as necessary to perform
inverse telecine to reconstruct the full resolution of 1080p24 content. In addition, Faroudja-based solutions apply certain filters -- that cannot be defeated or disabled -- which eliminate chroma information and introduce some degree of macroblocking into the picture signal.
Faroudja DCDi is not really "bad" as much as it is mediocre. If your HDTV is three or four years old, then you will probably see some improvement with DCDi. If you have a newer a $1000-$1500 LCD -- which commonly use DCDi -- then you probably won't see much difference. However, if you have a higher-end display, then DCDi may degrade your picture quality rather than improving it.
In contrast, Silicon Optix HQV processing is the same technology used in $10,000+ Runco displays. When properly implemented, its output quality exceeds that of the video processors in just about every consumer plasma, LCD, DLP, and SXRD display on the market today. If your TV has 1:1 pixel mapping (as necessary to bypass the built-in scaler), then Silicon Optix HQV -- if properly implemented -- can
significantly improve the quality of your picture on all sources.
Denon said at CES that its highest-end receivers and processors will use Silicon Optix HQV. The only question right now is how much you will have to spend on a Denon A/V processor to achieve comparable video quality to the $1699 Onkyo TX-SR875. Note Onkyo is using DCDi processing in their lower-end models, including the TX-SR605 model ($599 MSRP), which J&R is taking preorders for at $399.
