TVONE Blending Info, General Q&A or just how to? - Page 16

Rob - Do you have a tentative date for a firmware update - I'm getting antsy!


Gino - Are you close to setting up your pair of these yet?


Bob

Not yet, I have just sent over the customs clearance forms and paid the import duties and taxes, so they should be releasing them to me soon. I suspect they will arrive while I'm in Spain. I hope they have released the FW update by the time I return.

Hi Guys, I just had two Visitors from TV-One stop by and visit me at my diner. Very nice guys, Steve told me that Rob has been working hard on the latest firmwear and it should be done soon. Dont ask me how soon but i would say before december. HDCP is a pain !!

I also Asked them about a dual output video switcher and they said they once had it on the Project table but scraped it as they thought it wouldnt be need much, but now i shed some new uses and light on why it be great for a combo package with their single chip blend units. Lets hope they do it ! They Are really a bunch of great guys, lets hope they keep up the good work and listen to our wish lists.

Athanasios

I was thinking that the HDCP issue would be a pita. If I have time this weekend, I'm going ahead with playing with resolutions/refresh rates.

Thanks,
Bob

Andy - When you speak with them, please try to find out what else they will be doing besides the HDCP BS.

Thanks,
Bob

Andy Are they considering the Apple Software we talked briefly about? And Try to get them to reconsider a source switcher with two mirrored outs for use with a blend unit, maybe even a unit where you can buy secondary add on boards to expand it to 3,4, outs for multi blend systems for commercial use.

Athanasios

Any idea if these units support HDMI 1.3 spec?

Mine have arrived in Australia, so will play with them when I return, but will likely wait until the HDCP issue is sorted.

Andy, is it yet possible to define your own custom blend curve?

Is it yet possible to do individual blend curves for each colour?

Andy - Do you expect any other changes besides HDCP?

Bob

Andy, if I setup my blend with the TVOne units as is at my desired resolution and frame rates, will changing the firmware require me to do another setup or minor touch ups or everything will be fine?

Does anyone here think there is merit in doing 96Hz progressive?

Just opened up the boxes, do I need to connect these units together with some sort of cable?

No you adjust each one individually , it is basiclly the same on the all in one units each chip has its own controls IIRC.

Athanasios

Gino - you will obviously need an active HDMI/DVI splitter of some sort to get the input to both units. If you wish, you can also split the analog output of one of them and send it to the analog input of the second unit to "GenLock" the two. I have tried it both ways, and can see no difference. If there is any slight timing difference, it is much faster than my eyes can see.

While I have you, I have a couple of questions.
1 - What resolution/refresh are you going to try first?
2 - When you were in Spain you tried an 8% blend. Was there some special reason for this, or were you just experimenting?

Thanks,
Bob

Hi Bob, I was thinking of trying 1248x1060@72 for cinemascope. I've chosen 1248 for a 15% overlap.

We did 8% at Andres' place because his projectors were already ceiling mounted and that was as close together as we could get them without having to remount.

Gino - Are you taking your BluRay directly to the TVOne's or are you going through a scaler first?
If you are going through a scaler, what output resolution are you using from the scaler?

Bob

Andy you have my e-mail add me to your firmware list please

Athanasios

Andy,

that is great news, but the firmware upgrade brings up a few questions in itself and I will also use the occasion to ask a few more questions that popped up during my first hours with the TV One units and to report my findings so far:

Will the settings be left intact with the frimware update ?
Can I revert to the older firmware if problems arise ?
Is there any way yet that I can back up all my settings through the software ?


And on another note I have a few questions regarding general usability which if not implented yet would also be feature requests of mine:

With a given output resolution is there an option to to have a preset to get a 16:9 picture in the middle of my scope screen ? I find myself wanting this quite a bit with a lot of Blu-Rays that have popup menues that are mostly in the lower black bars.

Regarding the RS232 control: I think I would prefer to use that if the adjustments allowed as fine a granularity as with setting everything on the units themselves, at the moment this is not possible however and the adjustments are only possible in jumps, for example for setting a blend zone parameter I have a slider that takes me for example from 182 to 191, whereas at the unit itself I can adjust in steps of 1, on the PC I could never get to a value of 184 at the moment so the usability of the software is very low at the moment.

What is the recommended setting of the deinterlacer so that it leaves progressive sources untouched ? I have been using "auto" so far but it would be nice to have some kind of "off" setting to know the deinterlacer is not doing anything.

Now regarding my tests so far:

I can happily report that I was successful achieving 1:1 pixel mapping to my source of 1920 x 820p 23,976 and taking it to 1920 x 820p 71,928
With regard to flawless pans and judder free motion this setup looked as good as anything I have seen before and then some due to the higher resolution and light output achieved and due to the higher ANSI contrast that comes with such a setup.
I went back to a single projector on the same screen and it seemed dim to me - at 12 fL !

It was very easy to arrive at a seamless blendzone at higher IRE's, lower IRE's still have the blend zone showing up and I will have to adjust for that.
As my preliminary tests were mainly for artefacts with 24 Hz sources and 1:1 pixel mapping I did not do that much about the blend zone but so far I like very much what I have been seeing and I will continue my tests on another screen and with different projectors

Oliver

Bob - I'll be going through the Lumagen Radiance first, so I can connect more sources, and gain the benefits of custom gamma, CMS and perfect greyscale and colorimetry.

For BD sources, I plan on going native, so if the source is 1080p24, I'll be using that, and I'm hoping that the frame interpolation feature to get to 72 will work very well. IF it does, I'll be getting rid of my VP50Pro from the chain.

How does aspect ratio control work with these things?

So then what does it support from 1.3 exactly?

I don't know as I use my VP50Pro for AR control.



Gino - I would give anything for that flexibility! The only problem is that is would take two Lumagen's to do it. I can't wait until TVOne supplies this feature set.

Bob

It was very easy to arrive at a seamless blendzone at higher IRE's, lower IRE's still have the blend zone showing up and I will have to adjust for that.Oliver - This is interesting, because I had just the opposite - High IRE's were my problem.

I'm not sure It's the best way to do it, but I used the signal generator in my VP50Pro to do all adjustments. I set up my sensor in the blend zone and set my G2's, 100IRE values, color temp and gray scale by just turning off the blend and getting a match.

BTW - what res. are you runnig?

Thanks,
Bob

Are you using Moome gamma correction?

If I understand correctly the TV-ONE has a numeric setting for the blend zone, i.e. gamma for each projector.

I think it would be very nice to upload a custom blend function to the TV-ONEs. The problem with a numeric gammas is that it is very difficult to get an ideal numeric gamma at all IREs on all three channels (e.g. 2.22) on a real CRT, and even more so if you are using gamma correction (hence the problem with the low-end IREs).

Big dog, there is something coming soon for the VP50Pro that I think will you might want to keep it.

Cliff

Bob,

I did not try around a lot with the blend zones as this was not my primary focus - I only adjusted them so that I could check the other stuff without getting annoyed by an overly visible bendzone.

I am using 1920 x 820 at 72 Hz

Oliver