[DaveW42]

As most of you are aware, AVS currently has a powerbuy going for the Panamorph.


My question is this: In terms of improving picture quality, would I be better off spending the money on a Panamorph or on an HTPC?


If I were to go the HTPC route, I would be running FFDshow with TheaterTek and upconverting the DVD image. If I went with the Panamorph, the manufacturer claims that there is up to a 33% increase in resolution.


I am currently using a BenQ PB6200, which is an XGA DLP projector running in 4:3 mode. This projector is plenty bright, so the added brightness provided by Panamorphs isn't really a benefit for me.


Which option is likely to provide more bang for the buck? Your thoughts on this would be greatly appreciated.


Best wishes,

Dave

 

[Assayer]

Although I have not seen it yet myself, the PB6200 has a reputation for having so-so quality scaler and deinterlacer electronics. Unless you feel that you have a real screendoor/pixilation problem or need the brightness, you will probably get more bang for your buck out of driving the projector at its native resolution with an HTPC.


Keep in mind that the PB6200 is already shooting more pixels than are native in the DVD format. So you are not adding any information to the image when you vertical stretch, you are basically just smoothing out by rescaling up electronically and then back down optically.


The HTPC would also give you more flexibility in other ways down the road such as organizing your music collection in a jukebox format, playing windows media 9 HD material and the odd computer game. It is also more work to set up and generally not as spouse-friendly unless you go the extra mile.


IF a sharp, lower noise image is the priority: HTPC

IF smoothness, brightness, spousal convenience are priority: panamorph


I would do both, but the HTPC comes first.

 

[madpoet]

If budget is your concern, I would buy the panamorph and the Zenith upconverting DVD player, which is only $160. It gets you close to HTPC performance.

 

[Marco T]

Hi DaveW42,


I own the same projector as you (PB6200), and although I am trying hard to justify buying the panamorph offered at a great discount, I do not feel it is needed with this pj.


Pixelation is not a problem on my setup, and even with the panel cropped, you have more lines of resolution than the DVD source. The only thing a panamorph would provide is reduction in light spill in 16:9 and 2.35:1 modes. Nice, but not worth the 5 bills for me.


The upconverting player is a great investment. I was acually thinking of getting the LG 3510a, with integrated OTA HDTV tuner. It upconverts on the component output also. The cheaper alternative would be the same player without the tuner, which is basically equivalent to the Zenith 318.

 

[RalphArch]

In my case I need the HTPC for the panamorgh - my projector (Sharp PG A10x) auto reverts to stretch 1024*576 w/o overide on an HD signal - so I have to feed it xga HDTV via the HTPC.


So cable can't be panamorghed for me; I will be using the HTPC to panamorgh OTA HD and DVDs, both from 4*3 to 16*9 to whatever the widest is as well


Check out what your projector does - for HD you may also need an HTPC to provide other than 1080i/720p hd signal

 

[snowmoon]

I have the 6200 and am getting the panamorph, here is why. I am quoting from another page because he is just so much more eloquent than I could ever be. I have also tested the HTPC route and found that it did not give signifigant improvment over my DCDi progressive Pannasonic RP56. HTPC was set up with sonic decoder and ffdshow resize and filter.

http://www.videophile.info/Review/Page_01.htm

Quote:

Upscaling 720x480 to a higher resolution is not about creating 'detail' that isn't there in the first place. Its about presenting those 720x480 pixels on a display device with the least possible amount of high frequency aliasing noise. Huh? Ok, only because you have 720x480 SAMPLES of an analog medium (like film in this case), doesn't mean that displaying them AS SQUARE PIXELS WITH SHARP BOUNDARIES on a display device is the right form of output to reapproximate the smooth analog waveforms it originally captured! By upscaling digital samples to a higher resolution, you interpolate a smooth waveform between the discrete samples. The more interpolation steps the better. The ideal would be to use a sinc filter that yields a sine wave, but thats currently too demanding processing power wise. A typical interpolation that is used is bicubic filtering, which is already better than bilinear filtering, but not quite spline or sinc quality.

This person is formerly a very active member and is extremely well respected in the community for his insight into video processing. His math also holds up to scrutiny

 

[snowmoon]

Oh and yes, the BenQ 6200 allows you to select 16:9 or 4:3 ( necessary for panamorph ) on all componient inputs ( including 480p, 1080i, 720p, ... )

 

[DaveW42]

This is really great information, thanks everyone, and by all means keep it coming!


I had thought that the panamorph would have improved performance due to presenting additional pixels that could not be presented otherwise. Based on what Assayer and Marco T have said, this doesn't seem to be the case. I don't currently see any problems in terms of screen door or pixelation.


I have started with an extremely cheap progressive scan DVD player without DCDi, so upconverting via an HTPC or a better DVD player would certainly help. The advantage with the HTPC would be that I would have additional control in terms of color (my PB6200 doesn't allow me to work with red, green, and blue independently) and various other adjustments. I tend to prefer sharpness (without edge noise) so I am starting to lean more and more towards that HTPC instead of the Panamorph. Making it easy for my wife to operate is also important to me, but I don't believe that she would ever want to setup and use the projector by herself (it is much easier to simply go and use the TV).


Snowmoon, with respect to your comment it seems to me that an HTPC with FFDShow would be in a better position to do this upscaling and interpolation, since you can configure it to double the resolution of the DVD source, which (I think) would be a more dramatic improvement than the panamorph. The HTPC would also not introduce barrel effects, etc., although as Marco has pointed out the Panamorph does have the edge in terms of reducing light spill.


Thanks again and -- like I said -- please keep it coming!


Dave

 

[snowmoon]

Unfortunatly, one of the major problems with a HTPC is that I have yet to find one that can properly read cacidence ( sp? ) and because of that I really don't like the idea of a HTPC. Even on the best of programs and filters the quality improvement. Personally I don't see oversarpening or NR as impovements in video quality.