[Huey]

Got a chance to see 2 brand-new RP56's (one from Circuit City and one from Sears) brought over by avdoc who wanted to see my LT150 4:3 XGA DLP PJ. This progressive DVD player is very impressive IMHO with great deinterlacing and image quality. We viewed selected scenes from Fifth Element Superbit, It's a Wonderful Life, Gladiator, Wolf to evaluate the PJ for rainbows, colors, contrast (blacks and low level detail), sharpness, jaggies.


Everything looks great until we fast forward. Suddenly jaggies popped out from every curve lines (actor's ears, shoulders, etc.). We stopped the player and restarted the movie. This fixed the jaggies. We thought we were crazy so we got the other RP56 and the same observation was noted. This occured with more than one DVDs. Of course HTPC showed no such problems with fast forwarding or rewinding and image quality is slightly better than RP56 which is about 95% image quality of HTPC.


Thus, I'd like RP56 owners to check to see if 1) the player has a bug (the whole line vs. unlucky few units, 2) my LT150 has compatibility problem with RP56, 3) we're crazy.

 

[JeffDM]

You might consider it undesirable operation, but it is hardly a bug that affects 1x playback, and I don't even consider it a bug.


The RP-56 seems to go to video or field double mode when doing FF/RW operations. I guess it's a problem if you want to watch movies in 2x speed mode but that is quite disorienting anyway.

 

[sspears]

Are the jaggies only during >1x speed? ie if you press play to go back to 1x, does it go back to normal? If so, that is by design.

 

[Huey]

Sorry for not being clearer. After I resume playback at normal speed by hitting 'play' after 'FF', the jaggies presented themselves. I don't expect perfect deinterlacing at fast speeds.

 

[sspears]

Thanks Huey, I will look into that. Any particular disc and scene? (to make things easier for me because I am lazy. )

 

[Huey]

Fifth Element, the scene where Bruce Willis first brought the fifth element into the priest apartment and he fainted. Also It's a Wonderful life where little Jimmy Stewart was boxed in the ears by the pharmacist for not delivering the mistakenly packaged poisonous pills.


If it was just me then I'd think I wuz crazy but another AVS member avdoc saw it too on both brand new players. Like I said stopping the movie and restarting from scratch fixed the problem. Weird. Otherwise RP56 was very impressive indeed almost rivalling my Radeon HTPC. Certainly much better than Apex 800--what a piece of junk. I returned it as the progressive was worst than the interlaced into my LT150 due to jaggies and slightly blurry image from the get go.

 

[kiwishred]

Hi, this is my first post so hope this comes out OK.


I could not reproduce the jaggies. However, I do see a different, "jerky frame", bug that seems quite repeatable. Conditions:


- RP56

- Fifth element (Superbit)

- DTS (does not happen with DD)

- Progressive or interlaced (doesn't matter)

- Go chapter 3 and play for a few seconds.

- Quickly hit back skip twice (to end up at chapter 2)

- Motion now becomes really jerky (particularly obvious when pan past the big pillars about 7 secs into the chapter).

- Can clear effect by pausing then resuming.


The jerkiness is reminiscent of film in a movie projector getting "stuck in the gate".


Anyone else repeat this one ?


Brent

 

[Huey]

I think the bottom line is the RP56 players, though excellent for routine playback with its Faroudja deinterlacer, may have hickups once you do a lot of FF, REW, or other minor quirks (optical out only). These bugs should not bother most people and should not surface in routine playbacks. It's still a very cost effective, beautiful imagery player IMHO.

 

[JeffDM]

Quote:

Originally posted by Huey I think the bottom line is the RP56 players, though excellent for routine playback with its Faroudja deinterlacer, may have hickups once you do a lot of FF, REW, or other minor quirks (optical out only). These bugs should not bother most people and should not surface in routine playbacks. It's still a very cost effective, beautiful imagery player IMHO.

I must be in the "routine playbacks" category, I haven't noticed this problem yet, but I haven't used the scan buttons all that much in progressive mode because my special room will still be under construction for a few weeks yet.


In time, I will be using both an HTPC and an RP56, as I have a mix of interlaced and progressive DVDs.

 

[Cinemaphile]

I have been saying that for the past 7-8 months ever since I hooked up the RP-56 to my LT150. Near HTPC performance for a ridiculous price and absolutely none of the HTPC hassle. This also means that the LT150 scaler is not a slouch when processing 480p input. It annoyed me no end when people would pooh-pooh the scaler in the LT150 without having fed it a decent progressive signal to begin with.

 

[JeffDM]

Quote:

Originally posted by Cinemaphile It annoyed me no end when people would pooh-pooh the scaler in the LT150 without having fed it a decent progressive signal to begin with.

I bet that some of those people might have been feeding it a decent progressive signal and still dissing the scaler because of the 5% difference or so. Mind you, those are the very people that will put up with double the hassles of an HTPC to squeeze every bit of the performance that they can, even if the difference was subjectively rated at 1% or less.

 

[Frode]

Cinemaphile - I poopoo'ed the scaler of the LT150 way back when I got it and hooked it up to my Skyworth - and I still poo poo it. A HTPC is far better at properly encoded content than a progressive player. If the content however has encoding issues then a progressive player will give better results. That's just the way it is.

 

[sspears]

I am using an RP56 with an LT150z and I see the scaling artifacts. The scaler in the 10HT does a much better job converting 480p to its native rate.

 

[Cinemaphile]

I am glad we are talking about this again (heck I haven't posted anything in ages). I need some specific scenes from any of the more common reference DVDs where these scaling artifacts are immediately noticed and detract from the viewing experience of the film. I currently watch movies on an 84 inch wide screen from about 12 ft away. I have access to a laptop with very good DVD playback. I will compare the same scene on the laptop's LCD screen and then with the laptop hooked up to the projector. I need to put this issue to rest in my mind once and for all about whether anamorphic 480p scaled by the LT150 in cinema mode is noticeably crappier when compared to a native 1024x768 feed.


Thanks Stacey and Frode for any leads on this.


p.s. what would be even better is test images from either the Avia or VE discs where scaling artifacts would be apparent and then we can try to put a number on how much worse the internal scaler is.

 

[twopatels]

I had noticed the jaggies around ears also and the top of heads so i took my rp 56 back recently and ended with a sony 700p again, i am using the sanyo xp21 clone, i had mentioned this in a previous forum but most people seemed happy with the 56 but I did not like the stalling during eject and various other minor problems

 

[Cinemaphile]

Bump. I was hoping someone would step up to the plate and settle this once and for all. Anyone? Give me good examples of where the LT150 scaler fed with anamorphic 480p trips up in an obvious manner in comparison with an HTPC providing the same signal at native res. After all, solid conclusions must be supported by solid evidence.

 

[sspears]

DTS demo DVD #5. It has the DTS logo on screen. The logo is a bit jagged on diagons because of the scaler. When I feed a Faroudja DVP3000 straight in, it is clean.


I can actually see it on any diagonal line. Feeding the RP56 into the 10HT, things looke just like using the DVP3000 on the LT150.


The LT150 is also soft when feed the RP56 straight in. The image appears more detailed with the DVP3000. Note that I have DVP3000 enhancer off AND the output of the DVP3000 is softer than a straight RP56, but the scaling in LT150 softens the Rp56.

 

[John Kotches]

Stacey,


In fairness, the LT-150 + RP-56 combo can be had for under US$3000......


What was the price of the Faroudja DVP-3000 anyway?


Heck, that combo costs about the same as an NRS, doesn't it?


Regards,

 

[sspears]

You can get equal scaling with an HTPC for much less. I was just giving an example. Personally I think the RP56 to 10HT looks better than VP3000 to 10HT because of the HUGE roll-off on 10HT.

 

[John Kotches]

Scaling yes. Deinterlacing... well, that's a whole 'nother can of worms, isn't it ?


Regards,