Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion Meridian - Systems The one of MANY HD-DVD threads (No bashing Blu-Ray)

Mark - presumably it's a night and day difference? On a slight tangent, how accurate are the primaries in your display?

If I'm awake, I'm typically somewhere near a computer

Things are starting to get interesting I use my colorimiter a lot, not just in my cinema but also for calibrating TVs and my PCs and other peoples' too. A very useful tool, and once you start to enjoy correct greyscale it's very difficult to watch an uncalibrated set.

Mark

Actually, it's not that obvious a difference unless you have test video side by side like on HD-DVE. This is why I dismiss some of the "my colours are perfect of course" type comments which appeared on my AVS thread - unless you have test patterns for confirmation it's easy to be wrong. I've happily lived with wrong colours for the past 6 months, for instance, without realising it...

Now that I have noticed the problem I'd like to resolve it.

The primaries on my system are spot on Rec 709 for blue and red but slightly undersaturated for green.

Cheers,

Mark

I guess we're all used to the Rec 601 gamut.

I tried it yesterday and heres my question. There is a demo loop where they show a scene of a lady and man at a restaurant- this is done in split screen with the left side of the screen in 601 and the right side in 709. The 709 looked to me to have slightly more vivid green and red and the pink lapel of her jacket and her skin seemed a little richer. The difference was subtle but once I noticed it, it was clear.

So my question is can I tell if my processor is doing the right decoding from this? My logic is as follows: yes it can because I can see the difference. If I could not see the difference then both would look identical- wouldn't they not- in essence the 709 sample would get crushed back to the 601 right?

I don't think I can get my processor to change its color space all that easily....

best regards,
Jerry

Jerry, the simplest thing to do is go back to the first colour bar pattern in that sequence, pause the image and look through the green filter - which block of colours match the background - the 601 or 709 block? If I understand the test pattern correctly it should be the 709 block.

I'd be very interested to hear your results.

I've been investigating this for a couple of days now and think that the problem actually lies with the Lumagen or even my projector and not necessarily the sources as initially suspected. I've put test patterns from 2 HD-DVD players, a Blu-Ray player and a test pattern generator through my system and they all show the same problem...

Cheers,

Mark

It's my birthday next Monday. I'm very close to finally getting myself an Xbox 360 having seen a fantastic deal on the premium version bundled with a stack of well regarded games and a second joypad.

The purchase is nudging me towards buying an LCD display to hold me over for a short while until there's a display on the market that better suits my screen size and quality demands (not to mention to hold me over until I could afford said bigger/better display)….

All this is obviously leaving me eyeing the 360`s HD DVD add on (which is �129 over here), but ironically if I do stretch my birthday budget and get a small HDTV to tide me over it`ll probably leave me out of pocket to get the little drive as well. I`m still deeply torn on the whole hi def wars. It`s frustrated me so much… I`m still not even sure I`d want to spend �129 and accumulate a collection for a format that might fail.

I'm in a pickle.

The way I see it, I'll always have the films I've bought available to view, even if the HD disc formats do fail. And the image and sound quality of these films is generally so good that they are going to be the benchmark versions for some time to come...

Do you have an Amazon wishlist available to view?

Cheers,

Mark

Daniel. Just think back to 'Casablanca' if that helps.

Exactly. It didn't take me long to overcome the "what if HD DVD fails" thinking.

Daniel, take note! The last thing I put on mine was a Tosh XA1 and some kid with glasses and a shedload of white chocolate actually bought it for me!

Daniel, How big will your LCD screen be?

If its small, 32" or less, there is no real point in HD. (Just my opinion).

But it does leave you with time to save for the Big Screen that will make it all worth while.

Also the HD player you then buy will be better and cheaper.

If your worried HD will fail, collect the discs for the future.

Just how I see it, Cheers, Chris

P.S. Happy Birthday. How old?

Precisely why I am of two minds whether to be cheeky enough to post it or not ( ) as I do have a wish list - a UK one at any rate. I was updating it this morning funnily enough as my sister loves these things and was bugging me to add a load of stuff to it in light of my birthday next week. I`m always failing to update it regularly, and when I do it`s more as a casual reminder of things I`d quite like to buy myself at some time or other rather than for other people to pick at.

There`s a whole Canon camera kit on there which I`d been mulling over as an alternative to the Xbox and the new TV - in fact I was pretty set on it, finally nudging myself to move on from 35mm slr photography and into digital, but the Xbox deal which I found out about yesterday caught me off guard (the console alone is about �270 and this deal is for the console, 4 well regarded games and a second pad for �299). So that of course got me into the mentality that plugging a 360 into an interlaced TV with a scart lead is no fun and if I am to pay that much money for a game machine I`m going to want to get the best out of it as soon as it`s taken out of the box, so then I found a good little Sony LCD [the S2530].

Why is it with electronics things tend to snowball? You find one thing you want then you want half a dozen other things to go with it and there`s always bits you can`t afford.

It`s a 32inch one yes, Chris. Same (in fact slightly updated version) as a set that a friend of mine has which he runs successfully with his 360 and HD DVD add on. Although I know where you're coming from, I don`t entirely agree that there`s no real point at that screen size as such. I`ve seen HD at 32inches and from a viewing distance within five feet (max) I still think it is an obvious step up in quality. Any further back than that however and the returns quickly diminish without question.

There are bigger sets I am eyeing as a more long term purchase (the new Pioneer plasmas announced this week, Panasonic`s commercial plasma panels, the 2007 SXRDs from Sony, the fresh batch of larger LCDs coming from Sony later in the year…etc), but this set at �549 had crossed my mind as a potential short term purchase which I could then sell on in six months or so to someone in the family and concede a loss of around �100/�150 on. I buy DVDs so rarely these days in light of the HD formats. I miss watching as many films as I used to as a consequence and that's the chief reason the dual format issue upsets me as I know I'm not alone. Those with less to worry about obviously just dive right in and are enjoying both.

PS: 25. I`m amongst the Hitchhikers babies.