Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion Meridian - Systems Official Blue ray options - Denon, Arcam, Pioneer, etc.

Mark,


That is exactly my point. The idea of being down 3dB at Nyquist is for analog delivery. Now that we have a full digital pipeline, the old analog ways should no longer apply.


They are not breaking any rules. A full amplitude Nyquist is not above Nyquist.

Three common algorithms to convert 4:2:0 to 4:2:2 include nearest neighbor, bilinear and bicubic. I have listed them in order of processing power, and quality, from lowest to highest. Most players today are using bilinear to convert (scale) 4:2:0 to 4:2:2. The algorithm to convert 4:2:0 to 4:2:2 is the same one used for converting 480p to 1080p because it is a scaling problem. To put anothe way, chroma on Blu-ray is 960x540. Bilinear will produce softer results than bicubic.

We wrote a paper on how to do better chroma upscaling a few years ago, but never published it. We shared it with some CE companies. Panasonic has that paper. We also provided them with a test disc to use. Our paper describes how to convert 4:2:2 to 4:2:0 for disc creation as well as the inverse for playback. Many Blu-ray movies have used our conversion from 10-bit 4:2:2 to 8-bit 4:2:0. Universal, Paramount, Disney, WHV and many others. If they are using our algorithm to convert back to 4:2:2 it`s a great thing.

A lot more visible than any audio upsampling algorithm.

The differences are in the finest details. 3D animations, like Pixar, will be were differences are most noticable. My montage was shot at 4K and contains high frequency detail as does Baraka.

You will see more players start to produce higher quality chroma shortly. At least one has an open bug to fix the problem. The problem is in the decoder and there are only a handful of decoder makers.

As a side note, PHL is the leader expert in H.264 development. They also created the best MPEG-2 encoder back in the day when they were DVCC. This encoder is used only by Deluxe.

Ah, ok, I get it now!


OK, I'm sold.

Is this an issue we can expect fixed in firmware on existing players?

I'm also disappointed that consumers are still suffering from such issues. As you say, with the new digital delivery systems this should have all gone away already.

I think I'll grab a Panny player...

Many thanks,

Mark

Mark,

It just occured to me. When you read the Panasonic description, does it sound like a "detail enhancement" feature to you? If so, then I understand your concers.

I strongly dislike detail enhancement of any kind. Most modern processors have some type of detail enhancement feature. Faroudja used to have a chroma detail enhancer that caused all kinds of nasty artifacts.

Panasonic is not doing any type of detail enhancement.

Very much so.

"The Panasonic-unique P4HD technology processes more than 15 billion pixels per second, generating each pixel correctly according to information obtained from up to 60 surrounding pixels, and applies the optimum processing to every pixel in the video data on the disc."

This implies, to me, massive processing to create an interpolated image rather than accurately presenting what's on the disc... This is the sort of stuff we expect when scaling DVD for large screen/higher-than-native resolution displays but not for sources displayed at native resolution.


This is where I come from. I'm a purist. I want to be in control of any "enhancement" (which typically means I disable them!). The enhancements we normally associate with video processing to me means digression from the original or in other words degradation. No thanks.


Excellent.

Mark

My Panny DMP-BD60 has arrived. I can see the difference in the chroma multiburst test pattern (though it's subtle) but am struggling to see any real world differences... need to test more... It's not helping that when I switch sources I get a 5-sec handshake that involves a blank screen - it's impossible for me to make instant switches because of this which might allow me to see fine chroma detail changes. But my impressions so far is that the film images look identical... (I'm using two copies of the same film for testing...).

The Panny is clunkier than the Sony BDP-S350/S550 - slower to start, slower to load and slower to respond and has more handshake issues. Each time I start the player I'm greeted with a green screen and have yet to resolve this. Maybe a firmware update is available to help with this... I hate HDMI!

Cheers,

Mark

Mark:

Your continued feedback / thoughts on the DMP-60 would be invaluable as this is the Blu-Ray player that I am leaning towards as I can not / do not want to wait for the Oppo to be readily available...

Thanks, in advance, so much...

Joel, if you have anything specific you'd like me to test feel free to drop me an email if you still have my address.

Cheers,

Mark

Mark:

I do still have your address and will drop you a line over the weekend...the only comments that I would add for now are:

1. I went to the dealer to see the BD-60 and must admit that neither its construction nor its appearance impressed me but, then again, it is the PQ which is the issue.

2. I am interested in, in general, yours, as well as others, views in two areas i) its PQ realtive to other players (particularly as you have the competing Sony) and ii) its integration with the HD621/861 as this will be the environement in which it will be used.

Whether or not I am making a mistake by option for the Panasonic over the Oppo will remain to be seeing but for those reading this thread the reasons -- at least mine -- are as follows:

1. Panasonic is $200 cheaper;
2. Oppos' DVD-A is of no interest as I have an 80 for this;
3. Oppos' SA-CD is of no interest as I own no SA-CDs and do not see them in my future
4. Oppos' processing/scaling is of no interest as I have a Lumagen RadianceXE

so, for me, the extra dollars and extra wait of the Oppo do not provide value. With that, in the event that I have missed something and those with the Oppo (Stacey, are you there) believe that my thinking is wrong, please let me know why as I still have time to reconsider...

TIA,

Hi Joel,

Been playing with the Panny some more today.

If there are PQ improvements, I cannot see them. But as I said, my test setup is conspiring against my tests - any subtleties are being forgotten during the handshake blank screen. Now, having said that, I *can* see the difference in the chroma test pattern and so as a video purist one should choose the Panasonic... just because *I* cannot see the difference on my 15' screen doesn't mean they aren't there

As for the player, I continue to have handshake issues with the Panny, even after a firmware update. Each time I drop back to the main screen I get a green screen...

I also had a quick look at DVD. This time the player insisted on handing over YCbCr 4:4:4 and everything looked funky. A quick EDID change on the Radiance sorted this. There's no way to force colourspace output on this player, whereas the Sony allows you to choose YCbCr 4:2:2, YCbCr 4:4:4, RGB PC/VIDEO.

The player handles the audio streams fine through the HD621, supplying PCM as requested.

Conclusion. I'm sticking with my S550 for now. It's a much smoother experience overall...

I've hacked the Panny to be a region-free DVD player so will use it as a DVD/Blu player for my TV.

Cheers,

Mark

Mark:

Appreciate the feedback...that said, can you please advise as to what you mean by a "smoother experience" as I still have the ability to select the Sony over the Panny...thanks so much...