DVDO iScan VP50 Pro

[Reid Malenfant]

Just took delivery of a rather nice video processor early this afternoon & have only really had a brief play with it so far, but I can see the potential for better pictures already :)

It's going to take me a while to get the thing set up to make the best use of it, but already I have discovered the joys of upscaled SVHS tapes that can now be squirted down the HDMI cable to the TV or projector.

I'm not 100% sure if I'll be able to feed the TV a frame rate of 48 or 72Hz, but i'm sure that the projector won't complain at all, so it should be pretty interesting with film material very shortly :eyebrows:

What will be most interesting is using the Prep setting to see what does a better job of de-interlacing & scaling a DVD, as this processor can re-interlace & then properly de-interlace a DVD or whatever that has been bumped to a progressive output by the player. I get the impression that a £2K processor should do a better job than just about any player ;)

I'll report back when I have sorted this thing out properly & got everything calibrated etc. I'll also be replacing the standard 6V @ 7Amp SMPS with a Paul Hynes regulator in the not too distant future, which I'm sure will reap even more rewards.

More on that when it happens...

[Reid Malenfant]

I had a bit more time to have more of a play with this processor today, not as much as I'd have liked but not to worry :) I'm certainly not anyway...

While I realise this isn't going to have much of a huge effect on progressive encoded blu rays I had noticed a good bit of tidying on the Oppos' splashscreen & while I couldn't be 100% sure it was doing very much there was certainly no degrading of the picture what so ever.

So I thought it was about time I found out what it could do.. Into the Oppo menu & set the output to YCrCb 4.4.4 colourspace which both the processor & TV are quite happy with along with some better looking pictures. The best bit was when I set the Oppo to simply output what was on the disc with no de-interlacing or scaling :eyebrows:

While a standard progressive BD outputs what is on the tin, interlaced stuff such as BBC documentaries where now being de-interlaced by the processor. The result was by far the best pictures I have ever seen from these types of BD!

So I decided to spin a DVD, dug out Fifth Element (superbit) & gave that a twirl... Flawless scaling & de-interlacing to 1080P & a picture that is in all honesty only just behind the remastered blu ray version of the film.

Only a small amount of noise on the picture was the giveaway that it wasn't the BD spinning :cool: While the Oppo had by far the best picture playback of any stand alone player I have come accross, this is in a totally different league :D

I can see I'm going to have to have a lot more messing about time to get the very best out of this bit of kit, however, the results so far are more than worth the initial expenditure...


It'll be interesting to see how this performs when the standard SMPS is replaced with a top quality Paul Hynes regulator as it most certainly will be in the not too distant future. One is already in the pipeline :)

[synsei]

It sounds like an interesting piece of kit Mark. If it can upscale DVD's to near BD quality well, that is an achievement by itself... ;)

[Reid Malenfant]

It gets closer than anything I have seen - yes :) It doesn't half run hot though, but then it does have a 60W PSU so there is some hefty processing going on, which does show in the picture quality.

I think I'll open it up & see if I can give the hot bits some kind of extra heatsinking, I like things to be reliable :lol: The PSU doesn't exactly run cool either & that's an SMPS at the present time.

All I can say is I'm very happy indeed with the purchase at the price I payed for it :D

[Reid Malenfant]

Hmmm, I can't remember what I was doing the other day but I happened to go into the Fridge (:eyebrows:) to probably turn on the dCS kit from standby when I noticed a strange noise :scratch:

It took me a while to figure out what it was, but it was coming from the scaler.... I noticed that even though it was in standby mode (no power LED lit up) it was still bloomin hot, & then it hit me - a tiny fan was spinning :rfl:

Kind of annoying, but couldn't hear it with the Fridge door shut.


What hacks me off though is that it still consumes a shed load of power when in standby, as it's at virtually, if not exactly the same temperature when operating all I can say is I'm pleased that I'll be using a different PSU & regulator in the not too distant future!

Rather than unplugging the SMPS (which I wouldn't be able to do if fully installed) I'll simply be able to switch off the new PSU via a front panel switch :)


Nobody tells you these things, you have to find them out for yourself :steam: There is nothing in the instructions manual about it :mental: There should be as 60W is quite a bit to burn doing nothing at all..

[End mini rant] :eyebrows:

[Reid Malenfant]

[End mini rant]
In every cloud there is a silver lining - apparently :eyebrows:


I decided to check the projector was still functioning ok late yesterday evening, as the last time I used it the P600 did a credible impression of Rice Crispies - (apart from the snap) there was definately crackle & pop! :rolleyes:

Well it fired up fine so I got one of my favourite BBC documentaries (South Pacific) going on the screen. It took me a while to notice, but there were absolutely no de-interlacing artifacts whatsoever :scratch: Every time I have watched it previously, even with the Oppo doing the de-interlacing, there has always been a good few feint lines running accross the picture on certain parts of the blu ray (1080i 50Hz).

These are now gone & yet I could swear they were there using the iScan when I watched it previously? :confused:

So this got me wondering how new & how much use this processor has actually had in it's life. Not just that, but the chap I bought it off (who purchased it new) was probably the better side of 65 years old.

There is still a plastic film over the front panel display & on the remote control. The unit, box, remote & instructions are as new to...

It took me a while to set the thing up as I had to alter the settings on the Oppo player so that it spat out what was on the disc & didn't do any processing itself, leaving it to the iScan.

I have a sneaking suspicion that it's only now being run in, as if any player wasn't set to output what was on the disc then it'd effectively be doing nothing at all as it feeds through 1080P information with only subtle adjustments available.

Apart from the Oppo player this processor has been the number one upgrade in the way of picture quality that I have experienced & from the looks of things it's improving as time goes by. The icing on the cake will be the Paul Hynes regulator & getting rid of the SMPS. The difference one made over a linear regulated wall wart PSU on the Octava HDMI distribution amp was particularly enlightening :D

If that is anything to go by then running a whole processor with a top quality PSU should see improvements way above what I experienced with the one on the Octava :cool:


By the way, I really don't mind yacking to myself - I do it at home all the time :lol: I regard this thread as a journey that one day I may need to look back on to see where I have come from & how I got here :)

[Covenant]

I talk to myself when I am driving......

[Reid Malenfant]

I talk to myself when I am driving......
I was going to say I haven't done that in years :eyebrows: But then a motorcycle is riding :lol:


Hope you are well Jerry.

[Richardl]

Someone on another forum had his own webpage with a calculator to work out all the different settings for video processors, it was in excel format. I've had a look, but he's taken the webpage down. Ill have a look if its still on my pc somewhere.
It might still be somewhere on the web, it was called "video timings calculator".
If you like having a video processor and can't bee arsed with all the messing about, I went from a vp30 to a dvdo edge.........it does all the work for you. It has a database of lots of tvs, it senses what tv you have and changes the output format to suit.
The edge should be about £200 s/h.....maybe less.
There's also a dearer model called the duo.

[Richardl]

Found it on my PC, PM me your email address if you want me to send it to you, I know it helped my with a Crystalio video processor I had, the wording of of settings my be slightly different, but it should still work for a DVDO processor.

[Reid Malenfant]

Hi Richard, cheers for the offer :) While I have now discovered how to get a proper 4:3 or if you like 1.33:1 image on my Philips 21/9 TV using this processor it can't do any harm :eyebrows:

Must admit it does all make some sense now I think about it, it just works arse about face in some respects :lol:

PM on the way :cool:

[Reid Malenfant]

Hi Richard, cheers for sending the document :)

Unfortunately while I have a program that should open it (Microsoft Works Spreadsheet) which kind of covers xls files, it appears to be encrypted :scratch:

At least that's what it's telling me :eyebrows:

Perhaps it needs something a bit newer than Works, as I have had similar problems in the past with other xls stuff. If I remember right Works can deal with xl files, xls is more problematic as has been proven on a few occasions :(


Thanks very much for taking the time though! Very much appreciated even if it didn't quite work out ;)

[Richardl]

Hi Richard, cheers for sending the document :)

Unfortunately while I have a program that should open it (Microsoft Works Spreadsheet) which kind of covers xls files, it appears to be encrypted :scratch:

At least that's what it's telling me :eyebrows:

Perhaps it needs something a bit newer than Works, as I have had similar problems in the past with other xls stuff. If I remember right Works can deal with xl files, xls is more problematic as has been proven on a few occasions :(


Thanks very much for taking the time though! Very much appreciated even if it didn't quite work out ;)


I think the sheet is protected, but not all of it, you might not have scrolled upto the top of the page, have a look at cells K17-K23.
If you're still having problems with 'works', why not download 'open office' I think it has a version of Excel with it.......and it's free.
http://www.openoffice.org/

[Reid Malenfant]

I think the sheet is protected, but not all of it, you might not have scrolled upto the top of the page, have a look at cells K17-K23.
If you're still having problems with 'works', why not download 'open office' I think it has a version of Excel with it.......and it's free.
http://www.openoffice.org/
Cheers Richard, you are a true gent :)

I'm sure we'll get there in the end :D