substance

hi, just joined.

actually I was the one who recommended antcu the analog devices adv7800 evaluation board to use it as the external comb filter. The ADV7800 chip so far is the best comb filter in the market and I doubt that there will ever be a newer/better one from any hw manufacturer.

I am not well knowledge about the capture part but I can talk about a thing or two on the real time viewing.

I own or have owned pretty much all of the well known video processors including PMS Crystalio II (had 2 at one point), DVDO VP30/50, Algolith Dragonfly, Algolith Mosquito HDMI (still have two), Faroudja NRS, Lumagen HDQ. I currently own the following,

-Algolith Mosquito HDMI
-Lumagen Radiance 2144
-Lumagen Radiance Pro 4449

I own or have owned all of the highly regarded LD players. I won’t list all but only the ones I currently own.

-Pioneer DVL-919 (US version)
-Pioneer DVL-919E (EU version Pal/NTSC)
-Pioneer LD-S1
-Pioneer LD-S2
-Pioneer HLD-X9
-Pioneer HLD-X0
-McIntosh MLD-7020 (Pioneer CLD-97 Clone with factory RF out)
-Theta Voyager V2 (Silver)
-Theta Voyager V2 (Black with Progressive Scan Component upgrade)

If cost is no object below is the best of the best in LD playback, look no further!

Pioneer HLD-X0 -> Lumagen Radiance 2144 (Comb filter + deinterlacing =480p output) -> Algolith Mosquito HDMI (Dynamic Gaussian Filter for noise removal)-> Lumagen Radiance Pro 4449 (Color calibration + Darbe + Geometry = Scaling up to 4K)

Above is a several decathousand setup, let’s look at more conservative ones.

Pioneer CLD-97 and LD-S2(not! HLD-X9) are the closest to the HLD-X0. They have very low chroma noise and very stable video. For the shipping cost of HLD-X0(from Japan), you can perhaps buy 3x CLD-97s(or 4).

For video processing, I will stick with Lumagen gear. The no ringing scaling of Lumagen is really the only suitable processing for its NTSC video. DVDO sucks, Faroudja is OK, Algolith is OK. Only Crystalio II rivals but that is hard to find. Lumagen Radiance 2124 and 2144 are the only models with the good ADV7800 chip. All other Lumagen use 2D comb filters and not good. The very old HDQ model has the very good TI TVP5160 chip for its 3D comb filter. It is a rare machine but very cost effective comparing to 2124 and 2144.

At one point, I had both Crystalio II Pro VPS-3800 and Lumagen Radiance 2144 in my system. ADV chip in Lumagen is excellent with dot crawl(absolutely none) but noticeably softer than TVP chip in Crystalio II (some dot crawl in motion). Crystalio II uses Gennum VXP for upscaling which is second to Lumagen scaling. Let’s make a list:

-Lumagen HDQ $200-500
-Crystalio II $1000-1500
-Lumagen Radiance 2124/44 $2500-3500

If you really have to go low cost and can’t find a HDQ, Faroudja NRS would be my only alternative. These above VPs are so good, even a mediocre player like DVL-919 can look amazing through these. I see a lot of people use DVDO processors. If you have one of these, make sure to disable its scaling and use your TVs. Just set it to output 480p so it only does deinterlacing (which it does excellently). DVDO scaling will murder LD. its too harsh and aggressive.

Some fun project:

SO I bought these DVL and Theta units for a Frankenstein player. Theta Voyager is basically a DVL-919 with an upgraded power section and video opamp/output section. It’s discete components and toroidal transformers really help lower the noise floor for both sound and video. There is really not a decent PAL capable LD player in existence. I looked into CLD-d925, 2950 and D515 but the best is DVL-919E. It’s the only one with a digital TBC. So my project is to swap come boards inside a Theta unit and make it PAL capable. I still don’t expect CLD-97 type performance but with its amazing power section, I expect much lower noise than the 919. It will mostlikely be the best PAl player in existence.