PRODUCT REVIEW – AUGUST 28, 2006
Psuedo HD: To Scale, Or Not To Scale?
A review of DVDO’s VP30, Optoma’s HD3000, and OPPO’s DV-970H
With all the recent fuss about blue laser DVD formats, less attention has been paid to video scalers and scaling DVD players. But they have their place, as this review shows.
There’s no doubt that HD DVD and Blu-ray players offer significantly higher resolution than conventional red laser DVD players. The catch is, you’ll need to watch on a larger HDTV set or sit closer to your existing HDTV to see much of an improvement.
If you have a 50-inch or larger HDTV with native 1080p resolution, then you’re in the catbird seat. But if you just bought a 42-inch plasma or LCD HDTV, it’s a different story, particularly if the viewing distance is more than 7-8 feet. Even the newest crop of 1080p LCD HDTVs won’t yield much more detail to your eyes at these distances.
How about front projectors? A different story, as screen sizes are usually much larger. The question to be answered in this case is this: Should you spend hundreds of dollars more to get native 1080i or 1080p playback, or will a video scaler or scaling DVD player come close enough?
I didn’t really plan to have DVDO’s VP30 video scaler, Optoma’s HD3000 video scaler, and OPPO’s DV-970H scaling DVD player in house all at the same time. It just worked out that way. But I also had a few native 720p/768p and 1080p front projectors on hand with which to shake ‘em out. So, rather than three standalone reviews, I decided to put them side-by-side and see what $150 buys versus $2,200 versus $2,999 – the list prices of these products.
Note: The HD3000 video scaler is usually sold as part of a bundle with an Optoma home theater projector. See the review of the HD7300 system elsewhere on this Web site.
OUT OF THE BOX
Figure 1a and 1b – Front and rear of OPPO’s DV-970H scaling DVD player.
Oppo’s DV-970H is certainly a low-profile design. It’s barely two inches high and the DVD tray seems to come out of nowhere when you load a disc. The front panel controls are kept to a minimum, with just four operational buttons to the right of the tray. There’s also a drop-down cover that reveals plug-in slots for memory cards and a USB drive. Supported memory cards include SD, Multi-media Card, Memory Stick, and SmartMedia.
The rear panel provides the basic complement of connectors. You’ll find the usual composite and S-video jacks (does anyone even use these?), plus YPbPr RCA analog video outputs. For a digital connection, there’s an HDMI jack, and digital audio can be had from coaxial or optical S/PDIF outputs. Digital audio is also discretely demodulated to stereo and discrete 5.1 channel RCA jacks.
Figures 2a and 2b – Front and rear views of DVDO’s VP30 video scaler.
DVDO’s VP30 is a bit more complex, as expected. Instead of the shiny bushed-metal design of the DV-970H, the VP30 has a stealth-like black housing with a backlit blue LCD display that is muted unless you activate the menu. (A nice touch in a darkened theater!) There are but eight control buttons on its front panel, seven of which are devoted to menu navigation.
The rear panel has a bunch ‘o jacks. Start with two complete arrays of composite, S-video, and RCA YPbPr jacks, then add a 5xBNC array and finish everything off with four HDMI inputs. A single HDMI jack provides the digital output interface, while another 5xBNC strip takes care of YPbPr or RGB analog.
You can also apply digital delay to audio sources to correct for processor latency errors through one analog, two coaxial, and two optical audio connections. Both coaxial and optical S/PDIF output is available, as is an RS232 port and an optional SDI input jack.
Figures 3a and 3b – Front and rear views of Optoma’s HD3000 video scaler.
Optoma’s HD3000 also has that stealth-like black finish, adding a cool drop-down cover to its single, oversized on/off button. There’s no LCD screen here, just menu navigation buttons. Since the HD3000 is usually bundled with an Optoma projector, you can make all adjustments from the projected menu. Three jacks are provided behind the drop-down cover for video input 3 and include composite, S-video, and 15-pin RGBHV types.
The back panel is quite similar to the VP30. There are two complete sets of composite, S-video, and component video inputs, plus two complete 5xBNC jack fields for YPbPr or RGB signal types. You’ll also have three HDMI jacks and a loop-out to your AV receiver’s HDMI port for splitting off digital audio.
The output is 100% digital through a single HDMI jack. Two 12V screen triggers are provided, something strangely missing from the VP30. An RS232 port is also included.
MENUS AND OPERATINGS SYSTEM
As expected, the DV-907H doesn’t give you a whole lot of menu options, but there are some surprises. More of them have to do with audio set-up, including support for multiple disc formats like DVD-Audio, Super Audio CD, DivX, Xvid, HDCD, standard CDs, and Kodak Picture CDs.
In the audio menu, you can change sound fields including speaker position and size, audio delays to center and rear surrounds, re-map Pro Logic to virtual sound fields, and choose from three different bit rates for audio playback. On the video side, you’ll have four output aspect ratios to toggle between, plus 480i, 480p, 720p, or 1080i output through the HDMI connector.
The VP30 is a bit more loaded, but with video adjustments. In fact, you can tweak just about every video parameter you wish with this scaler, even defining and saving your own aspect ratios. You can choose from numerous frame and active aspect ratios on the input side and move from 4:3 to Cinemascope 2.35:1 on the output side. The VP30 also lets you turn HDCP on and off at its input connectors, select from RGB and YPbPr color spaces with 4:4:4 and 4:2:2 coding, set pedestal at 0 (RGB) or 16 (about 7 IRE), and over or underscan images to your heart’s content.
Not enough? How about automatic chroma upsampling error correction, Y/C error correction for phase delay, variable frame rates (50 and 60 Hz), support for seven different picture sync modes, and three different film detection modes. Throw in 66 available picture presets, almost every output resolution you can imagine, and 27 internal test patterns, and you may qualify for a PhD in electrical engineering once you’ve mastered the VP30. (Did I mention the variable digital audio delay in 1-millisecond steps?)
Optoma’s HD3000 looks like a bit of a slacker compared to the VP30, but it also has many useful adjustments. For simplicity’s sake, there are only five output resolutions to choose from – 1024x768p, 1280x720p, 1280x768p, 1366x768p, and 1920x1080p. That pretty well covers the most popular home theater displays and also Optoma’s projector line. You can have 50, 60, or 72 Hz refresh rates with any of those output resolutions, too.
Advanced tweaks include adjustable video pedestal (0 or 7.5 IRE), 10-step noise reduction, adjustable white levels (235 or 255 RGB), five different color temperature settings including User, image shift, masking, three-band gamma, and horizontal/vertical digital image zoom. Two ISF modes (Day and Night) are already built-in, but you can play with three User modes to set things your way.
PERFORMANCE
To make this a fair fight, I used Silicon Optix’s Realta HQV test DVD for all performance evaluations, except for composite video performance – that required the Avia Pro disc. The source DVD player for the DVDO and Optoma scalers was my tried-and-true Panasonic RP56 with Faroudja 2100 processing, sending both interlaced and progressive signals.
Two 720p front projectors shouldered the bulk of the burden – Sanyo’s PLV-Z4, and Optoma’s HD7100. In addition, I ran everything into a prototype 1920x1080p front projector to evaluate 1080i/p signal quality. An AccuPel HDG2000 was used to generate the 1080i test patterns and a Motorola 6000-series cable box brought in native 1920x1080 digital cable signals.
I evaluated SD (720x480) signal quality in six areas: Composite video decoding, deinterlacing, noise reduction, 3:2 mode detection, detection of mixed film/video cadences, and scaling to 720p/1080i. Additionally, I checked for evidence that simple “bobbing” or more complex “weaving” processing was taking place. With a native 1080 display, a “weave” processor with motion interpolation is the preferred choice for best image quality. Here’s what I found.
Composite decoding (not performed on the DV-970H): Optoma’s HD3000 was a clear winner here, with super-clean Zone Plate test patterns and no color moiré seen at 300 or 400 lines. There was, however, some flicker or jitter at 400 lines. The Pb and Pr components were cleanly separated with no moiré or crawl.
DVDO’s VP30 fell down hard on this test, which is ironic given that the company made its reputation originally on two of the best, low-cost 480i-to-480p processors ever made (iScan and iScanPro). The Zone Plate revealed plenty of color moiré on the 300-line and 400-line patterns, and lots of smudging and dot crawl along the Pb and Pr chrominance components. Even the Sanyo and Optoma projectors did better. Given the large amount of SD TV programming still available on cable, that’s not good news for your home theater.
Deinterlacing: Oppo’s DV-970H was average in its deinterlacing performance. The waving flag sequence from the HQV DVD showed scan line artifacts, as did the rotating bar sequences. They weren’t atrocious, but they were still easily seen. The RP56’s Faroudja processor was noticeably smoother, feeding 480p/60 directly to the projectors.
Optoma’s HD3000 did better with cleaner flags and less noticeable “jaggies” on the rotating bar sequences. DVDO’s VP30 had the VRS advanced deinterlacing board option installed and it appeared to be doing the job, with the same degree of scan line artifacting as seen on the HD3000. Both were about equivalent in performance to the RP56 player in 480p mode.
Noise Reduction: No one player/scaler stood out here; all had trouble with noise in dark blue skies and also motion adaptive noise from the roller-coaster sequence on the HQV DVD. The VP30 and DV-970H were about the same in terms of adaptive noise reduction with the VP30 getting the edge in plain-vanilla noise reduction.
The HD3000 has an adjustable noise reduction circuit, and while it works, it also makes the picture softer. This could be objectionable when viewing up-converted SD programming. The Panasonic RP56 fared about the same when driving the projectors directly.
3:2 Mode Detection: Optoma’s HD3000 was an easy winner here – it picked up the 3:2 test sequence from Super Speedway almost as fast as the clip started, and did it every time. Although there is a manual film mode setting in the HD3000’s menu, I opted for AUTO mode – it works.
The VP30 was a bit slower on the draw, but still recognized 3:2 content in less than ½ second on a repeated basis. The DV-907H was the slowest at all, often taking ½ a second or longer to detect and process 3:2 video content.
Mixed Cadences: The Realta HQV disc has a bunch of mixed film-to-video cadences, including 2:2 video, 2:2:2:4, 2:3:3:2, and 3:2:3:2:2 varispeed broadcast. (Networks use the latter to speed up movies and jam them into a 2-hour time slot.) None of the contestants got ‘em all perfectly.
The VP30 did best, detecting and cleaning up 2:2, 2:2:2:4, 3:2:2:3, and varispeed with the occasional hiccup here and there. Optoma’s HD3000 was fine with 2:2, 3:2:2:3, and varispeed, but couldn’t sort out 2:2:2:4. And the DV-970H was derailed on all three, showing plenty of scan line artifacts. It’s strictly a 3:2 machine.
The last test was a combination of 35mm film transferred to video with a 3:2 cadence, over which was superimposed white video titles in horizontal and vertical crawls. The horizontal crawl was clean on all three products, but the vertical crawl test looked best on the DV-970H!
Video scaling: It was almost to close to call. The VP30 and HD3000 did a good job preserving detail in the stationary bridge sequence from the Realta HQV DVD, with perhaps slight edge going to the HD3000 scaling from 480i to 720p. From 480p to 720p, it was about a dead heat. 480i to 1080p looked better on the HD3000 because it “weaves’ and doesn’t “bob” interlaced HD (see next test).
The DV-970H was not nearly as good as either of the two scalers in preserving fine detail when scaling from 480i to 720p, and its 480p output scaled to 720p by the Sanyo and Optoma projectors wasn’t any better than the RP56’ 480p output. Setting the DV-970H’s output to 1080i puts you at the mercy of the display, and wasn’t nearly as good as 1080p output from the HD3000.
For best results using the 970H, always hook up its HDMI output connector. That did show a noticeable improvement converting 480i to 720p and feeding the two projectors through their HDMI inputs when compared to analog 480p scaled in each projector.
1080i Processing: For this test, I used a crosshatch pattern from the HDG2000 with scan lines that are exactly two pixels in thickness. I checked the projected images for stable, same-size scan lines, evidence that a clean “weaving” circuit was in use. Any flicker would imply otherwise.
Optoma’s HD3000 gave me a nice smooth and stable 1080p conversion with no flicker at all. On the other hand, the VP30 had noticeable flicker on horizontal lines, so I will assume it is simply “bobbing” two adjacent fields of 1920x540p to come up with 1080p output. With tests of live 1080i content from CBS, NBC, and INHD, the material processed by the HD3000 was cleaner, particularly fine picture detail and any horizontal lines.
CONCLUSION
It is said that you get what you pay for, and with the Optoma HD3000 and DVDO VP30, you get a lot. Either one will do a fine job as part of a 720p-resolution home theater system, while the HD3000 is a better choice for a 1080p system as it handles deinterlacing much more cleanly than the VP30.
I liked many things about the DV-970H, but I’m not ga-ga over it, as some reviewers appear to be. My older RP56 DVD player still does a better job with the interlaced-to-progressive (480i/480p) conversion, even though it’s limited to an analog output connection.
Operationally, it’s a nice product and seems to work best sending out 480p or 720p signals. My advice? Avoid the 1080i output and stay progressive all the way. You’ll get the best results running it through its HDMI connector to your 720p or 1080p HDTV display or projector.
