Video Processor Reviews

At a Glance: Four-port HDMI switch • Inconsistent 2D-to-3D conversion • 3D conversion of video games causes lag

Believe it or not, the idea behind 3D movies started in the 1890s when William Friese-Greene filed a patent for a 3D movie process in which two films would be projected side by side on the screen and the viewers would look through a stereoscope to converge the two images. Needless to say, this didn't take off given the impractical viewing conditions. Over the next 100-plus years, 3D would attempt—and fail—to catch on with audiences.

Lumagen Radiance Series
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Ergonomics
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DVDO iScan Duo
Performance
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Ergonomics
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When I got started in this great hobby of ours, video processors were pretty much reserved for the higher-end theaters I only dreamed of. We didn’t have pristine 1080p24 sources to feed our displays; we had stuff like VHS and Laserdisc. Displays weren’t nearly as consistent, either. Projectors were mainly for the ultrarich and required brute strength to install. Beyond that, it took considerable work to get them looking right. Calibration was anything but easy. Expensive outboard video processors were also a necessity for these beasts to wring the most out of our then-limited video options.

Now we’re living the video dream. Some may scoff or say otherwise, but they probably haven’t been around as long as I have. These days, even low-end projectors outperform the majority of the reference designs back in the day. Sources are of a much higher quality, and new prerecorded formats are progressive by design and require very little, if any, tinkering. Sure, we have some DVDs lingering around that still need to be deinterlaced, but the proliferation of high-end video-processing chips into TVs, Blu-ray players, and even A/V receivers has made it easier than ever to get solid deinterlacing and scaling in a relatively cheap platform.

Remember the days when interlaced was a term used primarily by basket-weavers, and scaling was something the dentist did to your teeth when you didn't floss? Ah, those were good times. . . simpler times, when you didn't need a degree in electrical engineering to pick out a new television set. As we enter the era of large-screen 1080p displays, video processing—or the ability to convert all signal types, from 480i SDTV and DVD to 720p/1080i HDTV to 1080p high-def DVD, to a TV's native resolution—plays a more important role than ever before in overall performance. Even an average TV can make high-quality HD sources look good; the real test is how good a lesser-quality 480i signal looks when blown up on that big 1080p screen.

What's the most annoying flaw in digital programming from DVDs or HDTV? Video artifacts? Macroblocking? Freeze-ups? Standard definition commercials? David Letterman?

Key Digital Systems (KDS) is no stranger to the world of video signal processing. They've been manufacturing video scalers for several years, including some models that had more functions than a Swiss army knife.

The room-correction band-wagon is already rolling across the home theater plain, and it's rapidly gaining momentum with each new batch of model releases. Several products, from the highest-end pre/pros to the lowest-end receivers, are touting room assistance these days. This is hardly surprising—in fact, the more-surprising part is that it's taken this long for the broader run of electronics manufacturers to embrace the idea. After all, room interaction will always be the single most important factor, by far, in making an audio system sound right in its particular listening environment. Naturally, it's in the manufacturer's best interest to provide as much help as possible. Fair or not, the vast majority of users are going to blame the product, not the room, when they hook up their system and it doesn't sound good. Considering the challenges that the vast majority of users' listening environments are going to present, it's easy to see why even a little correction could go a long way.

Despite the encroachment of progressive-scan component and DVI outputs from DVD players, and HD video displays with their own built-in deinterlacing and scaling, there is still a market for standalone video processors. They provide flexible switching. Many will convert inputs of all flavors to a single output format. And most CRT projectors still need a separate processor to upconvert standard-definition sources.