Home Theater Systems Reviews

The Onkyo’s digital deinterlacing (HDMI in to HDMI out) had one serious failing. In the digital Motion Adaptive tests (MA HD) for both HD (1080i to 1080p) and SD (480i to 1080p), the receiver’s processing was clearly bobbing the entire pattern, evident by severe flickering of the stationary parts of the image. (Motion adaptive processing typically performs a simple interleave of the two interlaced fields on stationary elements, preserving as much vertical detail as possible, while processing the moving parts differently to minimize artifacts at some sacrifice in overall motion resolution.) The Onkyo passed the Digital Chroma Resolution test, but like its more expensive sibling, the TX-NR5008 also in this issue, just barely.

Oddly, the Analog results, overall, were better than the Digital, including passing scores for both Motion Adaptive tests. The only analog processing failure was Chroma Resolution, where no detail was present in the highest frequency burst. Interestingly, the HT-R980 passed both above white and below black in the Analog Video Clipping tests, while the high-end Onkyo TX-NR5008, reviewed elsewhere in this issue, did not.

The Digital Video Clipping and Resolution tests were conducted with a 1080p source and the video processing set to 1080p, and also with the same source passed directly through the receiver’s switching circuits in Through mode, bypassing the video processing (at least in theory). The results were the same in both cases.—TJN