CurtPalme.com Home Theater Forum

[gnnash]

Hello! Been lurking around here for a while, finally decided to make an account!

I'll be getting my first CRT projector in a few weeks (and a house to put it in), a Sony VPH-1271Q. $200 with 200 hours on the tubes and zero visible wear, I figured it was a pretty good deal for sticking my toe into the water in this hobby!

Not new to me is my Laserdisc collection - I have about 350 movies and a DVL-909 player. My Laserdisc hobby is actually what got me into CRT projection, I've heard it's hands-down the best way to watch them. I know, I know they'll never reach Blu-Ray quality for images, but I love them anyway, and they're dirt cheap to come by, with large lots at $1 per movie!

As an electrical engineer and having read through the service manuals and Curt's guides, I'm confident I can setup the projector. My main question is how to best hook up my Laserdisc player. I'll also have an HTPC hooked up, but that's the easy part. I figure I'll connect it via RGBHV and run it at 1080i.

For the Laserdisc player: I'm guessing that if I connect it directly to the composite input on the projector, I'll be running at 480i and will have horrendous scanlines, correct? Would running it through an analog line doubler be sufficient, or will I need a tripler to reduce the scanlines sufficiently?

Or, should I be looking for a scaler? My biggest draw to CRT was the fact that I could display the Laserdiscs at their "native" resolution, without any scaling, but I didn't realize scanlines would be such a potential issue.

One other option would be to run the Laserdisc player through the Faroudja scaler in my receiver, then run it through a Moome HDMI card, but I'm guessing that wouldn't yield much better results than my current setup, running it through the receiver to my LCD TV.

Thanks in advance! I'm excited for August, when I can finally start playing with all this!

[Curt Palme]

Congrats and welcome! A 200 hour 1271 will look great, you'll notice over time, at about 3000 hours, that the tubes will get a bit soft, which is the nature of ES focusing tubes. Still, at 1080i or 720p it will look great, nothing to sneeze at.

What you do want to get is a scaler of some sort. The great news is, all the $25K scalers from 15 years ago that aren't HD compatible are insanely cheap, so find a Faroudja NR or other Faroudja or earlier Luamgen Vision or Vision pro, for well under $100, and go to town. No need to get a line quadrupler, the 1271 tubes won't resolve 1024p, Go for a minimum of a line doubler, a tripler would be ideal.

[Curt Palme]

Congrats and welcome! A 200 hour 1271 will look great, you'll notice over time, at about 3000 hours, that the tubes will get a bit soft, which is the nature of ES focusing tubes. Still, at 1080i or 720p it will look great, nothing to sneeze at.

What you do want to get is a scaler of some sort. The great news is, all the $25K scalers from 15 years ago that aren't HD compatible are insanely cheap, so find a Faroudja NR or other Faroudja or earlier Luamgen Vision or Vision pro, for well under $100, and go to town. No need to get a line quadrupler, the 1271 tubes won't resolve 1024p, Go for a minimum of a line doubler, a tripler would be ideal.

[gnnash]

So I'd be better off going with a scaler of some sort rather than a normal doubler or tripler?

If I went for an NRS, what resolution would be ideal? 1024 x 768?

[Curt Palme]

Either/or is fine. A scaler just means that you have a selection of various resolutions for hte output. A doubler or tripler has a fixed output, but does the same thing. 1024 X768 is good, or 800 X 600 or similar.

Let me check to see if I have a suitable scaler here, otherwise ebay should have a good selection. you'll also need a 5 BNC to BNC cable between the scaler and the projector.

[Curt Palme]

Either/or is fine. A scaler just means that you have a selection of various resolutions for hte output. A doubler or tripler has a fixed output, but does the same thing. 1024 X768 is good, or 800 X 600 or similar.

Let me check to see if I have a suitable scaler here, otherwise ebay should have a good selection. you'll also need a 5 BNC to BNC cable between the scaler and the projector.

[ecrabb]

What receiver do you have? Something newer with Faroudja DCDi on Genesis? It's entirely possible that the scaling in the receiver is as good or better than anything laying around from the mid-nineties.

The receiver won't be nearly as flexible as some of the outboard scalers in terms of res, refresh, and especially formatting, but it kind of depends on what you want to do for screen aspect/size whether the receiver scaler will be adequate or not. I'd play around with and see what you think before you add more complexity to the system.

Will you run Blu-ray from the PC?

SC

[gnnash]

[ecrabb]

Ah, didn't think about the Moome card. HD Fury is an option, too. Might be able to find a used for around $100.

Any artifacts you saw with the LCD probably were almost certainly more from the LCD than anything else.

A "line doubler" doubles the 480i interlaced (which is actually 240 horizontal interlaced lines) to 480 horizontal progressive lines, so doubling 240 to 480. If the processor has inverse telecine, and you're watching a film source, all 480 lines will be original picture content. That's where it stops. Anything not from film, or any output resolution beyond 480p is going to be scaling. Tripling, quadrupling, and anything else is all scaling. Doubling each line, like you mentioned, is actually line quadrupling, or 960P.

Depending on how sharp it is and your viewing angle (screen size vs. viewing distance), 480p may not look too bad on the 1271. To be honest, SD is so low-res, and the lenses on the 1271 are soft enough, that I don't think you really don't have to obsess over odd scaling. I think you'll want to scale to wherever the scan lines start to disappear, which on the 1271 will probably be around 800p at 4:3 or 600p at 16:9.

With my 1271, I found 1080i preferable for HD content.

What screen size/aspect are you thinking about?

If you could snag that craigslist VisionPro for $50, that would be a nice way to get started playing around to find what you like best, though you could do the same thing with SD DVD and the HTPC, and it should be applicable for whatever you do with an outboard video processor and the LD player.

Cheers,
SC

[gnnash]

Thanks for the explanation!

I'm thinking probably 7 feet wide, seems to be the general recommendation. I'll make either a Wilsonart or blackout screen, I'd like to go with Wilsonart if I can convince myself that hotspotting isn't too bad.

Aspect ratio is something I keep going back and forth on. Laserdisc is obviously 4:3, but the vast majority of my discs are letterboxed, so if I go with a scaler, I might as well go with a 16:9 screen. I just hate the idea of what 4:3 content would then do to the tubes, but I really probably wouldn't be watching a heck of a lot of 4:3 content anyway, just whatever 4:3 Laserdiscs I have, which are few and far between.

[stridsvognen]

Nice seeing someone who also likes LD.

I think you should look a scaler like DVDO VP50, or the old Lumagen HDQ, both can be found around 200$, and can output RGBHV.

I never had the old Lumagen, so cant coment on performance, but i do have a DVDO VP50, and its ok for the job.

With Lumagen you will get more calibration options, who will be handy to have, but im quite sure you then should run a interlaced output.

I have around 500 LD titles, and love to play with it, and as you mention most of them is letterbox or widescreen, so a 4:3 screen will be anoying.

The big problem with laserdisc is that they are decodet in 4:3, and the material is mostly 1.78:1, 1.85:1 or 2.40:1

I deinterlace my LD in my Calibre Vantage HD2, and sende it 4080P HDMI to my Radiance, and then 1080P 60hz to the projector.

After that i need to zoom 30% to fill my 16:9 scrren with a leterbox, or widescreen movie.

So the big problem is the very low resolution, and make it look ok, compared to a 480i DVD who is decodet in 16:9.

But it is possible, and the sound on LD is just so much more fun.

[blue_z]

[bpdski]

I used to have a Sony 1271 myself and used an HTPC as the scaler via an old program called dscaler and a video capture card. I set the resolution to 1068x600 and ran all my inputs through it: VCR, Laserdisc and cable box. When I later got my HD cable box I also got a moome card and set the cable box to 720p output and it looked really nice. I also ran bluray from my HTPC though the 1271 until I upgraded to a 9500LC a few years ago.

The 1271 does not have Scheimpflug adjustments by default but I was able to mod the projector to add them and get a better focus as a result. You may be able to search around and find that mod on the avs forum somewhere. Don't worry about that yet though, just get your projector setup well and enjoy it a bit before you look at any mods. I will tell you that the biggest improvement I ever saw on my 1271 was when I learned about the astig adjustments using the ring magnets on the back. I couldn't believe the difference that made so make sure you figure out how to do that. Welcome to the world of CRT, a tweaked 1271 still looks better than most digital projectors.

- Brian

[fuchs]

[gnnash]

Thanks for the Dscaler suggestion. I actually tried this when I first hooked my player up to my LCD TV, but unfortunately found that it is not at all stable on Windows 7 64 bit, and doesn't play well with my tuner cards as well... too bad, because it sounds like with earlier versions of windows, it was very powerful! If only it were still updated...

[UncleWill]

Hey Gnash!

I got into CRT projection the same way. Welcome! This forum is the best resource for this stuff, but you already know that because you are here I watch LDs quite a bit and have my screen set to 4:3. Here are a few of my personal suggestions:

1.) Get a good scaler. Everyone will tell you this. Lumagen in particular is very good and most of these things are had for almost nothing. If you can get something with specific separate controls for each input, even better. You probably already know this but different sources have wildly different setting needs. Black levels for DVDs and LDs for example are different from each other.

2.) Make sure the scaler has a good comb filter. They are not all equal.

3.) Minimize the processing if you can. I would not put a PC in the mix simply because of all the conversion.

4.) Get a calibration LD. Video Essentials and A Video Standard reigns the king here. Set things up according to this, and you should be golden.

5.) See if you can exchange your player. The 909 is a well sought after player, but the LD components are actually on par with mid range players. Since it is a combo though, it fetches high price and demand online. Perhaps you could trade it for a 700 series or Elite Model. I made the switch a few years back and was most impressed.

[benareeno]

I too would think a ld player and PC just don't mix...

I also would think that 480p is the right resolution...both for your projector and your source (LD).

For that reason, you could also just get a simple and cheap dvdo scaler. The ones that do 480p are likely on ebay for less than 100.

[benareeno]

read this link:

http://www.mindspring.com/~laserguru/digitalage.html

[gnnash]

Thanks for your suggestions guys.

A lot has changed since I started the thread... before I got a chance to set up the 1271, I happened upon a free Runco DTV-1100 (Barco 1209s). I also upgraded to a CLD-D79 (same transport as CLD-D704).

So far I have things running through my receiver, letting it do the scaling to 1080p, out through a Moome box - my laserdiscs have never worked better. I think that 480p would likely show scanlines on my current projector. I also got ahold of a cheap Faroudja NRS locked at 720p that I will try with the player when I get a chance, it should have a much better comb filter than my receiver.

Ideally though, I'd like to get a Lumagen HDQ - I have a bit of foldover at 1080p on my projector, and need something that will give me flexibility with porch settings for my HD content. Laserdisc may still be best through the Faroudja though, that remains to be seen! (Hopefully I'll get a chance to try it later this week).

[benareeno]

I didn't know you had a freaking runco 1100!!

Must be fun!

I think that Faroudja might be pretty sweet for LD.

Let us know.

Ben