I haven't ordered one yet; but I've been doing lots of research and talking to some home theater guys and they seem to think this will work well.

Onkyo released a line of new receivers earlier in the year; and the 7.2 TX-NR515 features Marvell Qdeo 4k upscaling. No one has anything bad to say about Marvell, it apparently is really good quality scaling; and it has full zooming features.

It also has network functionality...but its got a great scaler in it. Its 7.2 and multizone and can even bi-amp speakers. But mostly, its got a great scaler in it.

Refurbished: about $280

So, I got it yesterday....hooked it up; tossed Star Trek VI in the player.

Holy........crap!

Here's the best way I can put it; its able to zoom widescreen without a noticable loss of resolution. There's no jagged edges; no blurriness; its about as clear as I would expect from my CLD-505.

Colors look great; edge enhancement adds a little sharpness; and the noise reduction is able to clean up the picture without all the blurriness I've usually seen. The comb-filter seems to be 3D or something advanced; I can't confirm; but the piture is quiet in places you'd notice. Deinterlacing is perfect; with the thing also able to do reverse pulldown. Yes, its a home theater receiver; but they didn't limit the Qdeo chip and you get full zoom functions....and it'll reaspect even already HD input...no more stretch-o-vision.

And done even get me started on its network capabilities. This is a serious piece of gear; loaded with features and can be found for an excellent price.

Its much better than that iSync was; its fantasic...I can now sit and enjoy my laserdiscs as much as I would with a CRT.

cool sounding, so this would take the place of a DVD recorder as some use now.

So can it take a 4:3 letterboxed LD and output it at 16:9 anamorphic WS?

TLK

Yes. Granted, you don't have a dedicated button for switching between it's various aspect modes; it will squeeze, zoom, or stretch the video to the usual standard methods. I can zoom in a letterboxed laserdisc; I can squeeze the stretched out upconverted content I see on cable. It's not as feature rich as I'm sure a dedicated scaler would be; that iSync had all kinds of video adjustments. It does have basic brightness, contrast, color, saturation, and hue controls.

The one thing I should point out is that the scaler only actually works over the HDMI connection; and apparently the manual says something about it doesn't handle anything more than 480i on component. I've yet to actually test this. If your TV doesn't have HDMI...that might be an issue.

If you're currently using a DVD-recorder as a scaler; yeah...this could replace it. There are advantages and disadvantages to both. While a DVD-recorder might have an older chip; and I don't know if they're updating models anymore; it probably consumes less current to watch a laserdisc. The Onkyo is a receiver...and even with the volume turned down so the amplifier stage isn't amplifying, it's still drawing slightly more currrent to power. On the other hand..it is a 7.2 unit with stunning sound quality and loads of network features. And if you're the kind of person who's going to have an amp on to watch a movie anyway; it's a win-win.

I picked up a factory refurbished model for $249 with about $25 shipping. Considering I've fallen in love with the network features I assumed I'd hate; I'm really loving this thing.

Hmmm... It might be simpler than my current set up:

1. Really old SONY receiver (STR-K840P)
2. DVDO/iScan VP30 (with ABT102 card) to deinterlace/scale
3. Faroudja NRS for its comb filter

It's just whether I want to spend $300 to replace my old, cumbersome set up (but a set up in which I am relatively happy with).

Can you provide screen shots of the Snell & Wilcox 2 (floating orb) pattern using it, so I can judge its comb filter?

TLK

If you did replace your current set-up, would you be selling the VP30?

Yes.

TLK

Naiaru, you are as bad as me at buying equipment that you don't desperately need.

We're sick, sick people.

I'm like a vulture.

I've had some time and chance to run a few movies from my 505 in to the 515. I've got a few random thoughts/musings on the quality of the picture in various areas. I'd love to organize these in to an organized fashion....but my thought train derails on a few things due to the fact I haven't done enough testing. Overall, I will say that for $250; if you can live with the slight inconvenience that there are a few things it won't do due to being a receiver; it's an excellent deal and performs well. The only major inconvenience I've found is that the unit will apparently only pass audio back to the TV when the source is HDMI. So you can't just turn the volume down; or not have speakers hooked up, and watch with JUST your TV. The only way the unit works that way is with HDMI input. Another issue is while it has "night mode"; it only functions with digital input. I can however use the Audyssey Dynamic Volume; which does the job; and flipping the unit to mono output is no more offensive at night to everyone else in the house than the TV itself. Since I'm not in the optimal listening position at those hours of the night/morning; there's no need for stereo.

On the whole; all I can say about the picture quality is that it's absolutely outstanding. The Onkyo must have better ADCs for video than my TV; or the recent repair on my player changed it's tracking ability....because running no video noise reduction; I'm not seeing nearly as much video noise. For a while; I was seeing this brick-like pattern in dark regions with the contrast turned up; but I haven't played any of those discs back lately...so I don't know if it's a the receiver; the disc; or maybe it's tracking better after it's recent repair. So later on tonight (and I've made a note); I'll have to throw my copies of Tank Girl and Death Becomes Her and see. Jurassic Park may have it too; though I've been looking for an excuse to watch that again.

The video processor has all the typical functions you'd expect; brightness, contrast, hue, and saturation for video controls; several zoom modes; film mode; edge enhancement; and a video noise reduction. Film mode seems to work very well; I can turn it off and on and see a huge improvement with it turned on (I'll tell you later about 24hz mode). Edge enhancement was kind of hit or miss; it either made a slight improvement or seemed to do very little. The rest of the controls work as well as they should; brightness gets bright; hue changes the hue; and the saturation is really able to make the colors pop (and sometimes chroma noise). The contrast though; that gets some special attention.

While cranking up the contrast when using the TV resulted in basically "hey, here's some ugly video noise over the picture"; cranking the contrast up in the Onkyo seems to have a subtle overall sharpening effect. Sure, typical video noise is there and becomes more noticeable; but no where near the ugliness from the TV itself. In fact, with the Onkyo's output the TV's contrast doesn't enhance noise as badly. Since I don't have any test patterns on a disc (though I think one of my Criterion boxes mentioned something about having some patterns of some sort); I've been mostly adjusting to what looks good...which has taken a while since the contrast actually seems to work properly...and I seem to like it cranked up. I did last night get everything set to something else based on an entirely new set of settings....which I'll tell you about in a bit.

To be honest; I'm really impressed at how well this thing is able to upscale 480i. I can actually see subtle differences between modes and pressings that I wasn't really able to see before. There's very little aliasing; and generally when you see it it's in a bright scene with a thin object at an angle when the contrast is cranked to the max. The colors are smooth; everything is about as crisp as you're going to get; and it overall just looks stunning. I'm not watching LD on a LCD anymore...I'm simply just watching LD. The best way I can describe it is the difference between Super-Betamax and DVD when I had a CRT.

But last night; I decided to flip this thing in to 1080p 24hz mode. I'm not sure if my TV actually supports this or not; but displays a picture that on anything but film content looks choppy. It's possible my TV has it's own internal conversion for this...as it's not really a high end TV. However; using this mode did allow me to enhance the quality of laserdiscs a bit. While I'll admit the video noise reduction looks nice; it's overall looked like everything has motion blur. Granted it's only with some objects in a scene; it still can be a tad annoying and is an obvious distraction from why I'm watching LD in the first place. 24hz solves this for the lowest reduction settings. You can kind of tell where the motion blur would have been; but the lower framerate makes it less noticeable. The real problem is I kind of enjoy watching analog video; and this method removes even more of that analog feel.....though not seeing mpeg noise is always enjoyable. I'll probably keep the 24hz trick; but leave that little bit of analog noise I love so much.

Now I'm kind of wondering what my super-beta stuff looks like.

No. Because I don't have the video essentials disc.

Drewdude - your television does support 24 Hz or you would get no image, but the 24Hz mode looks choppy on some material because you are running a 30Hz signal through it - with 30 Hz signals played at 24Hz, whenever motion passes a certain speed above the 24 Hz frame sampling rate you will get the choppy motion. The 24Hz mode should only be engaged on signals that were made on film or HD at 24Hz (and 23.98 Hz, which is called 24Hz). All NTSC video shot on video and and some HD at 60I is 30 Hz and shouldn't be used with the 24Hz mode - the 720P 30 or 60 rate should not be ran at 24Hz either - also a few films on DVD, like the 70mm versions of Around The World In 80 Days and Oklahoma, are true Todd-AO 30 Fps. The LaserDisc's of those two titles were made from the 35mm 24fps versions so would work with the 24 Hz mode, although the DVD's are the preferred versions of both if you like either.

So, the choppy look you are getting is from 30 or 60 Hz sources being played at 24 Hz and not any problem with your set or an incompatibility. It just means turn off the 24Hz mode for that disc.

Quite aware of that. I only mentioned that as a way of confirming that indeed, there was 24hz output. Some TVs, from what I've read, will display a 24hz signal, but can't drive the panel at that rate, so it has a built in frame rate converter. Although the panel in this TV is pretty good, its just the processing circuitry that sucks. Film based stuff looks fine, video stuff looks choppy, I knew that coming in.

What I was really getting at is I have no real way of knowing if the TV itself is displaying true 24hz, or if its converting the 24hz to 60 internally. But I do know the receiver is converting to 24 properly, and movies look outstanding.

I dont know if this would be indicative of how well the comb filter is; http://dewdu.de/pause.3gp

The video looks like a pretty simple comb filter. Since the image isn't moving a 3D comb filter would eliminate al the vertical dots and a more sophisticated adaptive 2D would get rid of the dots too. Too bad you don't have VE so you could check the chroma bandwidth. Do you have the THX box sets of The Abyss or The Wizard Of Oz? Both of those have chroma resolution tests on them in the THX test patterns at the end of each film. You just can't still frame the THX test patterns though, since a CAV still doesn't create a normal 4-field NTSC color frame for the comb filter, so you have to set up an A-B loop as the test patterns are each only about 16 frames long.

Yeah. I've come to the conclusion that while the video processor is good, its not doing the combing. I just stuck in Broken Arrow and the dots were visible on the top and bottom of the blue box. It is however doing the deinterlacing, reverse pull down and all scaling.

That's not particularly annoying to me. I know someone out there probably makes a simple composite to HDMI converter with a good ADC with 3D combing that could send a 480i signal to the Onkyo for full processing.

That would also solve the problem of the Onkyo only passes HDMI audio to the TV, so I'd be able to just use the TV speakers for might watching. But even with the simple combing, it still looks fantastic.

Your best bet for an external comb filter is the Faroudja VP-100 TV Enhancer - I love mine - its not only an excellent Super NTSC 2D adaptive comb filter with full color bandwidth, but it allows you to adjust the alignment of the chroma and luma, which are often wrong on LaserDisc players - even a slight correction really sharpens the picture. It also has a very useful image chrispening function that can make soft, poorly transferred LaserDisc's look quite good, and without excessive outlining if adjusted right. It's not like a normal sharpness control, it actually extends the bandwidth of the image and Faroudja has multiple patents on it as part of Super NTSC. Yesterday there was one of the Faroudja VP-100's on eBay for $9.99 and I think I'd pay up to $50 for one - they sold for $750 originally. It connects to your receiver via S-video. I'm using it with my Runco and other players because it's so good and doesn't add any noise to the image. The signal it outputs deinterlaces and is up converted to 1080P in my Denon and looks wonderful.

　I'm looking at that one.

I figured you had already got the one offered here. I hope you get this one. Isn't it a buy it now?

I'm watching the LaserDisc of The Hindenburg on the Runco right now. Besides having an over-enhanced transfer at the wrong aspect ratio, it's a noisy pressing but it looks perfect on the Runco, even without the DNR turned on. I love the stereo sound on this film, and the LD's PCM is much higher fidelity than the DVD - I hope it gets a BD release with its original 4-track directional dialog - it was supposed to be a Sensurround film but MCA changed their mind at the last minute. The Neural surround decoding mode works great with it.

Yeah, but it broke in transit so I'm sending it back to gumby, and I think it's just up for bidding.

Oh and how is your guys' MSB board project going?