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 Post subject: Let's hear it for the Leitch DPS-290
PostPosted: 27 Sep 2014, 01:31 
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I ran across one of these in my basement the other day, realizing I bought it a year ago and never hooked it up. Because of Disclord's passing (he talked me into it) I decided to check it out.

At first, the image was terrible. It was a hyper pixelated mess that looked like a badly encoded VCD. I did everything with settings I could and it didn't get any better.

I decided to open it up. Mine does not have RGB or the second TBC, but it does have the DNR/dropout compensator board. I removed it (left jumpers as-is, oddly) and once hooked up again it looked great! I re-installed the DNR module and then it just worked perfectly from then on. Don't ask me why...

Anyway, this piece of gear is AMAZING. Not kinda amazing, but really really amazing. Noise is %95 gone, detail is beyond what I thought possible from LD, and the color is much better.

I watched Majo no Takkyubin (Kiki's Delivery Service) (1989) [TKLO-50001] before going to work today and I was really sucked in. After 20 minutes I realized that this is the original pressing, and not the remaster from the box set. What do really good LDs look like with this thing? I haven't had much time to test, but the mediocre ones look terrific.

I'm going to play around with this for a while. I want to see if an LD-W1 can look as good as a CLD-99 with the right after-treatment.

I think we should maybe sticky this thread because this is, IMO, an essential piece of gear for any LD fan. I only paid $50 shipped for this thing!

FYI: My test player is a CLD-99. The display is a Sony XBR-960. Therefore, the picture was pretty f-ing good to begin with, yet it got much better.

Best results were had using composite from the 99 into DPS-290, comb filter "ON" on DPS-290. S-video out from 290 to the display.
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 Post subject: Re: Let's hear it for the Leitch DPS-290
PostPosted: 30 Sep 2014, 07:09 
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You should definitely check out the DPS-475 or 575 if you can get one at a good price. It (the 475 in my case) adds (among some other things) an optional 3D comb filter and it's able to fully resolve the 1.5MHz color bandwidth pattern at the bottom of the S&W pattern on VE. I remember my 290 had problems with that. I forget who, but someone in another thread linked to this guy's blog post in which he talks a good bit about the DPS-575 (towards the bottom of the page).
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 Post subject: Re: Let's hear it for the Leitch DPS-290
PostPosted: 30 Sep 2014, 15:31 
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Does the 475 have the loud fan issue that Disclord said the 290 has?
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 Post subject: Re: Let's hear it for the Leitch DPS-290
PostPosted: 30 Sep 2014, 17:44 
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I just unplugged the fan in mine. If I was worried I would replace it with a much quieter one, but I seriously doubt it's needed for light home use. There are no other fans or even heat sinks meaning that heat isn't a huge problem.
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 Post subject: Re: Let's hear it for the Leitch DPS-290
PostPosted: 30 Sep 2014, 18:41 
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elahrairrah wrote:
Does the 475 have the loud fan issue that Disclord said the 290 has?

Yeah, it has a small case fan (I think both the 290 and 475 have a 40mm fan?) but it also has one of those laptop style blower fans. They're easily replaceable on either the 475 or 290 though. I don't know if it's necessarily a problem, but both my 290 when I had one and my 475 would get really hot to the touch within an hour without any fan.
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 Post subject: Re: Let's hear it for the Leitch DPS-290
PostPosted: 30 Sep 2014, 22:56 
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naiaru wrote:
That's actually the blog of our very own megapixie.
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 Post subject: Re: Let's hear it for the Leitch DPS-290
PostPosted: 01 Oct 2014, 19:08 
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naiaru wrote:
elahrairrah wrote:
Does the 475 have the loud fan issue that Disclord said the 290 has?

Yeah, it has a small case fan (I think both the 290 and 475 have a 40mm fan?) but it also has one of those laptop style blower fans. They're easily replaceable on either the 475 or 290 though. I don't know if it's necessarily a problem, but both my 290 when I had one and my 475 would get really hot to the touch within an hour without any fan.



I've run my 290 for two or three hours straight and I can barely feel any warmth from touching the case.

A unit like this is made to run in a giant rack of other equipment with no air gap between components, 24/7, for a decade or two. Anything in that environment would need a case fan, but the absence of any other fan or even a significant heat sink, would indicate that self generated heat isn't a huge problem.
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 Post subject: Re: Let's hear it for the Leitch DPS-290
PostPosted: 14 Oct 2014, 06:01 
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The NR on these is sooooo goooood, it's just a shame that they don't have a 3D comb filter to top it off. :(

I thought about getting a 475, but it's so hard to find one that's tested to see if the NR functionality is enabled or not.
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 Post subject: Re: Let's hear it for the Leitch DPS-290
PostPosted: 15 Oct 2014, 01:53 
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I'm using the comb filter in the 290, but sending composite to the display. NR on the 99 is OFF. After some testing, this seems to be the best for my setup.
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 Post subject: Re: Let's hear it for the Leitch DPS-290
PostPosted: 19 Oct 2014, 19:47 
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hauntmedoitagain wrote:
The NR on these is sooooo goooood, it's just a shame that they don't have a 3D comb filter to top it off. :(

I thought about getting a 475, but it's so hard to find one that's tested to see if the NR functionality is enabled or not.

On the 475 most of the NR options are disabled in 3D mode. I've heard the 575 can do both at the same time though.
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 Post subject: Re: Let's hear it for the Leitch DPS-290
PostPosted: 10 Dec 2014, 21:45 
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How much delay does the DPS-290 add to the chain? I've been thinking about getting one but I'm curious how well audio and video will be synced.
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 Post subject: Re: Let's hear it for the Leitch DPS-290
PostPosted: 10 Dec 2014, 22:26 
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I couldn't find any specs in the manual, but since it's a full frame TBC, I would speculate ~33ms of delay.
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 Post subject: Re: Let's hear it for the Leitch DPS-290
PostPosted: 10 Dec 2014, 22:28 
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Seems like it's worth a try then. Cheers for the info!
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 Post subject: Re: Let's hear it for the Leitch DPS-290
PostPosted: 19 Dec 2014, 10:38 
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Got my unit today and it seems to work. Haven't hooked it up yet but I'm excited about this. Will probably watch Blade Runner on Laserdisc tonight as I've seen it thousands of times and will notice any kind of improvements.

Have anyone used it with 220-240V? The back of the unit says it supports 120V but Broadcaststore says the input voltage can be anything between 100V and 240V. I wouldn't want to blow a fuse though it's really nice to get rid of another step down converter. May open it up and see if I can find anything on the power board.
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 Post subject: Re: Let's hear it for the Leitch DPS-290
PostPosted: 19 Dec 2014, 15:53 
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Have now played around with it some. I do get some visisble ghosting (no matter if I use the noise reduction or not) but will try to adjust the settings in order to fix it. Other than that, it's a great piece of equipment. Noise reduction is great and cleans up the picture very well without losing any detail. Mimi wo Sumaseba now looks almost as good as my Swedish DVD. Can't say I see any difference in sharpness but colors seem more stable. Blues finally look like real blue, and reds aren't as noisy. Brightness, contrast, hue, colors etc. can be calibrated very easily with it. Much faster than my Crystalio for sure.

So now my chain is R7G (S-video) -> DPS-290 -> Crystalio VPS-2300 -> HDTV. Would really like to get an HLD-X9 someday. Been thinking about quitting Laserdisc for a while but I should get a better player before I make any final decisions.
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 Post subject: Re: Let's hear it for the Leitch DPS-290
PostPosted: 04 Jan 2015, 16:52 
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After having played around with it even more now by using it with a CRT, I've gotten a better perspective of the DPS-290.

On a 4:3 CRT, you will see even more of an advantage with the DPS-290. The noise reduction is very effective on a CRT set. In fact, for most of the LDs I've tried I cannot see any visible ghosting (that I could on my HDTV). And if ghosting is visible, it's very little. Colors look great and overall stability is very pleasing.

So after using my R7G with the DPS-290 I decided to try it out my D515. How does it look? Much better than expected! NR is just as effective as with the R7G and gives a surprisingly good picture. Overall not on par with the R7G but it gives a perfect idea of how powerful the DPS-290 is. The 290 also has an option to bypass all the processing. When doing so, you can clearly see the night and day difference.

However, the ghosting when using an HDTV is still annoying and I'm not sure if it compensates for the otherwise outstanding performance. When either watching some animation or anyting in 4:3-mode, I can't see any ghosting on my HDTV so then there's no loss in using the 290. But when zoomed in to make the LD look anamorphic, I can see the artifacts. May not be a big deal but still annoying.

On the other hand, if I would've been using a low-end or middle-range player, then I would've used the DPS-290. No doubt about it. Or if I would've used a CRT as well as there's pretty much no loss in picture when using a DPS-290 on one of those. You can find one of these cheap on eBay relatively quick so it's certainly worth the risk. :)

EDIT: Compared the R7G+DPS-290 to a DVD player on the same monitor. Difference is visible, sure, but not very big. DVD has less background noise and more stable colors, obviously, but Laserdisc isn't far behind.
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 Post subject: Re: Let's hear it for the Leitch DPS-290
PostPosted: 05 Jan 2015, 16:59 
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In theory, would this fix the y/c sync issues inherit in the CLD-95's svid output?
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 Post subject: Re: Let's hear it for the Leitch DPS-290
PostPosted: 05 Jan 2015, 17:29 
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I think it has an adjustment, but the real fix for that is running the composite through a better comb filter.

The R7G has good processing thanks to the NEC chip, the 515 has none, so it's a better workout for any processing device.
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 Post subject: Re: Let's hear it for the Leitch DPS-290
PostPosted: 08 Jan 2015, 19:13 
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Here's an example for you to see what the noise reduction is like.

D515 (composite) -> Crystalio VPS-2300 (720p, YPbPr) -> Elgato Game Capture (WMV, 15mbit/sec)
Image

D515 (composite) -> DPS-290 (Luma NR and Chroma NR turned on) -> Crystalio VPS-2300 (720p, YPbPr) -> Elgato Game Capture (WMV, 15mbit/sec)
Image

Could've adjusted the brightness a bit better in the last capture but hopefully you can very clearly see what to get out of the DPS-290.
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 Post subject: Re: Let's hear it for the Leitch DPS-290
PostPosted: 08 Jan 2015, 21:19 
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Nice cleanup on the crosstalk/analog audio non-filtering.

Any chance of a PAL 515 before+after sample, to help out the effort to figure out what the least-bad PAL player is?
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