Just curious - since the Lumagen 21x4s are more or less unobtanium - would it make any sense to use another device to convert an LD signal to digital (480p HDMI) and then feed that to a Lumagen 2143?

Would the capability of the 2143 be compromised by the device that converts the LD signal to digital?

If it was one of these cheap converter type devices that you see on Amazon, eBay etc. then I would say yes. Do you already posses a 2143? If not you may be best keeping an eye out for a DVDO Edge or similar which is arguably the next best thing to taking the 2144 route but at a 10th of the outlay. You could of course if you wished do LD to DVDO composite in to take advantage of its top draw comb filtering then go HDMI to Lumagen 2143 to make the most of the Lumagens arguably superior scaling but then things are getting expensive again. Really just purchasing the DVDO alone should give you a good uplift in performance.

Thanks for the reply - I really appreciate it.

I don't have a 2143 but was thinking about getting one. However, I need something solid in front of it to get the LD signal into the digital realm.

Like you said, I assumed the "low-cost" converters would provide a less than ideal feed for the 2143. Two ideas I had were

(1) pick up a DVDO iScan+ to get me to 480p and feed that to the 2143 but I would still need something else to convert that the DVDO VGA signal to HDMI

or

(2) to use something seemingly more high-end like this from Hall Research:

https://halltechav.com/product/sc-csv-hd/

This seems like a better device to use than the Amazon-grade converters but it is still not clear to me how good the output would be and there is no information about what chipset it uses.

I would love to find a 2144 but at this point I believe that woudl be nearly impossible or at a minimum prohibitively expensive in the current environment.

I've read the other posts here about the DVDO Edge/Duo and have some active searches looking for one.

Yes it seems like the Edge and Duo models are pretty scarce on eBay just lately, hopefully a decent example of one or the other will come up for grabs sooner rather than later for you. Just out of interest how do currently hook up your S9 and what type of display do you use if you don’t mind me asking?

Absolutely no problem. I have the composite of the S9 going right into my Sony XBR 70X850B 4k, which is about 6-7 years old now. Amazingly, the TV has a composite in so it is doing all of the scaling and other processing of the LD signal (via the Sony "4k X-Reality PRO Engine").

In all honesty, the LD PQ looks pretty decent and well-mastered discs look really solid. However, having read about what people do here to scale LD for projectors and such, I have always been curious if I would be able to get a little better PQ out of my set up using an external processor.

Initially, I had the LD signal going through my Onkyo TX-SR707 AV receiver (circa 2009) which uses a Faroudja DCDi Edge and upscales to 1080p. If you check out the first page of the other thread here about what people are using to scale to their 4k TVs, I posted some side by side pics when I was doing some testing of the video through the Onkyo vs the TV. The Onkyo picture was really dark and there was a big loss of detail which I couldn't seem to adjust out (I have the VE disc).

After doing some research, I found out the HDMI boards of that generation of Onkyo receiver have a high failure rate - so I just assumed mine was having some kind of issue. It also occurred to me that the scaler in the TV was 6 years newer than the one in the Onkyo, so I just bypassed the Onkyo for video processing and just use it for audio.

Just been looking at your pictures and although the aspect ratio seems to be incorrectly set on the Onkyo I do see your point! did you also try the S9 hooked up this way?

Tbh I think you currently have your player(s) connected up in the best possible way and with Sony Oled models seemingly gaining great respect for the high quality of their overall onboard processing quality I’m beginning to wonder if you would actually even gain a great deal of worthwhile improvement by inserting a Duo/Edge in between? the only other difference perhaps would be an upgrade of LD player but considering the S9 is already a very respectable player you’d only gain at a rough guess a 10-15% PQ improvement at best if you swapped it out for a X9 or X0, if you still do decide to go for the DVDO please keep us advised of the results- I’d be really keen to learn

I appreciate the comments and agree with what you are saying. I started this post because I think a lot of people have these same questions.

And yeah, I had the aspect ratio set wrong on the Onkyo when I took those original screen shots. Whoops.

I ran the Snell & Wilcox test pattern from VE last night. The direct composite feed in to the Sony was far better than the output from the Onkyo in every way except for the moving plate test. When the plate was in motion, I got intense rainbow patterns on the four corners of the plate from the Sony. The Onkyo still generated rainbows while the plate was moving but they were significantly less pronounced. When the plate stopped moving, the Sony processor displayed the plate with zero artifacts whereas the Onkyo showed just a tiny bit of distortion. I spent some time playing with the Sony processor settings to see if I could reduce the rainbows on the plate test but nothing seemed to affect it.

I then threw in my Firefox LD (which has a lot of dark scenes) and the image produced by the Onkyo was consistent with the images I posted in the other thread -- a lot of detail was lost/missing in low-light scenes and I could not correct it. There were also a couple of places where I could easily see the Onkyo was doing a better job combing than the Sony did, mostly on objects with horizontal lines that were close together (like air conditioning vents on building roofs). The Sony image displayed those objects with a lot banding (for lack of a better word) and the Onkyo image did not. I found that very odd.

In the end - I agree the Sony Reality Pro processor (in my set anyway) does an exceptional job processing the LD composite signal. It's only downfall seems to be the comb filter dealing with moving objects - which gets destroyed on the S&W moving plate test.

I forgot to test the LD composite straight into the Onkyo but will do that tonight. I am sure I tested it years ago and the results were the same. The Onkyo lost detail in low-light scenes.

I think I had also read somewhere online that the composite signal output from the S9 is recombined from S-Video. That is, the player takes the analog signal from the disc, runs it through the S-Video section, adds noise reduction, then recombines it and outputs a composite signal. And because of that, the article said the composite signal is slightly inferior to the S-Video signal. Not sure if that's true or not. I'll see if I can dig up the source article.

Quick update: low-light scenes still lost detail and were dark when using the composite signal through the Onkyo. Oddly, the Onkyo also had problems displaying still frames when using composite. Whenever I paused the disc, the freeze-frame stuttered badly on the screen. That did not happen with the S-Video signal.

Also, the S&W moving plate test using composite through the Onkyo was pretty close to what the Sony generated. I had very pronounced rainbows in the four corners of the plate. Unfortunately, I do not have a way to test the S-Video signal from the S9 straight into the Sony. Based on my results, it seems S-Video would give me the best PQ. I'm just not sure what effect the S-Video-to-composite cable would have on the PQ. In theory, if the S9 is converting S-Video back to composite internally (like I think) I would end up with the same composite signal I am already using.

Very interesting what you mentioned in your above posts especially regarding the performance of the Sony when viewing the S&W Test Patterns; one of the main strong point of an Edge or Duo is their onboard comb filter and after learning this then I think if one were to become available at the right price then if it was me I’d grab it, it possibly may not appreciably improve things but then again you may be pleasantly surprised - I highly doubt it will make matters worse and if there’s nothing gained I’m sure there’d be no problem selling it on.

Re: the S9 comb filter. I think this may be a generation earlier than that fitted to the Pioneer CLD-R7G which is almost if not on a par with the device employed in the Edge therefore the S9 should I would have thought look better via composite but there’s something nagging me here; that is the fact that the R7G which looks fabulous via s-video actually when hooked up via composite delivers a disappointingly soft image, I’ve not actually owned an S9 or seen one in action so I’m just wondering if it displays similar traits here to the 7G?