Yeah there is some ghosting/ringing going on and some muse artefacts around the subtitles too, but hopefully these two pics (crops/zooms of above) will highlight better what I'm specifically talking about.

Pioneer:


Panasonic:


Do you see on the horizontal edges of the subtitles how the Pioneer looks more rippled/jagged/wavy where the Panasonic is so much more smoothed over? Then look back at how each handles the horizontal lines in the test pattern. I don't have the technical understanding to even begin to explain why this might be, but the Pioneer is the only one to do this, the Victor and Sony produce a more smoothed subtitle like the Panasonic.

Ah I see what you are talking about now.
Very interesting, thanks for posting.

Just a quick heads up, a rare HD-M20 Hitachi badged version of the HM-D101 is currently on the bay if anyone has a spare $2000 currently doing nothing in their wallet if only!….

The Pioneer seems to be applying sharpness (aka edge enhancement)to the image. The idea behind sharpness/edge enhancement is that algorithm detects sharp contrast changes in the images such as the borders of objects, stripes on clothes, lines in sports and applies negative boost to the low IRE(dark) area and a positive boost to the high IRE(bright) areas. This makes the edges more pronounced. The catch is if the software applies the boosts to a wider area than it should, the bright side of the edge appears as a halo. The edge enhancement works better for high definition and above images as the pixel size is much smaller, the contrast boost area would remain much closer to the edges.

I think I just diminished the likely hood of this sale happening with my above post (seller pls forgive me). The Pioneer applies edge enhancement and has visible ringing. Its a pass for the purist.

Or wait for the next one on YAJ?

It's here: https://www.ebay.com/itm/124961629724 ($2,000, for parts or not working)

But it was likely imported in September via proxy in the hope to fix the capacitors from https://page.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/auction/p1004982657 ($833, powers on but doesn't seem to work properly, considered as junk)

Julien

Indeed, I wonder if the seller is actually a member on here? Perhaps he would now consider a 50% price reduction

substance, regarding your comments about the HM-D101, do you think there is a possiblity that Hitachi may have tinkered under the hood and possibly tweaked the performance of their version of this decoder in any way or is it most likely the only difference to the Pioneer is as thought purely a cosmetic one?

Thanks for this Julien,

I’ll have to honestly confess that I hadn’t noticed the “for parts or not working” description

I was somewhat blinded by the main description explaining how the unit had been fully recapped etc. and assumed it was in full working order, reading it again now and it doesn’t actually say that it is - could this be considered as just a bit misleading or is it simply me being ever so slightly dumb?

Hi Substance, I'm not sure that's the answer/reason. The ringing/ghosting/haloing you see in the images is from the player; it's visible on all my Muse decoders, and I've tried a few, especially on subtitles. (It's visible in the shots from the Panasonic above.)

Overall the image from the Pioneer has never given me the impression it has been edge enhanced; if anything when compared to the TU-MDC100 I'd say it's more likely it might be the case in the Panasonic.

But the Pioneer does seem unique in how it handles angled lines (you can see this quite clearly in a couple of the test pattern shots, especially where close to horizontal), breaking them into more numerous smaller sections rather than continuous (or sections that appear like scan lines). I don't have it plugged in right now but iirc even a newer Pioneer does not do this. It's always struck me as resembling something of how computer graphics might be differently drawn. Could it be something in a different approach to all the digital processing going on inside a Muse decoder?

You'd probably never actually notice it in most real world material unless like me you're looking for it, though it does seem to reduce any aliasing/scrolling effect you might get when those kinds of lines are drawn on-screen.

The Pioneer decoder on ebay is mine. $2000 is the "it's for sale for the right price." Don't know why the listing is for parts or not working and it will not let me change it. Might be because of the category its in. Strange.

As far as the ringing and jaggieness of the subtitles reported above. They're non-existant on the Hitachi. It's entirely possible your decoder needs new capacitors. The inside of this one was a mess with all the dried out SMD caps. I must say save the fan noise it's the finer of my decoders. I have owned most of them. MST-2000, MSC-3000, MSC-4000, TU-AHD100 and the Pioneer PDP-502R outputting component through the VCR output. It's on par with the TU-MDC100 from what I can tell regarding pictures a friend has shared. It's no Panasonic TW series studio decoder but it gets the job done well and it's sexy as hell.

Anyone with a Pioneer have a remote?

Ah, the mysteries of eBay - and I’m sure I’ve also had something similar happen in the past concerning a piece of AV kit too! As I’ve currently got an alert set for Muse/Hi-Vision items; I’d swear blind that on first sighting it wasn’t flagged as for parts or not working, so do eBay sort of auto-add these things later I wonder? - wish I’d taken a screenshot now to prove it wasn’t my defective eyesight

Anyway I would dearly love to take the Hitachi off your hands but its way out of reach for me atm sadly, I have a fully recapped Sony 4000 which would at best fetch just a few hundred so can only hope for next month’s lottery A quick ask - audioboyz1973 above mentioned some time ago that his Pioneer HM-D101 made the Sony 4000 onscreen image appear like it had a lightly frosted sheet of glass in front of it in comparison, did you see a difference as drastic as this between the other models?

Emphasis on lightly; I don't recall it being a chalk and cheese thing!

Before even reading this comment I had noticed my recapped Sony MSC-4000 was "fuzzy" in comparison to my other decoders. The "lightly frosted glass" describes the effect perfectly.

Unfortunately all I have is this poor image of it:

The only functions are a Still and a Strobe effect though.

I don't doubt the decoder would benefit from recapping; I know there's an issue with the 5-ch audio out (luckily the straight 4-ch is good), for which I think some of the many surface mount electrolytics on that area of the board around the D/A convertors are responsible for.

It's something I'd really like to get done but dealing with SMD's in particular is beyond my current capabilities so am on the lookout for someone local to do it. Plus honestly I'm a little hesitant in case they break it!

It may even help with the ringing, but at risk of sounding repetitive I'm going to repeat that I think the majority of that is coming from the player (X9). It's been there with every decoder I've tried; here's the pictures from both the HM-D101 and MDC100 again:

Pioneer:


Panasonic:


It shows up well in areas of the test pattern too:

Pioneer:


Panasonic:


And to make the point it's not just me I borrowed and zoomed/cropped a photo laserfanhld-gb recently posted (also X9 with recapped Sony):

It's not as obvious on a much brighter background but I think you can see essentially the same thing going on.

Of course in normal viewing it's not really noticeable; but once you zoom in super close.

It is difficult to tell. Now the Pioneer looks better and has less ringing. Unlikely the caps will help ringing. The operation is in digital.

I need a power on code. But then again I switch my transformer using X10 and the decoder has last state power memory. Might be a moot point now that I think about it.

Interesting beast doing BS, A/V with a MUSE module and some basic stereo speaker amplification.

=> Pioneer PDP-502R

Julien

I recently acquired a MDC100 and can say the plasma box is a better decoder. It matrixes all channels for a proper subwoofer output which no other decoder does. I will be stripping and anodizing mine black to match my X0.

I got one, actually ended up being two of these a little while back and it's impressive (when it works!). Unfortunately I just get the muted blue-screen (more like teal-screen) on one's Muse input while the other can drop out intermittently, which a bit of a whack fixes so dry joints are suspected. Didn't want to pop on a another thinking it might be a bit of an inherent issue with them?