Cadence-Detection & Diagonal-Smoothing: HTPC vs. Dedicated DVD player (1 Viewer)

[Matt^K]

Hey guys:

I am in the process of putting together my first home theater system (a pretty modest one I'm afraid, but I only have a college student's budget to work with). I'm currently looking at the much-hyped Sanyo HT32744 (32" 4:3 HDTV) with an Onkyo S770 htib.

I watch a lot of R1 anime releases, which are notoriously poorly encoded and poorly flagged (both compounded by the fact the vast majority of anime titles are video-sourced material). Because of this, I think (and this is just from a cursory understanding of the well-known article at hometheaterhifi.com/volume_7_4/dvd-benchmark-part-5-progressive-10-2000.html; if I'm wrong in my assumptions, please correct me before I confuse myself further!)I need dvd playback that has good cadence-detection and diagonal-smoothing.

My question is: Can HTPC soltutions meet the same level of picture quality that a DVD player with a Faroudja chip can do via its DCDi? I have a pretty beefy PC (Athlon64 3200 and am soon to drop in a GeForce 6800) so I don't think available processing power is an issue. Can ffdshow + ZoomPlayer (or any combination of filters and players) match the pq I'd get from the cadedence-detection, 1080i upconversion, and diagonal-smoothing from a dvd player like the Zenith DVB-318 (as if I could find one for sale with compnent 1080i anymore :frowning: )?

Thanks in advance!

 

[Max Leung]

I'm not aware of any current HTPC solutions that can match the performance of a Faroudja chip. However, NVIDIA is about to release a commercial package called FWMM (ForceWare Multimedia?) 4, which is basically the NVDVD 4 PC DVD player. I believe it requires something like a Geforce 6800 or 5700. Supposedly it has very good 3:2 pulldown capabilities, as well as good cadence detection.

I've learned about this in the HTPC forum of the AVSForum.com website.

 

[DaveGTP]

Hey Matt,

You should check out the Anime discussion thread over in the HT Films on DVD area. More anime posters are good!

As far as anime deinterlacing performance - none of the software programs can match the Faroudja deinterlacing (or the Silicon Image deinterlacing found in many other high-end players).

Anime is really tricky to deinterlace. Lines have a tendency to end up jagged (esp. diagonal ones) on my 90" or so of projector screen. Even the good Faroudja players aren't perfect with anime. But they definitely keep the deinterlacing artifacts to a minimum. Esp. on poorly flagged discs.

The best, most very optimal setup would be an SDI-modified Faroudja player - it outputs the deinterlaced image to the PC for scaling. But expensive.


That said, you're best off going with a good Faroudja player. Esp since you only have a 32". You'll probably be very happy with it. I've got a Zenith DVB-318 which I'm not 100% happy with, but it is a very good Faroudja player, upscales to 1080i over component (until LG/Zenith starts using new firmware). I'm probably upgrading to the Denon DVD-1910, which is coming out in the next few weeks. Pending good reviews, of course.


Anyway, I can see you've done your research. The answer is NO. Esp. not for anime - deinterlacing artifacts are glaringly obvious with animation.

 

[Scott L]

I have this predicament too in these two options:

1) HTPC using Zoom Player Pro + Sonic Filters + FFDShow (denoise3D, HQ, Unsharp Mask). DVI -> projector

2) Xbox component out to Infocus 405 w/DCDi. Component -> projector

Discs that are poorly flagged like my imported DTS copy of Hero and Nip/Tuck Season 1 look horrible on the HTPC. It's way too jumpy, telling me the filters have horrible 3:2 pulldown.

I put the disc in the Xbox and even though it's 480i the jumpiness is gone. That DCDi really looks good and is useful. As for pure quality on a properly flagged disc, the HTPC edges DCDi out. There's just too many things you can tweak and fine-tune, and I'm just using two algorithms.

Good news is that the NVDVD v4.0 is supposed to have awesome 3:2 pulldown, even for crappy DVDs. Bad news is that you can only get it through buying an nVidia card or Theatertek.

That said, HTPCs are for tweakers and can give you a lot of headaches even if you are PC savvy. I'd try out the Zenith until NVDVD is available.

Dave- I'd like to test out the deinterlacing on the Anime discs. I have Cowboy Bebop: The Movie on my Netflix, how's the flagging on that?

 

[Vince Maskeeper]

HTPC basically has no cadence detection DVD software for internal playback, nothing approaching a good chip. However- an alternate solution would be to use a stand alone player, modify it to pass SDI mpeg directly into a PC (there are a couple places that can do this mod, and several PCI SDI input cards for this purpose).

Then you could use the sdi direct digital input with cadence detection software like dscaler or whatever... giving you the excellent scaling and processing of HTPC with the convience of a stand alone player, and good image quality.

I think this is the way many of the bigger videophiles I see posting here and on AVS have their system setup.

-V