CurtPalme.com Home Theater Forum

[justin_f]

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hello all,

i have been reading a few threads in this section regarding uhd, hdmi 2.0 and hdcp strippers but have a few questions still...

I will be building a theater room (and a house sometime next year and need to update my well and truly dated equipment. I have recently acquired two colour corected 909s and want to use them in a stack viewing format.

ultimately i want the shortest (simplest) video chain to feed these 909s. movies is what i plan to view most. and i want a full size image (16:9).

I had a coworker talking to me about the oppo 203. i decided to have a look at the specs and liked the idea (even if i cant resolve the native image resolution - downscale) of being able to purchase uhd media and view it on the stack.

i had also found myself looking at moomes hdmi card for the barco... i read some specs on the card and noticed it supports upto hdmi 1.4. admittedly I don't know the difference, but figured 2.0 was for hdr content and 4k?

anyway... if i bought a moome card for each set and fit them, ran hdmi straight from the sets to something that can duplicate what comes out the oppo 203, that this would be the ultimate solution for this current moment?

is that correct? what do i need that wont cause any video noise that the oppo feeds before the moome card? do i use a splitter box? whats the best device available? and what are the price differencrs and quality differences between devices to do this?

I noticed the oppo 203 has hdmi 2.0 output. it also has two hdmi outputs. however my understanding is that one hdmi is video signal and the other is audio for the amp?

any help would be appreciated. I look forward to some replies?


regards,

Justin.

[Tim in Phoenix]

Hello

You may want to consider the Moome Mux device. It has two HDMI out and switches four inputs and strips HDCP. I have been using one for years and it is excellent. It would feed a Moome input card on each 909. Not sure how you want to deal with audio.

You may also want to explore Edge Blending, the image will be twice as bright as stacking and far less work to maintain finicky convergence.

Also, the throw distance will be under 1.0 so enabling a very large screen in the smallest footprint. Blending is ideal on nine to twelve foot screen widths. You will want a screen fabric of 1.0 gain to avoid color shift issues.

[justin_f]

thanks for the advice tim. really!

i originally saw these colour corrected 909's running in an amazing stack arrangement through a htpc (the screen was 16:9 12ft wide). i was demo'd a few classic reference 2d bluray movies. the one that sealed the deal was james franco in "oz the great and powerful." https://youtu.be/_ijSs9eD6S4?t=133 < as he floated through the river in the basket, the flowers opened up. i had to rub my eyes. i thought i was watching a 3d version of the movie. everything in this clip jumped out of the screen and smacked me in the face... i had never experienced this before. the depth and motion was intense.

i swore i would just replicate this setup in my home theater. however, now giving some serious thought to your suggestions, i am considering a blend now. the previous owner had convergence drift issues with these sets. not to say it wont happen again, but with geometry on less of a wild angle, i would assume convergence would drift less?

i was never really a fan of cinema scope (really prefer the 16:9 image), but seeing some of nashou's screenshots and videos, i feel a turn coming on!

i couldn't find a link to purchase a moome mux device, so found myself wandering through the htpc section of this forum. i came across a few people suggesting using the nvidia quadro cards for edge blending. if i went this path, i could go one of two ways with a htpc and quadro card... digital or analogue.

digital:
1 x nvidia quadro (or gtx card with hacked video drivers to emulate a quadro) w/2 x hdmi out
1 x moome hdmi 1.4 barco card in each set
1 x darbee dvp5000s between each moome card and the graphics card

analogue:
1 x nvidia quadro (or gtx card with hacked video drivers to emulate a quadro) w/2 x dvi analogue out
1 x dvi to bnc cable to each set

the analogue route would be significantly cheaper, at the cost of potential video signal loss. i would use nvidias proprietary software for the edge blending. the htpc would have a bluray player device fitted. i would treat it like an optical media player?


just airing some thoughts.

[gjaky]

With analogue cabling it is often claimed that the signal loss is so bad. But in fact using proper cables may yield much better results than using Moome cards, the DA converter found in VGA cards are better than what it is in the Moome card. Playing back BluRay with analogue output will cause a HDCP lock issue, there are two workarounds:
1.) Copy all your BluRays on a HDD, and play back from HDD (oddly the HDCP not protecting when movie is played from HDD)
2.) Use AnyDVD that "breaks" HDCP (This software is now obsolete, and in some coutries even illegal?)

[justin_f]

thanks gjaky.

what defines a quality bnc cable for the analogue display path?

i forgot about the hdcp handshake. i honestly would rather walk over to a shelf and grab a bluray disc and throw it into the htpc. having experienced a network provider outage during a netflix screening on my projector, i will always keep movies and tv shows on bluray. if i were to store blurays on a hard drive, storage capacity would get absolutely out of hand i imagine? i understand the suggestion was a hdcp work around, but may need to look at other ideas? keeping the video chain as simple as possible for an edge blend is going to be tough.

i have never heard of anydvd. i am now having a quick look at their website and it sounds impressive. it disables alot of annoying issues with optical media. i quote the website "Makes Blu-ray media playable with any playback software." does this mean i can use vlc media player? it's not cheap to purchase, though.

i have seen the darbee vision device on a digital projector and really wanted this for my 909 stack. going the analogue path, i can't have the darbee vision device at all.

i guess i will have to price the htpc build and all my wants, then weigh up the options available. darbee vision is something i can live without. i didnt know analogue could perform as good or better than the moome barco hdmi card. back to the drawing board!

[racerxnet]

[gjaky]

The analog cables are usualy misinterpreted, sometimes the lowest capacitance is pursued, but in fact capacitance is only loosely connected to bandwidth. We use 75 Ohm impedance cables in video circuits, the 75 Ohm impedance is coming from Z=sqrt(L/C) behavior of the cable. Having to cables with the same impedance, but one with the lower capacitance does not mean anything, since both appear the same impedance from the outside. What does matter is the dielectric loss, that is given in dB/length units under Attenuation name, the lower attenuation is the better of course.
If you have room I’d suggest to use all copper RG-6 cables (you can find clad steel RG-6s more easily), RG-6 cable is the most commonly used as TV antenna cable where the upper frequency limit is close to 1GHz and they use it for several meters, so you can guess it will work for video as well, it is a thick cable though.
For miniature cable I prefer VanDamme Plasma Grade miniature 75 Ohm coax, it has reasonable attanuation at lengths <5m, very flexible, easy to work with (the non miniature version of this cable compares to RG-6, but is more expensive I think).

For all analog signal of course you can’t use Darbee, but keep in mind having a HTPC will let you play a broad range of video filters which could bring similar visual result as a Darbee -for free.

[justin_f]

thanks racerxnet.

i installed both mpc-hc and madvr. i love how light mph-hc is... and how well it played content. definately using this over vlc for now. especially when i dug up your old threads on mpc-hc. i made a *.hlsl file with the shader code for edge blending. it works ace as! i adjusted the code in notepad and saved and mpc-hc instantly updated the fade settings. now i just need to rewrite drivers for windows to enable this all the time

i mucked around with the madvr filters and saw some good improvements. but wont use any edge enhancement etc. as it made the picture sh*tty. the darbee vision is no joke. i wish i could use it in an analogue signal.

i have two really long shielded bnc cables that came with the projector purchase. they look decent but wouldnt know what they were.