CurtPalme.com Home Theater Forum

[Melifluonze]

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I used to drive my 9500LC with a DVDO Duo until I found out that my sync settings in the 9500LC Ultra projector were clipping the image. I changed the sync settings from slow to fast (or vice versa, forgot which... but if you know what I'm talking about, you know which.. ) and then I had the ringing on the left (common problem, looks like vertical intensity banding on the left). No way to change timing in the DVDO to expand the porches as far as I know.

To combat this, I aquired a Lumagen 2123. I get a great picture on my RS600, but a once per second flickering image complaining about no sync on the 9500LC. I figure the timing in the Lumagen is for something other than a CRT.

Can anyone please post their Lumagen Radiance timing for their 9500LC so I can at least have a starting point? I'd like to do 1080p60 with the right porch timing to shift the image out of the ring area!

Total Lumagen noob here... definitely more complex than the Duo (= WAY more powerful). I don't know how to get into service mode (to set timing), I haven't successfully gotten the Lumagen to transfer Audio from the input to the output yet, and I'm fighting an aspect ratio battle (and losing). The darned thing is too smart for it's own good.

My video chain is LD (DVL-91, composite out) to DVDO DUO (to de-interlace and get on HDMI with 480P and LD audio) to Lumagen Radiance 2123 (to upscale to 1080p60) out to projector via a Moome input module on HDMI out 1 and to receiver (for Audio) on HDMI out 2. Again, works great for the JVC RS600... no go for the 9500LC.

Currently a flashing picture on the 9500LC with no sync reported, and no audio from the receiver. Hook up to the DVDO the same way (bypass the Lumagen), and I've got pic and sound (but ringing).

Pulling out my hair! (And I don't have much left!!!) I know the Lumagen can fix all this...

Thank you for any help you can provide!

(And, no... "just run the JVC" is not the answer for me. I love my dinosaur!)

[Melifluonze]

Here is the current timing...

[pureaudio]

First you need to make sure you have a HDMI cable that supports the Lumagen 4K chipset, even your only running 1080P to the Marquee.

[Melifluonze]

Alright, I read about the cable issue. Ordering one up.

[CIR Engineering]

Firstly, you do definitely need a better HDMI cable and I would strongly recommend Ruipro sold on Amazon. They are active fiber cables and work almost 100% of the time. You should not be getting the drop outs you describe regardless of the timings in the Lumagen. You can't overclock 1080p 60Hz when your cables are already giving you problems.

The 2123 has limited timing output compared to the 2143. Jim and I talked about this years ago, and I know we decided to set the clock quite a bit higher than 1080p 60Hz's standard clock rate so that CRT people could do things like increase porches to reduce ringing. What I don't recall is where we set the max clock. Maybe we went all the way up to 195 MHz, but I don't think so; I think we set it at 155 or 165 MHz or something around there. When you increase the clock and Htotals, always check in the Marquee menu that the signal is indeed stil 60/1.001 Hz and not something lower. If it is lower, that means you are beyond what the 2143 is allowed to throw.

You can download my clock calculator here:
http://www.cir-engineering.com/bin/clock_calc.xls

With an Htotal lines of 2300 lines the clock requires 155094905 Hz. I think the 2123 may be able to do this. If not try 2275 lines and recalculate the clock. When I had Patrick modify the firmware for a higher clock, the primary goal was to allow LG projectors to properly run 1080p 60Hz without cropping the image so it wasn't for Marquee optimization.

2300 lines won't be enough to remove the ringing, but it may be enough to push it further off the screen and improve things for you. Try 2400 lines and see if the 2143 will do it, that would be better. Also, don't center your image in the raster, push the image far to the right to get it away from the ringing. Use a small cross hatch patter though and watch the squares on the right as you move the image in the raster. On the Marquee, the right side of the image will start to get compressed (the squares will turn into rectangles) before you make contact with the far right side.

If you aren't satisfied with what you can do with the 2123 contact me directly by email if you are interested in purchasing an upgrade kit to make your 2123 into a 2143. I may be able to provide this for you even though Jim really doesn't like to sell these kits.

The other final piece of the puzzle is that Moome set the HDMI boards to run an extremely low voltage to the HDMI chip. If you send me your Marquee board (or buy another one from me) I can modify the board to increase the voltage to something better suited to running higher clock rate 1080p 60Hz signals. This however is not usually necessary until you go beyond 176 MHz so most likely not required.

craigr

[kal]

Ruipro 4K fiber HDMI cables: https://amzn.to/2NrWVva
Ruipro 8K fiber HDMI cables: https://amzn.to/3jQzCaA

Kal

[kal]

Ruipro 4K fiber HDMI cables: https://amzn.to/2NrWVva
Ruipro 8K fiber HDMI cables: https://amzn.to/3jQzCaA

Kal

[CIR Engineering]

[gjaky]

[Melifluonze]

Thank you for all of the responses thus far!

I received a new cable today, 4K@60Hz certified. No go. Still flickers...

So I tried an experiment. I plugged the shorter cable that drives my JVC just fine into a splitter I had around and drove the long projector cable out of the splitter. PICTURE!

So, clearly the new cable I bought is also not fully compatible with the Lumagen 2123.

I plugged the old projector cable into the splitter and voila, picture as well. So, since we're in the digital domain, I don't care about adding a splitter just to make the outputs of the Lumagen compatible with the cables I have.

Image driven by the Lumagen current settings has much more ringing than that with the DVDO 1080p60 timing. The timing is clearly WAY different between the DVDO and the Lumagen.

Now playing with CIR's spreadsheet to see what timing I can come up with. I assume what really needs to happen is the back porch needs to become much longer in relation to the start of the line? I'm reading that the back porch compensates for the fall time and settling time following the sync pulse.

I really don't want to push the image to the right. Especially if you're suggesting that I push the actual raster on the face of the tube to the right... Nope... That would force me to move the projector and move out of the worn area of the phosphor. I'm going to have to figure out how to adjust the timing to move the retrace ring off the screen.

[Melifluonze]

So odd... The efect of tuning the waveform is non-intuitive... or I'm just thinking about it wrong.

I would expect that if you increased the back porch, you'd move the image to the right. I guess that happens, but it also shrinks the image too much, or makes it impossible to shift the phase left enough to recenter the raster..

Do I have to mess with the magnetics, or the HDM coils, or is there another adjustment to keep the raster centered on the tube face, but move the ringing off the screen? It would probably be bad to do any movement using convergence...

Or, do I need to skip the Moome and go back to analog inputs with an Extron 202xi to adjust all this?

Has anyone found that the latest HDM/CLM/VIM do a better job to prevent ringing? Or is this simply more difficult than I think it should be?

[gjaky]

Have you tried to increase the total pixel count to 2450? If you are there, then you can use "Long retrace" and bye-bye ringing, while you can keep your raster centered on tube face as well.

[Melifluonze]

I did try that, and it looked promising, but I couldn't increase the total clock beyond ~155MHz. Plus, it seems to do weird things like shrink the raseter. I'm at 100% Horizontal size now.

I aloso tried going down to 48 fps. That's interestig,but not sure how good it'd work with LD.

I found a Lumagen 2144, so soon I should be able to mess with the clock some more.

What is your timing right now with the 2450 horizontal? (What are all your timing numbers)

[CIR Engineering]

[gjaky]

But going back to square one... You'd only use the Lumagen to upscale Laser Disc to some sensible resolution, right? If so, then there is nothing that makes you stick to 1080P 60Hz, the Laser Disc is an 525i source, so I'd definitely would upscale to whatever resolution that fits into the Lumagen's capabilities, 1600x900 60P or whatever, you won't miss a single detail either way.

[Melifluonze]

I blew away a message by accident... but I got things working...

The Lumagen 21XX is basically amazing for LD. I ran the DVDO 480i to 480P (to use the ADV chip) into the 2123. I hear doing this pipeline is basically duplicating a 2144.

I still have trouble with the clock settings since I'm limited to the 156MHz clock. I can't seem to make the 9500LC rasters any larger at any frequencies/combinations other than close to the settings of the original 1080p60 of the Lumagen. I tried adjusting the HDM coils, and searched through the menus of the 9500LC, but I'm still at 100% and can't use ANY other clock settings... driving me nuts!

I thought you could expand the raster to full screen for any frequency! Not true... or something's busted on my projector.

Also found out that the JVC is not happy with anything other than something really close to the 1080p60 that the Lumagen was originally set for. That causes some issues with how I plan to use the 2144... but we'll see.

When I have experimented with the 2144, I'll post more...

Here's a shot captured with a cell phone from the 1080p60 LD upscale while it was playing... I haven't messed with anything yet. It's just scaled with default settings on both the DVDO and Lumagen. Yes, it's SD, and you can tell it is, but it's definitely something I don't mind watching on a 120" screen. This is upscaled from a 2.35:1 letterboxed CLV disc. Actually kind of impressive!

[CIR Engineering]

There is a lot to unpack here. For starters, post the exact Lumagen timings that you tried with your Marquee when you could not get the image to be wide enough. Also, did the image fill the entire raster, or was there room on the sides of the raster between the boarder and image?

Yes, the JVC will not accept custom timings; it is expecting industry standards for 1080p. This is however really easy to work around. Simply create a custom output modes in the Lumagen for your CRT, and a standard 1080p output mode for your JVC. Then in the Lumagen assign one of the output modes to memory A and the other to memory B. This way you can run a different output mode for each projector.

The reason gjaky recommended NOT using 1080p is because it's not an even multiple of any LD resolution. Even multiples do not need to be scaled, instead they just need to be line doubled which may have less artifacts. That said, the 21xx scaling is very good so there may not be any discernable difference. However, a custom resolution double that of LD could actually provide an even better image than you have now. If your LD is 525 lines than 1050p may be better (LD can also be 425 or 440 lines though.

When you get the Lumagen 2144 you'll be able to run the LD directly into it. Once you do that, you can bring up the Lumagen status screen and see what resolution you are getting from the LD player and you can line double that. If your LD player is outputting 480i than you will probably see a better image if you make a custom resolution at 960p for the LD player.

craigr

[Melifluonze]

Agreed!

I've just begun to climb into the Lumagen. Very powerful!