CurtPalme.com Home Theater Forum

Zindar · Joined: 12 Jun 2009 Posts: 26 Location: Austin

Hello,
My employer was trying to get rid of an expensive CRT high definition 32 inch monitor, and nobody would buy it from them, so I gave them $25 and took it off their hands. It accepts VGA input, so I'm interested in purchasing a product from HDfury that will convert and HDMI output on my HD TiVo (DVR) to a VGA signal to go into my new monitor.

The monitor is made by Monivision, model DM-6952S.

I'm attempting to test what sort of resolution it can display. The specs say:

Compatibility: PC VGA, SVGA, XGA (640 x 480 @ 60, 72,k 75, 85 HZ / 800 x 600 @ 60, 72, 75Hz / 1024 x 768 @ 60HZ
Digital TV Format 480i, 480p, 1080i, 720p

So I'm guessing it can at least support 720p, which is one of the possible outputs my HD TiVo is capable of outputting.

I read on your site that to test this ability, I should attempt to send an image from a PC with 1280 x 720 resolution.

I did so, and compared to 1024 x 768, here's how the image looks.

1024 x 768 looks completely normal. 1280 x 720 looks pretty close to normal, but the images are skewed a little in the sense that things look kind of compressed in the horizontal dimension, but not the vertical. Maybe that makes sense, because it's trying to fit 1280 pixels, not 1024 in the same amount of horizontal space.

In addition, there's a slight curvature in the sense that things in the middle of the screen are compressed more than things in the top or bottom, kind of like a horse's saddle if you know what I mean.

In other words, when displaying a square on my screen it looks shaped more like a horse's saddle as seen from above where the narrow part is in the middle of the screen, and the wider parts are above and below.

It's not a pronounced effect, meaning the curvature is not great, but I can notice it.

Is this normal? Does this count as a successful or unsuccessful test of 720p?

Also, I did a screen snapshot of the skewed image, but when I display the screen snapshot on my other computer/monitor, it's not skewed at all. So the skewing is just how it looks on my new monitor. The data itself is not skewed.

**AnalogRocks** · Posted: Fri Jun 12, 2009 6:14 am Post subject:

The distortion you are seeing can be corrected most of the time in the service menu. The reason it's not showing up on the camera is due to the barrel distortion of the lens. It's canceling out the bow of your monitor.

You say at 1280x720 the picture looks compressed in the horizontal direction, it's more likely that it's stretched vertically. Again you could try to adjust this in the geometry menu. I believe that's a 16:10 monitor, when displaying 19:9 you should have some narow leterbox bars top and bottom on your screen.

Try 1080i, it'll be easier on the monitor. 33.75KHz vs 45KHz for 720p, plus it's 1920x1080 so you'll see more detail.

You may also need to get into the menu to correct for the left offset of the VGA signal that comes out of the HDFury1/2. This is caused by the short digital signal timings coming out of the Bluray/DVD/STB etc...

I would recommend a Box1040, this will give you component input and image alignment correction to help adjust the left offset. You can either go with the HDFury1 and plug it directly into the Monitor and try to adjust in the menu or add the Box1040 in there between the HDFury1 and the monitor and use the IAC circuit to center the picture going to the monitor.

The combo of the 2 should give you a good picture and DVI/HDCP as well as component input compatibility. The added bonus of gamma boost will bring out the shadow details in movies.

Your setup would be as follows:

STB----HDMI.to.DVI.cable---HDFury1|Box1040==VGA.cable====Monitor.

HDFury1 FAQ's
https://www.curtpalme.com/forum_archived/viewtopic.php@t=5282.html

Box1040 FAQ's:
https://www.curtpalme.com/forum_archived/viewtopic.php@t=10987.html

Zindar · Joined: 12 Jun 2009 Posts: 26 Location: Austin

Thanks for your useful comments.

**AnalogRocks** · Posted: Fri Jun 12, 2009 3:34 pm Post subject:

Zindar · Joined: 12 Jun 2009 Posts: 26 Location: Austin

By the way, I wanted to follow up. I ordered the HDfury, but not the box1040, because I wanted to first see how good a job the HDfury does without the box1040. There is no barrel distortion at all, so I'm very happy.

Also, the vast majority of my programming I get from my TiVo DVR is in SD quality, but I still see a significant improvement watching it on my 32" computer monitor / HD fury combo, compared to my decades old 27" SD TV, so overall I'm happy.

But I'm confused by what I'm seeing on my HD channels. I hooked up an antenna so I could pick up some local networks OTA in HD quality. (I did this because my Time Warner cable is delivering SD programming to my TiVO.) My antenna is hooked directly to my DVR, but it's an HD TiVo, which is equipped with a built in digital tuner, so it's able to tune into my local HD networks, through the antenna. (It has two inputs: one for cable and one for antenna, and it's able to simultaneously accept signals through both inputs.) So I tried looking at one of those channels, and then I flipped to the analog version, which I have available through my Time Warner analog cable. I kept toggling back and forth between the two versions, watching the same show so I could compare the quality.

I was expecting dramatically better quality through HD, because everybody raves about HD. But I could hardly see any difference in quality. And the scenes I was looking at were brightly lit scenes, and I thought my lack of a box1040 only hurts me on the darkly lit scenes, so I don't understand why my HD shows don't much better than the SD shows.

I admit I only tried this on one show. I'll try some more to see if this is a consistent problem.

**AnalogRocks** · Posted: Sun Jul 05, 2009 5:11 am Post subject:

What resolution did you have your output set to? Does your cable box actually output 1080i or does it just receive HD signals and downgrade them to SD?

Zindar · Joined: 12 Jun 2009 Posts: 26 Location: Austin

Zindar · Joined: 12 Jun 2009 Posts: 26 Location: Austin

Update: On this website, I see a map showing the location of the KXAN tower. Just eyeballing the map, my brain roughly estimates the tower is 10 or 20 miles from my house. It's also in a hilly area of Austin, so I bet they put the tower on top of a tall hill. You'd think I should be able to pick it up.

Zindar · Joined: 12 Jun 2009 Posts: 26 Location: Austin

I just found this old thread of mine. Sorry, I see that my ramblings about tuning into HD channels was off topic from this thread, and I probably shouldn't have done that. I did eventually, years ago, solve all those old tuning problems. The solution was simply to put my antenna near a window, facing the direction of the towers.