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Author
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Topic: Upgrade Recommendations - Scaler / alternative content help
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Brian Mendelssohn
Film Handler
Posts: 17
From: Pittsburgh, PA, United States
Registered: Oct 2015
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posted 05-18-2019 09:29 AM
Hi all!
My cinema is approaching 6 years old. I'm generally "if it aint broke, then don't fix it" sort of fella ..... however, I'm mapping out potential upgrades for my system. I would love your help as certain things I'm not quite sure on...
I know I hate the Gefen AV Cinema Scaler Pro II. It has connections for which I could hook up my 1989 Compaq, but has only one HDMI port. This is high on my target list because we currently use -
Oppo BDP 103 - HDMI
Apple TV - HDMI
Direct HDMI computer link (for hooking up laptops in emergencies or when Apple TV isn't enough
In an ideal world... I want my set up (beyond DCP of course to be)
- Oppo UDP-203 (or 205??!??! which one is better)
- Oppo BDP 103 (we do a lot of blu-rays, so I do desire a backup since Oppo is RIP)
- Apple TV
- Direct HDMI in
- VCR (its a new trendy thing)
An of course I would love my Christie ACT to control all of the above. At a minimum control the Oppo's (which is no problem), control the VCR!!!, and at least switch to the Apple TV or Direct HDMI in. I assume this would require a scaler to have multiple inputs for HDMI. I'm using an HDMI switch right now, but its less than ideal and a big frustration for my staff. Having two blu-rays would be sweet for festival shorts, which we do from time to time... so the blu-rays can just auto play instead of someone closing the doser and switching the discs by hand. We are showing VHS more and more as it becomes trendy.
I can update the switch and cables to cat6a easily enough... does anyone have an opinion if this would help / do anything. It seems like our equipment's technology is a bit lagging in networking features.
The USL JSD 60 D seems fine. I haven't run into too many issues. Does anyone use the mic feature? I installed a separate PA system for presentations on the stage. Seems odd to send a mic through our cinema speakers? Does upgrading to the JSD 100 do much, its hard to understand the differences for me. Again, the audio processor seems like 10 year old technology.
Anyone have a good line on Oppo players (203 or 205). The market is crazy expensive (203 around $2k and 205 around $4k, yikes)
Any VCRs work with the Christie ACT? just basic features like play pause, stop. I'm cool with OSD since we are marketing it as a VHS night.
Thanks so much in advance. I love these forums. I'm such a better of a presenter as a result!
Brian
Row House Cinema
Current System:::
Single Screen Theater - 5.1 Surround - 16' Screen
- Christie Solara One Plus
- Christie IMB
- Christie ACT (101-102101-01 D)
- USL JSD 60 D - Audio Processor
- Oppo BDP 103
- CM-8B audio monitor (what is this thing. does anyone use these in real life??)
- Gefen AV Cinema Scaler Pro II
- Some old 10/100 network switch that looks like technology from 1995
- Everything is cat 5 cables
- QSC amps and speakers
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Scott Norwood
Film God
Posts: 8146
From: Boston, MA. USA (1774.21 miles northeast of Dallas)
Registered: Jun 99
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posted 05-31-2019 09:28 AM
I think that the Gefen unit exists as a fairly low-end A/D conversion device. You can plug in your laptop VGA output, VCR, 3/4" deck, Beta SP deck, Nintendo, Atari, etc., and get that signal to the projector. There are better options, but the Gefen is good enough for some venues. Honestly, the best part about it is the manual, which does a good job of showing how to deal with getting various formats to be geometrically correct on screen.
People are really showing VHS in cinemas in 2019? Umm...wow. I've done that (and am not proud of it) at "film" festivals in the early 2000s and it looked bad then.
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Jim Cassedy
Phenomenal Film Handler
Posts: 1661
From: San Francisco, CA
Registered: Dec 2006
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posted 05-31-2019 02:20 PM
quote: Scott Norwood
People are really showing VHS in cinemas in 2019?
A local movie house here in SF has a VHS show about once a month.
There were a lot of obscure titles released on VHS in the late 70's &
during the 80's, which never later made it to DVD or Blu-Ray.
I've never been to one of their shows, but I hear it's pretty popular.
It's a 2-Screen venue, and neither of the screens are super-huge, so
they can probably get a fairly decent image of the VHS.
Last year I worked a "Laser Disk" festival, which also featured flix which
came out on laser disk, but are rare, or impossible to find on other media.
The laser disk venue sat abt 200, and had a mid-sized screen. I don't recall
the resolution specs for laser disks, but I was surprised how good the
picture looked. Also the (stereo) audio was much cleaner than VHS.
We were using a SONY "Professional" laser disk player that had balanced
audio outputs (xlr's) The video output (BNC's) signal was rock steady, on
my waveform/vectorscope, even before I ran it through a Folsom Image-Pro.
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Scott Norwood
Film God
Posts: 8146
From: Boston, MA. USA (1774.21 miles northeast of Dallas)
Registered: Jun 99
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posted 05-31-2019 02:29 PM
quote: Brian Mendelssohn
Scott, is there a better piece of that you would recommend over the Gefen?
That depends upon what you want. Do you want to optimize image quality for one format, connect to an automation system, or support as many formats as possible? Do you need clean transitions from one input to another?
The people who do video projection for trade shows and rentals know the most about scalers.
I have used and can recommend the Analog Way Pulse LE, Barco Image Pro series, various Extron models, and a lesser Barco (whose product name I forget). These all offer far more flexibility than the Gefen. They are great for doing things like cropping out the edges of a marginal video signal, scaling a scope letterbox image to fill the DLP chip's width, and converting from higher computer resolutions (say, 1600x1200 or 2560x1440) to fit in a 2048x1080 box.
If you just want to get a good picture from an analog playback device and don't actually need fancy scalling capabilities, AJA and Blackmagic both make converter boxes that will take analog signals and convert them to SDI or DVI.
Someone else can probably speak to the ability of various devices to interface with automation systems.
That said, I would generally avoid scalers if you have a device that will output a digital signal. The D-cinema projector can do most of the basic stuff that people generally want to do internally. The external scaler adds inputs and flexibility at the cost of complexity and the addition of a potential point of failure.
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Marcel Birgelen
Film God
Posts: 3357
From: Maastricht, Limburg, Netherlands
Registered: Feb 2012
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posted 05-31-2019 05:27 PM
quote: Jim Cassedy
There were a lot of obscure titles released on VHS in the late 70's &
during the 80's, which never later made it to DVD or Blu-Ray.
I've never been to one of their shows, but I hear it's pretty popular.
It's a 2-Screen venue, and neither of the screens are super-huge, so
they can probably get a fairly decent image of the VHS.
Last year I worked a "Laser Disk" festival, which also featured flix which
came out on laser disk, but are rare, or impossible to find on other media.
The laser disk venue sat abt 200, and had a mid-sized screen. I don't recall
the resolution specs for laser disks, but I was surprised how good the
picture looked. Also the (stereo) audio was much cleaner than VHS.
VHS was really an awful format, not only is the resolution itself low, the chroma and luminance often not really matching, together with tape wear and sync issues, didn't really allow for a good picture. Another problem converting it to modern, progressive video presentations is the interlacing. If your projector doesn't support interlaced presentation, you need some kind of image processing (e.g. a line doubler) to get rid of most of the interlaced field-goodness of old broadcast formats.
VHS does about 250 scan-lines (differs between formats like NTSC and PAL) and the maximum vertical resolution is about 240 lines.
I think, the best way to watch at VHS on a big screen is by using an old-school analog CRT projector, that can do a true interlaced presentation at the correct refresh rate (50 or 60 fields per second). The flickery nature of the presentation also serves to hide some of the deficiencies of the format.
Laserdisc does about 480 scan-lines and roughly 440 vertical lines. The effective resolution is about 4 times that of standard VHS. In addition to that, a LaserDisc signal from a good preserved LaserDisc has far less noise than your average VHS recording. With a lot of image processing, a LaserDisc image can be still made to look halfway acceptable on a medium sized screen, at least if it's masked correctly.
Also, LaserDiscs can feature uncompressed PCM stereo audio and compressed digital formats like Dolby Digital AC3 and DTS. Many VHS audio recordings are low dynamic range mono recordings...
Some of the better VHS recorders supported "HiFi" stereo audio, allowing for a more dynamic range. Also, there was this short-lived S-VHS format, that allows for roughly the double amount of scan lines and an increased horizontal resolution. Some later models even recorded NICAM stereo decoding in conjunction with HiFi stereo recording. The quality of those audio recordings was really pretty decent and could compete with the best tape decks with advanced noise reduction.
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