multiple questions

[madshi]

I've been thinking about how my future home cinema will look like. Probably some day (not too far away?) I'll have a BluRay/HD-DVD player. It will come with new audio formats (e.g. Dolby Digital Plus).

(1) How should I optimally connect a BluRay/HD-DVD player? I could use HDMI, or HD-SDI. Let's say I want to use HD-SDI for best possible PQ - how would the Crystalio II then do audio delay for me? Would it be possible to connect the BluRay player both via HD-SDI and HDMI? I'd then connect the display to the Crystalio II analog or via DVI/HDMI, while I'd connect the receiver via HDMI (for multichannel sound). Is that possible/feasible this way? Or do you have a different solution in mind?

(2) Will you be able to do audio delay on Dolby Digital plus and the other new formats? Or will you need to use newer HDMI chips to support that?

(3) What does the Crystalio II do with 1080p50/60 *inputs*? Does it accept them? Or will I get a black screen then? Do the current HDMI chips support 1080p50/60 at all? I stumbled about things like "double head" connection and broader HDMI connectors and such stuff and am a bit confused now. Do your HDMI input and output connectors and chips fully support the required bandwidth for 1080p50/60 input and output?

(4) I'm not sure yet about noise reduction. I know that the Crystalio II will have some noise reduction capabilities built in. But there are also other devices dedicated to this job (like the Algolith Mosquito), which might be superior for this task. Let's say I'd want to use the Crystalio II in combination with a Mosquito. How would that work? The optimal solution would be to let the Crystalio II do the switching and deinterlacing in a first step, then the Mosquito do noise reduction and finally let the Crystalio II do the scaling. The Mosquito doesn't really work on already scaled sources, so I can't put it AFTER the Crystalio II. <sigh> I guess there's no optimal way to solve that, or is there? Probably I'd have to put all sources into the Mosquito and then connect the Mosquito with one cable to the Crystalio II, which would make all the countless Crystalio II inputs superfluous. Any thoughts on this?

(5) I believe broadcasters here in Germany might be using Dolby Digital Plus, cause it compresses better than Dolby Digital. Will the media player support Dolby Digital Plus?

Thank you!

[Jason]

I've been thinking about how my future home cinema will look like. Probably some day (not too far away?) I'll have a BluRay/HD-DVD player. It will come with new audio formats (e.g. Dolby Digital Plus).

(1) How should I optimally connect a BluRay/HD-DVD player? I could use HDMI, or HD-SDI. Let's say I want to use HD-SDI for best possible PQ - how would the Crystalio II then do audio delay for me? Would it be possible to connect the BluRay player both via HD-SDI and HDMI? I'd then connect the display to the Crystalio II analog or via DVI/HDMI, while I'd connect the receiver via HDMI (for multichannel sound). Is that possible/feasible this way? Or do you have a different solution in mind?
Not quite understand, but anyway, Crystalio II can extract audio (independent of video) from any input port, including HDMI and Digital audio input, perform audio dealy, and output to any/all of it's audio output ports, including HDMI and Digital audio output. Can that solve your problem?

(2) Will you be able to do audio delay on Dolby Digital plus and the other new formats? Or will you need to use newer HDMI chips to support that?
Audio delay of all formats are supported.

(3) What does the Crystalio II do with 1080p50/60 *inputs*? Does it accept them? Or will I get a black screen then? Do the current HDMI chips support 1080p50/60 at all? I stumbled about things like "double head" connection and broader HDMI connectors and such stuff and am a bit confused now. Do your HDMI input and output connectors and chips fully support the required bandwidth for 1080p50/60 input and output?
1080p50/60 inputs are fully supported.

(4) I'm not sure yet about noise reduction. I know that the Crystalio II will have some noise reduction capabilities built in. But there are also other devices dedicated to this job (like the Algolith Mosquito), which might be superior for this task. Let's say I'd want to use the Crystalio II in combination with a Mosquito. How would that work? The optimal solution would be to let the Crystalio II do the switching and deinterlacing in a first step, then the Mosquito do noise reduction and finally let the Crystalio II do the scaling. The Mosquito doesn't really work on already scaled sources, so I can't put it AFTER the Crystalio II. <sigh> I guess there's no optimal way to solve that, or is there? Probably I'd have to put all sources into the Mosquito and then connect the Mosquito with one cable to the Crystalio II, which would make all the countless Crystalio II inputs superfluous. Any thoughts on this?
In firmware 2.0.0 or later, there is a feature called 2nd passthru path. This feature allows Crystalio II to work on two video paths at the same time independently. One path is the normal processing path, and the other path is a direct passthru path. So you can treat Crystalio II as a video switching device AND a video processor. When you connect the output of the passthru path (one of Crystalio II's output port) to the Mosquito, then back to any input of the normal video processing path (one of Crystalio II's inputs ports), you can have the result as if you have equipments like the following

4 HDMI + 2 Components switcher -> Mosquito -> VXP video processor

Will that solve your problem?

But plesase note that firmware version 2.0.0 will only be available in Q1 2006.

(5) I believe broadcasters here in Germany might be using Dolby Digital Plus, cause it compresses better than Dolby Digital. Will the media player support Dolby Digital Plus?
For direct digital audio output, Crystalio II supports all kinds of formats.

JKoong

[madshi]

@JKoong, thanks a lot for your in depth reply!

Not quite understand, but anyway, Crystalio II can extract audio (independent of video) from any input port, including HDMI and Digital audio input, perform audio dealy, and output to any/all of it's audio output ports, including HDMI and Digital audio output. Can that solve your problem?
Very nice. I think that should solve the problem.


- Audio delay of all formats are supported.
- 1080p50/60 inputs are fully supported.
- For direct digital audio output, Crystalio II supports all kinds of formats.
Great!

In firmware 2.0.0 or later, there is a feature called 2nd passthru path. This feature allows Crystalio II to work on two video paths at the same time independently. One path is the normal processing path, and the other path is a direct passthru path. So you can treat Crystalio II as a video switching device AND a video processor. When you connect the output of the passthru path (one of Crystalio II's output port) to the Mosquito, then back to any input of the normal video processing path (one of Crystalio II's inputs ports), you can have the result as if you have equipments like the following

4 HDMI + 2 Components switcher -> Mosquito -> VXP video processor
This is very nice, and would already satisfy me, I'd call that a 99% solution. Perfection (ehm, 120% perfect) would be this:

Crystalio switcher -> Crystalio deinterlacing -> Mosquito -> Crystalio scaling

That would be slightly better because the Mosquito works somewhat better on progressive material (although it also works fine on interlaced material). Does that make sense to you? But again: Your passthru feature would already do the job better than I honestly had expected!

Overall I have to say that your Crystalio II seems to be *very* well thought out. Whatever wish I post, you're always answering "yes, we've already implemented (or at least planned) that". Very impressive!

One more question, if you don't mind:

Let's say I take one of the DVDs I own and strip the VOBs (with a decrypting tool) and copy them to the Crystalio's harddisk and play them with Crystalio's media player. Would the resulting image quality be every bit as good as that of the best SDI modded DVD player?

Thanks again!

[Jason]

This is very nice, and would already satisfy me, I'd call that a 99% solution. Perfection (ehm, 120% perfect) would be this:

Crystalio switcher -> Crystalio deinterlacing -> Mosquito -> Crystalio scaling

That would be slightly better because the Mosquito works somewhat better on progressive material (although it also works fine on interlaced material). Does that make sense to you? But again: Your passthru feature would already do the job better than I honestly had expected!
Since Deinterlacing and Scaling can not be seperated within the Gennum VXP processor chip, that senario is theoratically infeasible. But since Crystalio II is a dual processor design, I'll try to see if we can seperate the FLI2300 deinterlacing and VXP scaling, yet the Mosquito can be placed in between (actually we already done that seperation and user can select to use FLI2300 for deinterlacing and Gennum VXP for scaling in a single video path inside Crystalio II). If that can be implemented, I guess the deinterlacing will be placed in the "2nd passthru video path", but I have to make this complication a comprehensable concept, and also with a easy to understand OSD, in the user's point of view. Will update in this forum later.

Overall I have to say that your Crystalio II seems to be *very* well thought out. Whatever wish I post, you're always answering "yes, we've already implemented (or at least planned) that". Very impressive!

One more question, if you don't mind:

Let's say I take one of the DVDs I own and strip the VOBs (with a decrypting tool) and copy them to the Crystalio's harddisk and play them with Crystalio's media player. Would the resulting image quality be every bit as good as that of the best SDI modded DVD player?
Both methods use pure digital path and there should be no additional/problematic processing after the MPEG decode, so theoratically they are the same. But there are still differences: the MPEG decoding. So I guess you still have to judge by your own eyes.

JKoong

[Carl]

In firmware 2.0.0 or later, there is a feature called 2nd passthru path. This feature allows Crystalio II to work on two video paths at the same time independently. One path is the normal processing path, and the other path is a direct passthru path. So you can treat Crystalio II as a video switching device AND a video processor. When you connect the output of the passthru path (one of Crystalio II's output port) to the Mosquito, then back to any input of the normal video processing path (one of Crystalio II's inputs ports), you can have the result as if you have equipments like the following

4 HDMI + 2 Components switcher -> Mosquito -> VXP video processor

Will that solve your problem?
Now that is one cool feature.

[madshi]

Since Deinterlacing and Scaling can not be seperated within the Gennum VXP processor chip, that senario is theoratically infeasible. But since Crystalio II is a dual processor design, I'll try to see if we can seperate the FLI2300 deinterlacing and VXP scaling, yet the Mosquito can be placed in between (actually we already done that seperation and user can select to use FLI2300 for deinterlacing and Gennum VXP for scaling in a single video path inside Crystalio II). If that can be implemented, I guess the deinterlacing will be placed in the "2nd passthru video path", but I have to make this complication a comprehensable concept, and also with a easy to understand OSD, in the user's point of view. Will update in this forum later.
Yes, I see the problems with the easy to understand OSD (since part of my job is creating user interfaces, too!). Maybe you should just forget about my 120% wish and just implement what you already planned. It probably makes most sense, anyway. Using FLI2300 deinterlacing only has the problem that it doesn't do motion adaptive deinterlacing of 1080i video (if I'm not mistaken). So it would not be perfect, either. I'm happy enough with your original plan.

Both methods use pure digital path and there should be no additional/problematic processing after the MPEG decode, so theoratically they are the same. But there are still differences: the MPEG decoding. So I guess you still have to judge by your own eyes.
Understood.

Thanks again for your reply!

Now that is one cool feature.
Agreed. Honestly when I asked for that feature I didn't have much hope to really get it!! :eek:

[jacko]

May I ask another question about the audio extraction option of the Crystalio.

For eg, is it possible to take the audio from a HDMI and then output ot via SPDIF output ? It would be against HD audio contents protection, but would allow DD lossless and DTS lossless to be decoded by old audio processors (without HDMI nore firewire).

Also will the firewire inputs of the 3800 will be only used for external harddrive link, or will it be possible to have audio ? It would make a S400 input ?

[Carl]

For eg, is it possible to take the audio from a HDMI and then output ot via SPDIF output ? It would be against HD audio contents protection, but would allow DD lossless and DTS lossless to be decoded by old audio processors (without HDMI nore firewire).
Not if it goes against the terms of the HDCP licence.

[Atman]

Also will the firewire inputs of the 3800 will be only used for external harddrive link, or will it be possible to have audio ? It would make a S400 input ?

The firewire inputs are reserved for future use. It may be able to take MPEG TS input in the future through firmware upgrade (this is not a committed feature). Audio S400 input is definitely not possible because the hardware does not support this mode.

[Atman]

Not if it goes against the terms of the HDCP licence.

No problem. This feature is supported. HDCP only protects video.

[jacko]

So yes HDMI audio path can be redirected to SPDIF outputs ? I am right ?

Do you have info about the new audio codec protections HDDVD and BRD should have ? Will it be a bugger ? (it is not linked with the HDCP agreements and licencings, this will be an audio legacy only policy, if it rolls out, but it likely will).

[Carl]

Do you have info about the new audio codec protections HDDVD and BRD should have ? Will it be a bugger ? (it is not linked with the HDCP agreements and licencings, this will be an audio legacy only policy, if it rolls out, but it likely will).[/quote]
It appears as though DTS-HD, MLP, Dolby TrueHD, etc will be decoded inside the players and a high resolution (24/96?) PCM audio stream will be output. The protection for the audio will probably be along the same lines as DVD-A and SACD.

[jacko]

That is exactly what I fear, I will have to get a new and updated audio processor.

[Carl]

That is exactly what I fear, I will have to get a new and updated audio processor.
You could always use (gasp) analogue audio cables.

[jacko]

I thought it too but my audio processor only has a 5.1 multi in....
I will upgrade to BRD with a Crystalio II and a new audio processor .... that is life !

[Carl]

I thought it too but my audio processor only has a 5.1 multi in....
I will upgrade to BRD with a Crystalio II and a new audio processor .... that is life !
How about an external ADC?