Calibre UK VANTAGE-HD manual Issue

HDCP Handshake delays

HDMI inputs can suffer from delays in locking to a new input source, or a source which has just changed resolution or format. These delays are handshake delays relate to the inherent HDMI-HDCP handshake period between your display device and your source equipment. This is unfortunately outside of the control of Vantage- HD which simply relays HDCP information between display and source, as is mandated by the HDMI-HDCP licensing rules.

This kind of issue affects switchers as well as processors and is a real nuisance. The only legal way around it is not to use HDMI which in many cases is undesirable or impractical.

Can Your HDMI Source Output an Unprocessed Signal?

The ability to access your DVD player's native format depends on whether the designer of your DVD

player provided you with the ability to output 480i or 576i from the HDMI output on your player. Unfortunately most players do not have this ability, although some do exist which can.

Native PAL is 576i and native NTSC is 480/484i, so if you are outputting 576p or 480p then this has already been de-interlaced by your DVD player. You can check this by looking at the menus to find out if the line rate is approx 15KHz (i) or approx 31KHz (p).

A common mistake when using Vantage-HD is for the user to allow the DVD player to de-interlace or scale the signal from its native format. This is very bad for picture quality since the de-interlacing and scaler within Vantage-HD is far better than that within a DVD player itself.

If the picture content has already been screwed up by the scaler within the DVD player, the improvement seen when using Vantage-HD is not as great as when Vantage-HD is given a native format signal. Remember, unless you have a true HD-capable DVD player (a Blu-Ray or HD-DVD player) then your native format is 480i if playing an NTSC DVD and 576i if playing a PAL DVD. All other formats are NOT native since they differ from the format in which the DVD itself was recorded.

Unfortunately many HDMI-capable DVD players refuse to output unprocessed "i" formats on their HDMI connectors, which is very annoying of them since to get best performance you ought to let Vantage-HD do all the processing, including the de-interlacing. This can be a significant reason for using Component instead of HDMI since you generally have more control of Component via the menus on your DVD itself.

Which is better, HDMI or Component? Well, you can argue this forever, we all have our own opinions, but what matters is which works best for you in your own install with your own gear. If you get best picture performance with HDMI then go ahead and use it, but if you get best performance with Component then use that instead.

We ourselves have tried many DVD from several leading manufacturers, each with varying results in terms of how "HDMI Compatible" they were. Our Company view is that component video is the preferable connection medium when using a standard definition source such as a PAL or NTSC DVD player since it is so important to output from the player at native resolution.

There is also the issue of how many bits HDMI runs at compared with the component video signal. That depends on the data format which your DVD player chooses to output, but this is something you almost certainly have no control over; many players choose to output RGB which means that on single-link HDMI they are running at 8- bits not 10.

This is our view but even so, if you prefer to use HDMI with your SD source, go ahead and do so - that's what we put the inputs there for!

Please remember, we are not stating that HDMI is useless, or that our HDMI implementation is useless, but we are observing that some SD-originated sources don't work terribly well on HDMI. This is far less likely to be the case for true HD sources where use of HDMI is often mandatory. However, these tend to be newer product designs with better inter-operability. Hopefully this information will allow you to make an informed choice about which connection method is best for your own system.

Issue 1.0.2 28 March 2006 © Calibre UK Ltd Page 29 of 30