DVDO EDGE - How it performs

[kel]

Thanks Bucko I would appeciate it if you could. I doubt that it will still be under guarantee though as I bought it second hand but it's still worth finding out how much it will cost to get it repaired.

[BuckoA51]

Ok, the official UK service centre is Karma AV, you should be able to reach them here:-

Karma AV
Marston House
Unit 9 Centre Park Holdings
Tockwith
York
YO26 7QF

Office: 01423 358846

[kel]

Thanks Bucko. I'll give them a ring sometime and see what they say.

[Hamburglar]

Well I finally got around to making the custom cable and everything looks great. SCART to component right up to the Edge. The Sync Strike gives me an incredibly dark picture.

I'm assuming it's defective?

[fagin]

Well I finally got around to making the custom cable and everything looks great. SCART to component right up to the Edge. The Sync Strike gives me an incredibly dark picture.

I'm assuming it's defective?

Do me a favour.... can you take an image of the bright picture and dark picture and post up the results?

[BuckoA51]

I'm assuming it's defective?

It certainly sounds like it, why would the Sync Strike mess with the brightness of the picture? it's only supposed to strip/split sync. Surely that has to be a defect.

[Hamburglar]

Well I finally got around to making the custom cable and everything looks great. SCART to component right up to the Edge. The Sync Strike gives me an incredibly dark picture.

I'm assuming it's defective?

Do me a favour.... can you take an image of the bright picture and dark picture and post up the results?

You know what stinks? I've been trying to take pics of the differences for the past hour and when I take a pic, it seems like it's "fixing" the brightness issue. Like it looks dark as anything on my TV, but looking in through the camera, it appears normal. I'm assuming it's correcting the image for me?

Since I have to describe it, it simply looks like the contrast is turned completely all the way down. If I blast the contrast it's more acceptable but still looks really off.

[fagin]

Well I finally got around to making the custom cable and everything looks great. SCART to component right up to the Edge. The Sync Strike gives me an incredibly dark picture.

I'm assuming it's defective?

Do me a favour.... can you take an image of the bright picture and dark picture and post up the results?

You know what stinks? I've been trying to take pics of the differences for the past hour and when I take a pic, it seems like it's "fixing" the brightness issue. Like it looks dark as anything on my TV, but looking in through the camera, it appears normal. I'm assuming it's correcting the image for me?

Since I have to describe it, it simply looks like the contrast is turned completely all the way down. If I blast the contrast it's more acceptable but still looks really off.

LOL - OK no worries.... your camera is obviously over exposing to compensate.

The only reason I asked for this is because iirc, my EDGE was "dimmer" on RGBs than it was on RGBC input.

[Hamburglar]

LOL - OK no worries.... your camera is obviously over exposing to compensate.

The only reason I asked for this is because iirc, my EDGE was "dimmer" on RGBs than it was on RGBC input.

Ah ok, Well even if it worked on the RGBC input, doesn't that defeat the whole purpose of the Sync Strike?

[fagin]

Not at all.

[Hamburglar]

Well I just tried it on the other component inputs and it's still extremely dark. This has to be defective, yes?

[Konsolkongen]

There is a new 1.62 firmware out. Doesn't say anything about fixing VGA RGB recognition though.

http://www.simplaylabs.com/support/DVDO ... loads.aspx

http://www.simplaylabs.com/documents/DV ... 62_146.zip

[Konsolkongen]

It doesn't fix that unfortunately. Also don't try updating the firmware using Linux or other OS's besides Mac and Windows. I thought it was as simple as dragging and dropping a file into a folder, but for some reason this didn't seem to work on Linux. Had to boot up my Vista partition and redo the process to kick some life back into the Edge

[BuckoA51]

Looks like it's just a few quick fixes for 3D passthrough.

Anyone know what the difference is between Edge and Edge Green? I had assumed that Edge Green was simply a more power-efficient Edge, but they have different firmwares for download, anyone know?

[Fudoh]

The Green is based on the ABT2015 which accepts 10 and 12-bit video signals. Other than that, no difference. I guess the new processor requires a few changes to the firmware, so they have to offer different FW versions.

[palette]

hi,

I am very disappointed with my dvdo edge. it is not working properly when I connect my playstation 2 via component. and now I also know the problem. I've got a modded pal ps2. my question is: is there any chance that this problem will be fixed in future firmware updates?. or is it a hardware problem?

I hope you can help me!

Thanks!

[BuckoA51]

I have a modded PAL PS2 and it works with the Edge via component just fine.

[kel]

I also have a modded PAL PS2 which works fine with the Edge via component.

How is it not working properly?

[palette]

hi,

ok, I tried a normal ps2 and it's not working too.

I read somewhere that there might be problems with modded pal consoles, but obviously that's not the problem in my case.

when I connect my ps2 I have a distortet picture or no picture at all, but the component connections on the device seem to be ok, my xbox 360 works fine.

thanks for your quick answer.

[kel]

It seems like it's your component cable at fault, maybe a bad connection. Check your component cable and connections.

This may be a daft question but did you remember to set your PS2 to output component in the settings menu?

If all else fails then you could buy or build a scart to RCA adapter and connect to the Edge via RGBs.

[palette]

the component cable works and the ps2 settings are also correct. the ps2 does fine via component on my tv set.

[Hamburglar]

Here is something incredibly odd maybe one of you geniuses can help me figure out.

I was kind of frustrated that the SyncStrike gave me a really dark picture on my DVDO Edge as you all recall me saying a few pages back. I felt like the maker of the Sync Strike is such a small operation it isn't really cool of me to send it back and ask for a refund or replace it, so I just sucked it up.

I went on eBay then and bought this:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... 0518023898
(I think the dude making these things posts here)

Anyway, it's producing the EXACT same results on my DVDO Edge! An incredibly dark picture. Does not matter if I use component 1 or 2 on it. I have tried all the settings I can think of on my Edge but I must be missing something? I tried 2 different SCART cables and 2 different SNES consoles (and 2 different RGB modded NES systems) and they all do the same thing. Super dark picture.

Can anyone give me an idea here before I rip out more hair?

[kel]

the component cable works and the ps2 settings are also correct. the ps2 does fine via component on my tv set.

If your PS2 works fine on your TV via component and your XBOX360 works fine on you Edge via component then the only difference that I can see is the type of signals. The PS2 mainly outputs 480i/576i depending on wether it is NTSC or PAL and I can only assume that your XBOX 360 is set to output a progressive signal, 480/720/1080p.

I would try another 480i/576i device or a 240p PS1 game via component on the Edge just to eliminate the possibilty that there isn't some weird fault with 480i/576i sources. It's probably a long shot but I always try to eliminate even the strangest of possibilties when I have an unknown fault like yours.

[BuckoA51]

Hamburglar, open your SCART cables, are there any caps/resistors on the RGB lines? Are you running them through an external switch before getting to the DVDO?

[Hamburglar]

Hamburglar, open your SCART cables, are there any caps/resistors on the RGB lines? Are you running them through an external switch before getting to the DVDO?

There are caps on the SNES/NES one, but no resistors at all.

They are not going through a switch. Right to the Sync Strike/other thing I bought on eBay, then out to the component 2 input on the Edge.

[fagin]

Has your dsub to RCA got appropriate grounds?

[Hamburglar]

Has your dsub to RCA got appropriate grounds?

It's not the cable because if you recall I already attempted to use the screw terminals and got the exact same results.

The creator of the breakout board, which is giving me the exact same "too dark" problem as the SyncStrike, said this:

"If the only problem is it's very dark then it could be double terminated. It has an output impedance of 75 ohms and is designed to be terminated at 75 ohms at the receiver. Try hooking it up directly to a PVM and it should show a bright picture."

Can anyone elaborate? I don't own a PVM, and other people here are using their plasmas with a DVDO Edge and SyncStrike just fine, so I'm really at a loss as to what it could be.

[kel]

Has your dsub to RCA got appropriate grounds?

It's not the cable because if you recall I already attempted to use the screw terminals and got the exact same results.

The creator of the breakout board, which is giving me the exact same "too dark" problem as the SyncStrike, said this:

"If the only problem is it's very dark then it could be double terminated. It has an output impedance of 75 ohms and is designed to be terminated at 75 ohms at the receiver. Try hooking it up directly to a PVM and it should show a bright picture."

Can anyone elaborate? I don't own a PVM, and other people here are using their plasmas with a DVDO Edge and SyncStrike just fine, so I'm really at a loss as to what it could be.

Some of the older PAL SNES units with the separate PPU/CPU chips will give a very dark picture when used with a scart cable that has caps in it like the official Gamecube scart cable. I'm not sure if it is the same with the older NTSC SNES units though as I've never owned one. The newer SNES units with the PPUs/CPU combined (1-CHIP) don't seem to have this problem though.

Try using a scart cable with resistors instead of caps in it. The diagram on the site below for the PAL SNES at the top is the type I mean.

http://members.optusnet.com.au/eviltim/ ... t.htm#snes

[BuckoA51]

I debated making a new thread for this but, I guess here will do. On the weekend I was watching a Blu-ray (Clint Eastwood as Dirty Harry in The Dead Pool) and the lip sync was off. I was using the PS3 as my blu-ray player with the audio passed through HDMI to the DVDO Edge, then out to optical to my amp (something I thought would not work, according to DVDO's own documentation, but strangely it does, even with Dolby TrueHD, so much for HDCP). The films soundtrack was Dolby Digital (not TrueHD).

I researched the problem and concluded that the TV was introducing a lot of processing lag due to 24p playback and motion-flow being on. Now, HDMI 1.3 is supposed to correct for processing lag intelligently. Does this actually work? If it does, how come the audio delay control does not change on the DVDO when I change my TV from game mode to regular mode?

[Fudoh]

Does this actually work?

it does not work in your setup. In theory it can only work with an information-back-channel through HDMI from the TV to the amp, so forget about it.

The Edge's audio delay DOES change when changing from game to regular. The control remains on 0 ms, but the negative minimum will jump from (about) -8ms to (about) -56ms. This means the Edge delays the audio for 8ms in gamemode and 56ms in standard mode (in other words, the Edge compensates for it's OWN video delay). If your TV adds - let's say - 70ms with motionflow, just set the slider to +70ms. I don't know if the audio setting is saved per "input signal" or just per input, give it a try.

HDCP is not an issue when splitting audio apart from the video signal. If your amp has only got SPDIF inputs, just tell your PS3 that it only supports DD/DTS5.1. This will cause the PS3 to extract the Core DTS track from DTSMA/HD and downmix DolbyTrueHD to DD5.1. As long as the output is set to bitstream the Edge won't have a problem to output those formats via SPDIF.