Lumagen Radiance Series
Performance
Features
Ergonomics
Value

DVDO iScan Duo
Performance
Features
Ergonomics
Value

When I got started in this great hobby of ours, video processors were pretty much reserved for the higher-end theaters I only dreamed of. We didn’t have pristine 1080p24 sources to feed our displays; we had stuff like VHS and Laserdisc. Displays weren’t nearly as consistent, either. Projectors were mainly for the ultrarich and required brute strength to install. Beyond that, it took considerable work to get them looking right. Calibration was anything but easy. Expensive outboard video processors were also a necessity for these beasts to wring the most out of our then-limited video options.

Now we’re living the video dream. Some may scoff or say otherwise, but they probably haven’t been around as long as I have. These days, even low-end projectors outperform the majority of the reference designs back in the day. Sources are of a much higher quality, and new prerecorded formats are progressive by design and require very little, if any, tinkering. Sure, we have some DVDs lingering around that still need to be deinterlaced, but the proliferation of high-end video-processing chips into TVs, Blu-ray players, and even A/V receivers has made it easier than ever to get solid deinterlacing and scaling in a relatively cheap platform.

The modern world revolves around easy. Look at the home-theater-in-a-box products. Consumers only need to make one shopping decision to purchase an entire home theater sound system. Unfortunately, they still need to set up the speakers and connect everything together.

The most expensive and problematic component of any home theater system is the room. Changing speakers or electronics seems like child's play compared with trying to change the room in an attempt to tame its resonant frequency nodes (areas where certain frequencies are cancelled) and antinodes (areas of reinforcement). Correcting a room electronically is a far more practical solution to most rooms' problems.

Despite the encroachment of progressive-scan component and DVI outputs from DVD players, and HD video displays with their own built-in deinterlacing and scaling, there is still a market for standalone video processors. They provide flexible switching. Many will convert inputs of all flavors to a single output format. And most CRT projectors still need a separate processor to upconvert standard-definition sources.

The most common form of video pro-cessor, the deinterlacer-scaler, serves two primary functions. First, it acts as a video switcher, so you need to run only one cable to your display. More important, a video processor converts standard-definition 480i (NTSC) sources either to 480p or a higher resolution, depending on the needs of the video display.