Aaron Ledger
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Aaron Ledger
I suppose it is possible. Have you tried to see if there is an updated firmware for the drive from the manufacturer?
Generally, the higher price points are due to more features such as higher reading/writing speeds, extra capability such as BD writing, retail packages which may include extras such as cabling and software. If your goal is simply to read the disc while watching, the lowest cost option should suffice.
If you are ripping discs, you may want to pay some heed to the read speeds (e.g. 12x will read faster than 10x). Also, some drives may be noisier than others.
Try opening up the resource monitor in Windows and you can see the drive activity.
It is not that the drive can’t handle that alone, it is the number of things that it is trying to do at once. A bunch of simultaneous operations can cause applications like multiple recording/viewing to have issues.
I have the X-rite i1 Display 2 (same as Display LT), but I believe that has been discontinued recently and may be harder to find. It is a good meter for the price (measures fairly quickly, can go to fairly low luminance levels, is compatible with Color HCFR software as well as other packages and can also produce color profiles for PC monitors). Being a colorimeter, it will lose some accuracy over time. It isn’t nearly as accurate as pro level meters, but then again, it doesn’t cost thousands of dollars either. The i1 Display Pro appears to be the new model that is similar to the Display 2/LT.
I think it depends on your goals and configuration. Ideally, you would have a separate calibration for each input. In practice, this may not be ideal because you might be using an AVR to switch inputs or the display don’t have input modes to handle them that are adequate (or even there). What I mean by that is it might be possible to have a “Movie” mode for one source and “Night” mode for another (or whatever your displayis capable of). This would only be possible if your display had multiple viewing modes that were acceptable.
If we assume one single mode and switching by AVR, then you may want to do as you suggest. It probably results in the least amount of comprimise. It is probably difficult/impossible though to achieve the same exact response on the display to both sources especially if using RGB on the PC output coupled with YCbCr on the CE equipment due to the conversions required. You might be best off trying to maintain the same colorspace output across all sources (e.g. YCbCr).
There’s a disk throttle setting in Show Analyzer and I recommend you use that if you do turn it on again. Just letting it rip on your drive will likely thrash your recoring/viewing if the two are done simultaneously. I think I have it throttled to something like 5 MB/s.
I’m sorry, I never did get around to writing Part II. I would like to, but it is a big undertaking and unfortunately, my time is limited these days 🙁
I recommend a visit to this guide. Most of what you need is there though it is a huge amount of info to swallow if you’re not familiar with some of the concepts already. If you have any questions, feel free to start up another thread and maybe I can help.
That’s quite odd. I’m recording every single XXX Summer Olympics program onto a Hitachi 5K3000 and haven’t had an issue. With my other normal slate of programs, there are sometimes up to 7 or 8 simultaneous recordings. The WD Black drive should be faster than my “Green” drive so I wouldn’t think that would be an issue unless there’s a defect in the drive. Are you performing any commercial detection? This could result in excessive drive activity if not constrained.
I have not bothered with running slides on my plasma nor do I recommend it in general. The only time I think there is some merit to running slides is if you need to rapidly overcome the initial aging process of the plasma cells so that a pro calibration can be performed allowing the results to be more accurate over time. Otherwise, the cells will age as you watch content. If plasma technology were as sensitive as you fear, manufacturers would have long ago stopped selling them due to all the returns they would suffer. I have run the desktop on a screen for 30 minutes to an hour with no consequence many times on my plasmas.
To have both HD audio and HDMI 1.4 in your case, you should be able to feed one output to your display and another output to your receiver. Your card may require a DVI to HDMI adapter if it only has a single HDMI output.
RE: e-mail, we may be having some technical difficulties with some site upgrades. I don’t get them anymore either 🙁
If you have an RC6 WMC IR remote, it should “just work.” No USB dongle required.
That’s odd. It still works for me. Try searching for PCTLPF1002. You can find at the PCT or ChannelMaster store (same company, PCT is their commercial branding).
Please refer to this guide for your calibration. While having a meter or having a pro calibration is great and can provide more accuracy, the majority of correction will occur just with these basic calibration techniques.
You also will need to be prepared to invest a lot of time with the meter to understand exactly what you are doing and to perform the process. If you are up for that, by all means, get a meter. If you do, feel free to start up a thread here on that topic and we can discuss. If you just want to get it done and learn from a pro, hire someone and make sure they will explain to you what they are doing and why (if you want that).
It sounds like maybe you were seeing interpolated motion processing in your neighbor’s display? This is often turned on by default. Newer plasmas also have this feature. Originally, it was used in LCD to attempt to negate one of the technology’s weaknesses which is ability to refresh pixels quickly enough. Some people do like this feature.
As an owner of two plasmas (Samsung C8000 and Panasonic UT50) both with HTPCs attached, I do not notice any serious flaws with image retention. It certainly exists to some degree on every plasma if you go looking for it, but it is temporary. I do not worry about it AT ALL. Of course, if you were to leave bright static images for days, you probably will have a difficult time removing persistence caused by that. If you go by what a some people write in AVSForums, you will likely never buy any product. You may even be able to convince yourself it is better to spend money to repair your DLP 😉
I find plasma to still be a better technology at this point in time vs. LCD with respect to image quality. Each has their pros/cons.
That’s great. I am glad that they are working well for you and thanks for the update.
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