I would have liked more control over Trigger 1. A remote control button (hopefully discrete access is coming) will help provide better control over the trigger output.

The SDI card, which remained the same since the original iScan HD, has now been superseded by a new, but as yet unreleased, user-installed board. This new board provides not only two SDI inputs, but also supports HD-SDI. SDI originally served the processor industry in order to bridge the gap between the digital nature of DVDs and the poor analog outputs they had. SDI allowed people to bypass the analog stage of both processor and DVD player and provide a fully digital means of transferring the data up until the display.

This was before the days of HDMI and HDCP copyright protection. SDI was a broadcasting and post production standard and therefore incurred quite a bit of a cost for modifying DVD players to support it.

These days, regular SDI is not as critical, because HDMI supports passing-through SDTV. This means only those consumers requiring analog (the CRT projector folks) or unencrypted digital sources still need SDI. HD-SDI is an even more complex mod to Blu-ray and HD-DVD players, and I suspect its users will be fairly scant.

The VP50^Pro also adds THX certification, which means it underwent a rigorous testing and verification phase at THX labs (more details can be found here). I'm not really sure that this has any significant impact on VP50^Pro's customer base, but it certainly doesn't hurt anyone to have the THX logo on any of their equipment.

I'm not one to use a video processor as a sound switch. Previous units did have audio issues, such as clicks and short cutouts. During my testing, I did not have any audio issues, but I cannot categorically state that all audio issues are gone.

The VP50^Pro implements the same Panorama Non-Linear-Stretch (NLS) option that the VP50 and VP30 have. NLS is a very difficult algorithm to achieve properly, and I think this particular one needs a lot more work.

For one, I would like the Panorama option to be remembered when selecting an aspect ratio (per input). It should also be applicable horizontally or vertically. Say I have a 2.35:1 movie playing on my 16:9 plasma screen. I should have the option of using a panorama style feature that will prevent me from having to zoom in or risk burn-in on 25% of my non-used pixels. The current implementation results in way too much deformation around the sides of the screen, causing the image to become too distorted and stretched. I would have liked at least one more option: to zoom in slightly and reduce the level of distortion around the edges at the expense of cropping the top and bottom of the image. Interestingly, the overscan and cropping controls don't really cause the NLS to change parameters, so you can't really change how the algorithm works. I would really like for ABT to revisit this feature and improve it dramatically.

Some of the test patterns in use on the VP50^Pro are my designs. As with all other ABT units, the test patterns are at least two steps ahead of any other device out there (if I do say so myself). They are they pixel perfect and serve to check and verify almost every display feature possible. However, for sharpness, I would like a simple black/white line pattern against a gray background to ensure screen sharpness is optimal. Turning on and switching test patterns is a real treat and could not be implemented any better. Why can't everyone have this range and bulk of useful test patterns?

The unit is clearly oriented towards digital audio inputs. There are two sets of digital (SPDIF/coax) inputs, four HDMI inputs (they can carry sound), but only one set of analog audio inputs (although analog audio is becoming quite rare these days).

The VP50^Pro carries the Imaging Science Foundation (ISF) CCC (Certified Calibration Controls) logo. This means that ABT will release support features which will let ISF-certified calibrators better control the unit. Initially, this means support for ISF day/night profiles that will let you have control over daytime calibration (lots of ambient light) vs. night time calibration (little or no ambient light). It also hints at the possibility that ABT will add more calibration options than currently offered.

Conclusions

The Anchor Bay Technologies DVDO Iscan VP50^Pro Video Processor is not a dramatic leap from the VP50, but an evolutionary step. ABT clearly has more features in mind for the VP50^Pro, but as it stands today, not everyone really needs all the features that it adds. I would state that existing VP50 users might want to wait until the full feature set of the VP50^Pro is announced before upgrading (unless you come by a good upgrade opportunity).

New purchasers should not hesitate to go with the VP50^Pro. It only has benefits when compared to the VP50 and is clearly a big step in the right direction.

I think Anchor Bay can be proud of this unit, but should really revisit some of the features left over from previous units and consider improving or upgrading them as well.

- Ofer LaOr -
 

Mr. LaOr is Editor of Hometheater.Co.Il, a Hi-Fi magazine published in Israel. He is also the moderator for the AVS Forum Video Processing section.