Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater Scaling Question

From what I've read, most of the fancier features of the Anchor Bay chip are turned OFF in the Denon receiver; they're reserved for the Oppo players and DVDO Edge scaler.

I would be interested to know where you heard this. I see the ABT2010 as a major selling point for the denon 890/2310.

Thanks again, folks. I read the same thing Craig_P read about certain features being turned off in the 2310. I believe I read it on the AVS Forum's "official" 890/2310 thread, though I couldn't swear to that. My read was that even with certain of the features turned off, though, the chip is still a nice feature of the 2310.

It is a common practice for the chip manufactures to reserve functionality of their devices. ABT is probably the best at this practice. They have an unusual philosophy where they keep their chip’s abilities secrete. They then equip differing lines of their own products under the DVDO badge with the same chip, but give each devise different functionality at differing price points in a manner that no one can determine just exactly what the chip’s limitations are. The same goes for receiver manufactures that buy their chips. Each one, depending on price, will have different limitations. ABT is not alone with this practice either. The Reon was the hot chip two years ago. Everyone wanted it and would pay extra to get that name on their receiver’s face plate. It wasn’t until it was too late (money already spent) that the realization hit that their new toy with the shinny new ‘state of the art’ Reon only had half the functionality as their buddies’ AVR with a Reon.

I own a DVDO VP50pro. The Pro is DVDO’s $3500 flagship machine. It has been on a beta firmware version for almost 18 months now while DVDO has rolled out two new, lower end products and several firmware upgrades for both of those products. Both have more, and also less, functionality as the Pro. DVDO has offered me downgrade path to the $1200 Duo for no charge (the audacity of the bastards). They will not make an official statement whether the Pro will get additional firmware or not, or if it will be discontinued or not.

Rant aside, it is for these reasons that I suggested to test each device to see which one, or which combination provides the best or most desirable results. Asuming one machine does a better job than another just because it has a particular chip in it is the wrong approach.

I believe that you read it at AVS - to Dean's (Grunt) point in a separate thread - was the poster credible?

Argon: I don't know that I can answer the question about credibility of the poster. Frankly, it didn't really matter to me because by the time I read the information I already owned the machine. That being said, I went back and found the specific discussion I was thinking of, and the person who posted the information seems quite knowledgeable based on discussions throughout the thread. For folks' information, this is the post I was thinking about: "the ABT 2010 chip in the BDP-83 is fully implemented whereas in the Denon 2310 it's only 1/2 implemented, to include not having PReP implemented (which is why a 480i input signal to the 2310 vice upscaled 480p provides the best picture quality improvement). The full implementation in the BDP-83 allows it to provide additional picture adjustment features the ABT 2010 is capable of providing, although the basic deinterlacing and upscaling in both the BDP-83 and Denon 2310 are likely to be the same. If you're not interested in the additional fine tuning picture adjustment features offered by the BDP-83, then you should be good to go with just setting the BDP-80 to "source direct" mode and letting the Denon 2310 do the deinterlacing and upscaling." Again, I can't vouch for the accuracy, I am just cutting and pasting.

Thanks, that is very interesting. I have a friend who either has, had or will have a denon 2310. (she's sending it back since it wasn't right) All she has said is that the picture quality out of it, when it's working, is nothing short of amazing.

Agreed, There is no way to know for sure the credibility of the various posters - I know exactly what Dean is saying. You have to really read the thread and develop your own sense for which posters know what they are talking about and which ones are "shootin' from the hip". Sounds as if you did that.

Yeah I definitely read that on the AVS forum 2310/890 "official" thread. Can't vouch for the source, but it certainly makes sense.
I've been seriously looking at picking up an 890 from Futureshop, though I'm not quite ready to pull the trigger. Seems like a great unit, especially at their clearance price. Probably should soon, as I'm sure they'll run out of stock soon.