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Topic: IMS2000 to be discontinued

Bruce Cloutier
Expert Film Handler

Posts: 161
From: Gibsonia, PA, USA
Registered: Aug 2016

posted 11-14-2019 10:04 AM

Since we are ranting a little... and that's my thing...

In my home theater I have been stuck with 2K upscaled because of all of this HDMI bologna. I even have some HD Fury but not compatible with the latest HDMI standard (I guess).

My issue is generally not being able to get both 7.1 (or any really) surround and a 4K virgin image at the same time. I use the surround sound amp for routing from Oppo, DirecTV, Roku and PC and it picks off the audio forwarding the video to a 4k 86" panel. On my 3rd surround model (one blown by lightning) I was close to having it all be perfect and... the HDMI standard changed. The new Roku 4 wouldn't play along. At that point my budget was blown and the finance minister lost patience with me. I was done chasing the holy grail and settled on the status quo. The panel upscales nicely and I am more about sound anyway. I can crank U-571 and make you fear each and every depth charge.

The surround receiver passes 4K but doesn't satisfy the latest encryption requirements (I guess). I can get 4K with direct connection but the sound fed back to the amp is sub-par (and difficult to sync). Not worth rewiring. So reevaluating from end to end to eliminate the broken HDMI logic would lead to further investments and politically, that ship has sailed.

And... therein lies the reason that I am not an HDMI fan.

Um, probably should just ditch the consumer equipment for serious professional stuff some day. Uh, once I cash-in that winning lottery ticket.

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Marcel Birgelen
Film God

Posts: 3357
From: Maastricht, Limburg, Netherlands
Registered: Feb 2012

posted 11-14-2019 11:02 AM

quote:
Another vote for HD Fury boxes. I have a pricier version, but which has been worth its weight in gold for passing HDMI video and audio between devices when I simply couldn't any other way. The Windows app that comes with it also lets you see what it is doing to the EDIDs, HDMI and HDCP versions coming in and out, so you can actually figure out what the compatibility problem is, too.

We also have a Vertex here. We don't use it for EDID and/or HDCP troubleshooting but we use it to split digital audio coming from the BluRay player or other gadgets like game consoles (PS4, XBox One and Nintendo Switch). Since professional audio processors have their continuing issues with all those digital home formats, we use a regular AV processor to decode stuff like Dolby TrueHD, consumer Atmos* and DTS including DTS-X. The Vertex allows us to split those signals and even fake the EDIDs of the devices connected if we want to.

* We just recently tried to run consumer Atmos through our CP850 and it actually seemed to work.

quote: Bruce Cloutier
I even have some HD Fury but not compatible with the latest HDMI standard (I guess).

What model do you have? The Vertex has been around for about 3 years now and they have been providing firmware and FPGA updates for all kinds of new iterations of standards. I can even downconvert from HDR to SDR with it and still have a better picture than the SDR original... Even the scaling on those devices looks pretty decent for that price-range. Some AV geeks may hate me for saying this, but I've run comparisons between a simple HD Fury Vertex upscaling from FullHD to 4K and a Lumagen RadiancePro and the difference in quality was hardly noticeable. The RadiancePro retails somewhere around $7K...

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Bruce Cloutier
Expert Film Handler

Posts: 161
From: Gibsonia, PA, USA
Registered: Aug 2016

posted 11-14-2019 05:22 PM

Well we are off topic but... I've had 4K on the wall since Feb 2013. I have one of the first LG 84LM9600 4K panels installed in PA. I am not sure about that but we worked directly with a VP at LG to establish the local stereo shop as a dealer and we took two of the early 4k panels. One stayed in the store. At CES the guys at the stereo shop tell me they were the only ones that already had a unit installed and the others were just potential dealers.

Anyway, I am sure the HD Fury that I have is ancient. It is one of the models that removed the encryption and provided free access to content. It's in a box someplace.

So I have Pioneer Elite Class D amps in this surround system.

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Marcel Birgelen
Film God

Posts: 3357
From: Maastricht, Limburg, Netherlands
Registered: Feb 2012

posted 11-14-2019 06:27 PM

quote: Bruce Cloutier
Anyway, I am sure the HD Fury that I have is ancient. It is one of the models that removed the encryption and provided free access to content. It's in a box someplace.

Sorry for going even further off-topic. [Wink]

AFAIK there has never been a HDFury that strips HDCP, other as their Digital to Analog devices (HDMI to Analog RGB)*, but this was a legal route. What some of the models can do, is downgrade HDCP (for example, go from 2.x to 1.x) and that part is compliant with the specifications. Warner Brothers thought it was illegal, but they lost the court case against them.

* I used some of their original HDMI to Analog devices in combination with a whole array of Barco Reality 909 CRT projectors in edge-blend mode once. It remains one of the best projected digital images I've seen to date. Till this day, nothing can replace those deep blacks in combination with this kind of resolution.

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Steve Guttag
We forgot the crackers Gromit!!!

Posts: 12814
From: Annapolis, MD
Registered: Dec 1999

posted 11-15-2019 06:45 AM

HD Fury, historically, were known for basically being an HDCP stripper. Originally, they would take HDMI signals and make RGBHV signals, but at full HD under the ruse that they were merely keeping legitimate analog HD devices in use but the A/V world was using them to strip HDCP. They were very publically sued with a cease and desist (and lost).

They are a company that will likely walk the fine line between legitimate and non-legitimate...including to forget about test modes and such.

That said, the HDMI consortium can kiss my butt...their "scheme" is so flaky that one can be fully HDCP compliant and STILL have things not work...in fact, the odds that it won't. About the only reliable way is a direct connection from source to sink.

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Marcel Birgelen
Film God

Posts: 3357
From: Maastricht, Limburg, Netherlands
Registered: Feb 2012

posted 11-15-2019 08:01 AM

I agree, HDMI is a bit a lost cause, but the problem is, that it wants to be an interconnect for everything... It's not just a simple high-capacity bit-pipe.

With all the different versions of both the link standard itself and the different HDCP standards, it's getting increasingly difficult to get stuff right. It doesn't help that there is so much crap out there that doesn't even dare to comply halfway with the complete standards...

Regarding HD Fury, AFAIK, they never lost a court case about their HDMI to Analog boxes, but they were pretty hard to get in the U.S. for quite a while, because content industry threatened to sue every distributor in the U.S. Their HDMI to Analog converters were really pretty top notch for what it was worth. On the Barco 909s we used, we had close to zero input noise and the picture was lightyears better than what any VGA RAMDAC produced at the time.

Also, those devices were only of limited use for copyright infringement. The copy protection on DVDs and the original Blu-Rays only lasted for weeks. So why go the route of capturing this stuff from an analog signal source anyway?

As for HDCP strippers... I've got an interesting device which I bought locally, it works only up to 1080p60 and was marketed as a HDCP compliant HDMI splitter, but it effectively removes HDCP from the output signal... I've only discovered this after we needed to capture some content from an AndroidTV box for some proportional material using a BlackMagicDesign capture card. We initially used the splitter to connect a simple monitor in between and it just worked. Later, when I directly connected the box to the capture card, it didn't work, because the capture card didn't want to do HDCP for obvious reasons...

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Bruce Cloutier
Expert Film Handler

Posts: 161
From: Gibsonia, PA, USA
Registered: Aug 2016

posted 11-15-2019 08:12 AM

Yup. I have pre- cease and desist HD Fury hardware. I used it primarily to keep my earlier rear projection system in operation which was eventually replaced by the 4K panel.

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Steve Guttag
We forgot the crackers Gromit!!!

Posts: 12814
From: Annapolis, MD
Registered: Dec 1999

posted 11-15-2019 08:34 AM

It wasn't that the HDMI to analog stuff that got them into hot water, per say, it was their outright HDCP strippers that did with the 4K splitter landing them in hot water.

There definitely were other HDCP strippers out there but HD-Fury almost bragged about it...the others merely had test modes or, as you found, happily did it without broadcasting it.

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Leo Enticknap
Film God

Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000

posted 11-15-2019 11:26 AM

This will work for connecting a lot, but not all, HDCP source devices to a Series 1 Barco or NEC. I recommended it to one customer who used it happily for about a year, before updating the firmware on his Oppo, after which, no more video. So I think the industry has sent out a kill code for it in a recent round of firmware updates. That is a bugger, because it used to be a very useful solution for people wanting to run HDCP alternative content into a Series 1 projector.

quote: Steve Guttag
...or, as you found, happily did it without broadcasting it.

Same deal with the DVD players that could be made region free by entering a secret code on the remote. Officially they were one region only, but the code was then "leaked" (doubtless by the OEM) onto geeks' forums and social media. If one wanted a region-free player, one simply Google searched for a model that was easy to modify in this way, and then bought it.

For some reason, this practice seemed to end when BD superseded DVD. The few multi-region BD players sold now are legitimately marketed as such, and cost almost of much as buying individual players for all three regions.

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Steve Guttag
We forgot the crackers Gromit!!!

Posts: 12814
From: Annapolis, MD
Registered: Dec 1999

posted 11-15-2019 01:13 PM

UHD discs did away with regions altogether. DVD players could be set to region 0 to play all of them (DVDs). Normally the Blu-ray stuff was a hardware thing where one could change the zone via remote button pushes.

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Marcel Birgelen
Film God

Posts: 3357
From: Maastricht, Limburg, Netherlands
Registered: Feb 2012

posted 11-16-2019 08:48 AM

quote: Leo Enticknap
This will work for connecting a lot, but not all, HDCP source devices to a Series 1 Barco or NEC. I recommended it to one customer who used it happily for about a year, before updating the firmware on his Oppo, after which, no more video. So I think the industry has sent out a kill code for it in a recent round of firmware updates. That is a bugger, because it used to be a very useful solution for people wanting to run HDCP alternative content into a Series 1 projector.

I think the box I mentioned is exactly the same, though with a different labeling and product number on top of it. Probably made by the same Chinese factory.

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