After seeing others talk about this in Bmwuk thread about his Oppo player with this built in, I decided to buy one of these, which came on Friday.
First, this does not look like a $200 piece of video gear. Build quality is ok, and it gets the job done, and honestly, once you get it set up, you can probably tuck it behind the tv and forget about it.
Not much to setup, just plug the output of your source in to it, connect another HDMI cable to the output and then to the tv, and finally plug it in. There are three settings, Hi-Def, gaming, and full pop, with the full pop being the most dramatic in changing the appearance, although to me, that setting is akin to torch mode in a showroom.
You can also change the graduation of all three settings, from 0 to 120 in 5 point increments. You can get into an "advanced" menu and change the increments to 1 point, but I don't think many will bother with that.
Now for the fun part. This works! Period! I was a little skeptical that it would end up being cartoonish, or that everything would have double edges on them, but after playing around with it, I ended up using Hi-Def at a setting of 65. I played Guardians of the Galaxy first, which is a pretty good looking movie to begin with, but when paused and turning the darbee on and off, you could see just how much better the darbee made the picture. It made the picture sharper and increased the black levels, without introducing ringing or other artifacts. I was afraid it was going to look unnatural or over processed, which it can at the higher settings, but at least for me with the middle of the road setting, it looks very good.
I think Botch was going to get one of these as well, I'd be curious to hear his views on it. $200 is probably the most I would spend on something like this, but I do not regret my purchase in the slightest.
First, this does not look like a $200 piece of video gear. Build quality is ok, and it gets the job done, and honestly, once you get it set up, you can probably tuck it behind the tv and forget about it.
Not much to setup, just plug the output of your source in to it, connect another HDMI cable to the output and then to the tv, and finally plug it in. There are three settings, Hi-Def, gaming, and full pop, with the full pop being the most dramatic in changing the appearance, although to me, that setting is akin to torch mode in a showroom.
You can also change the graduation of all three settings, from 0 to 120 in 5 point increments. You can get into an "advanced" menu and change the increments to 1 point, but I don't think many will bother with that.
Now for the fun part. This works! Period! I was a little skeptical that it would end up being cartoonish, or that everything would have double edges on them, but after playing around with it, I ended up using Hi-Def at a setting of 65. I played Guardians of the Galaxy first, which is a pretty good looking movie to begin with, but when paused and turning the darbee on and off, you could see just how much better the darbee made the picture. It made the picture sharper and increased the black levels, without introducing ringing or other artifacts. I was afraid it was going to look unnatural or over processed, which it can at the higher settings, but at least for me with the middle of the road setting, it looks very good.
I think Botch was going to get one of these as well, I'd be curious to hear his views on it. $200 is probably the most I would spend on something like this, but I do not regret my purchase in the slightest.
