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Darbee DVP-5000

Huey said:
jomari said:
So.. What's the cheaper ones er... Flaws compared to the newervversion?

I know nothing of the newer one other than what Botch and Rope posted above. Prettier box, higher price tag and better hdmi handshake. Since mine is tucked behind my tv, I'm good with what I got.

Haywood, Everything I've read, this thing shines with projection type systems, so you probably wouldn't be disappointed.

I have a lot of little boxes tucked into my cabinet (Roku, Squeezebox, Ethernet switch, HDMI distribution amp), so hiding another is no big deal. I wouldn't spend extra for a nicer looking box. The HDMI handshake issue can be super annoying though. Any issues for you there? I currently run my Roku into a 1x2 distribution amp with one channel feeding my receiver and the other feeding the TV in the kitchen. Once in awhile, handshake issues put the two systems out of sync and I end up with an annoying echo effect I can only fix by rebooting the kitchen TV (possibly more than once). I wonder if adding another device between the receiver and TV in the living room will make this problem worse. I am seriously considering the purchase of a 2x4 HDMI matrix switch that I can plug all of my sources into to provide a bit more flexibility and to help mitigate the handshake issue.
 
I have had zero handshake issues, although when streaming from Netflix the other day, the screen became pixelated and also turned pink and green screens. Had to back out to the play menu and hit resume twice, but being that I could back out to the resume menu without a problem, more than likely a problem of Netflix, Cable company or the roku itself, not the darbee. I haven't streamed anything else since then.

I did have the darbee reboot back to factory settings yesterday. I was using my harmony remote, which I need to tweak as the darbee is slow to respond to it, vs it works fine with it's original remote, so I'm thinking it got confused because it was probably receiving conflicting signals. Since there is not much to set up, not a big deal, just a pita.
 
Haywood said:
I just pulled the trigger on a Darbee and should have it within ten days.

Congrats Scott! Why 10 days? Mine was here in two from Amazon.
 
The order was via Amazon with fulfillment via Darbee with a shipping window putting delivery sometime between now and the 21st. I suspect I will actually get it a lot sooner than that, but that is all they promised.
 
Well hopefully it comes sooner than later for you and I hope it works out for you Haywood.
 
I spent awhile playing with it using the Vudu HDX version of Guardians of the Galaxy and it definitely makes a nice improvement. I have it set to about 58 on the HD setting after fiddling with it for awhile, but suspect I'll continue to tinker.

720p content from my Tablo presents a bit of a challenge. The Darbee definitely makes certain types of artifacts show up worse. Given that I am moving toward a hard-wired network, I am going to try setting my DVR to 1080p to see if that looks better.
 
Haywood said:
The Darbee definitely makes certain types of artifacts show up worse.

That's what I suspected would happen. I'm sure there's a threshold where the base PQ won't be improved or actually made to look worse. I'm still on the fence. I don't care enough about the PQ on any of my displays other than my HT projector and that is fed primarly BD material and ocassionally TV from Uverse. The BD quality is superb and the Uverse is compressed enough to look "okay" 110" but I wonder if those arifacts can be improved. :think:
 
Anyone with a Darbee now, also have a Harmony One or similar? Is there a template for the remote to turn the Darbee on-n-off?
Got my Darbee last weekend, HDMI cable yesterday, will start playing tomorrow (4-day weekend!)
 
It looks fine with all of the streamed content I tried it with, but the real test will be trying it against a wider range of 720p content. The evening news transcoded on the fly to 720p by the Tablo was not improved by the extra processing, in fact, I thought it made it look worse. Other TV shows I tried looked a lot better. I switched the Tablo to 1080p. I definitely improved things, but that crappy news show still looked crappy. I'm thinking the source material was just junk. It didn't look great without the Darbee either. I need to play around more.
 
Botch said:
Anyone with a Darbee now, also have a Harmony One or similar? Is there a template for the remote to turn the Darbee on-n-off?
Got my Darbee last weekend, HDMI cable yesterday, will start playing tomorrow (4-day weekend!)

I can check when I get home Botch, but the Darbee is in there, just can't remember which source to choose when setting it up on the Harmony. Once you find it, it will put everything in the soft keys and you're good to go. I haven't gotten around to adjust it, but compared to the Darbee remote, the Harmony One is really slow at changing settings, minor problem which I'm sure can be fixed in the Harmony settings.
 
Towen7 said:
Haywood said:
The Darbee definitely makes certain types of artifacts show up worse.

That's what I suspected would happen. I'm sure there's a threshold where the base PQ won't be improved or actually made to look worse. I'm still on the fence. I don't care enough about the PQ on any of my displays other than my HT projector and that is fed primarly BD material and ocassionally TV from Uverse. The BD quality is superb and the Uverse is compressed enough to look "okay" 110" but I wonder if those arifacts can be improved. :think:

I think the Darbee really shines with the best content, not the worst. Not saying it won't improve a compressed signal, but at least with me, I get more a wow factor when playing a bluray. Although, it does make content from Dish look better as well.
 
The bulk of what we watched is 1080p streamed content, which is neither the best nor the worst. Two of the biggest differences between Vudu HDX and Blu-Ray are black level and very fine detail. I thought the Darbee did an outstanding job of narrowing the gap in those areas. I was very pleased with how it handled Guardians of the Galaxy.

Once I finish getting my house in order (building the last of the furniture, unpacking the remaining boxes, sorting out the garage, etc.), I plan to start ripping my movies to the NAS. I only have a few hundred Blu-Rays, so I actually do have the option of doing fully uncompressed rips. My NAS has an HDMI output capable of passing lossless soundtracks and has XBMC built-in. I am not going to do it for every movie (i.e. why do an uncompressed rip of Ghost Busters?), but for the movies where it really matters, I've got the space to have perfect Blu-Ray quality on demand in the living room. I may even acquire a few movies that I have on Vudu on disc to complete a few sets or because they are genuine wow-factor films.
 
Exactly my thoughts Haywood, much better black levels and increased detail without adding ringing or edging. I do think if someone has a higher end tv, they might not see as much of a difference, but for a standard set, the Darbee is worth the money.
 
I read that the sweet spot was around 47 to 48 on the HD setting, but my experience with my own TV puts the sweet spot higher than that. I suspect it depends on the type of display involved. I'm at 58 right now, but may actually go up a few more points. The trick is to watch for artifacts and bring it down a notch if you see them. I also think that the best setting my fluctuate with content, but I'm trying to dial in a base setting that works well with everything.
 
Haywood said:
I read that the sweet spot was around 47 to 48 on the HD setting, but my experience with my own TV puts the sweet spot higher than that. I suspect it depends on the type of display involved. I'm at 58 right now, but may actually go up a few more points. The trick is to watch for artifacts and bring it down a notch if you see them. I also think that the best setting my fluctuate with content, but I'm trying to dial in a base setting that works well with everything.

Yeah, I started at 65, and have dialed it back to 60. Wasn't seeing much in the way of artifacts on movies, but at times, video seemed a little harsh at the higher setting. I think the better the media, the more you can push the darbee.
 
Just a heads up, the darbee has reset itself to factory default settings twice since I've owned it. At least once, I think it was while switching sources, so maybe there is a hdmi handshake issue. It takes less that two minutes to reset it up, but if it happens again, I'll be contacting either Amazon or the manufacturer.
 
I was checking out the reviews on Amazon, there were definitely a handful of reliability issues. I hope you get it worked out.
 
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