Re: DARBEE Visual Presence DVP 5000

[Anonymous]

The Darbee box is NOT a video processor. It has no controls at all except for 3 modes (HD, Game, and Full Pop) and an “amount of effect” from 0% to 100%. It doesn’t do ANYTHING to make the picture more accurate. It tweaks contrast and saturation (increases both a little bit) and it sharpens the image and produces the same sharpness artifacts you can see in any sharpness evaluation target that we use to determine the position for the Sharpness control so that it DOES NOT “sharpen” the image. I have to set the HD mode to about 40% (0-100 range) in order to not have it degrade cable/satellite images. It can be set a little higher for Blu-ray before negative effects set in. What I don’t understand is… why do people feel the need to PAY for this box when they can achieve the same result by setting gamma a little higher (numerically) to bump contrast, add a click or two to the Color control setting, and raise the Sharpness control slightly… to the point where you are barely seeing Sharnening artifacts. You can do that for FREE. Why pay $250-$350 for an external box that does the same thing and has a single input and output and is loaded with handshake bugs that may make it annoying to use in your particular system. There are tons of complaints online about the handshake issues. I have handshake issues with the older system we have, but no problems with the newer system YMMV.

Then there’s the whole philosophical argument… we spend 3 or 4 or more hours calibrating a video display to make it as accurate as it can be. When we are done, what we see on the calibrated video display is very very close to what the director and cinematographer saw when they were checking the mastering of the Blu-ray version of their movie. If we then insert the Darbee box, the images now look different and by definition, they are LESS ACCURATE than the calibrated display without the Darbee box. Because the most accurate the video display can be is the calibrated result without the Darbee box. Anything you do to that calibrated display makes it less perfectly calibrated… period.