Customer Reviews

DVDO EDGE High-Definition Video Processor

5 star:		(18)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

After having owned numerous 'line-doublers' (all the way back to Faroudja upscaling my 480i sources to 480p for my first home theater,) and innumerable HDMI switchers, I have finally found one that takes the alphabet soup of HDMI versions and handles it with aplomb while being the cleanest and most easy to use upscaler to 1080p that I've touched to date.

So, after having issues with HDCP handshakes, HDMI versions 1.0, 1.1, 1.2, 1.3a, and 1.3b not playing well with most autoswitching units--this product from DVDO does all of the above with aplomb.

Want to take your upscaling DVD player, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, TiVo HD, Wii, and more and mix and match audio inputs to a single optical output? Done.

Want them all at true 1080p (including your wee-little wii?) Done.

Want to get rid of the "Sugar/Mosquito-Noise/Sparkle issue from compression of your HD inbound signal? Nicely done.

Want to see everything pop better on your HD screen without looking artificially processed? Simply Done.

Want power-on priority for various units in your system (the TiVo comes before the Xbox 360, and the Denon 2930ci comes before the PS3?) Again, done and done well.

Add a simple remote, ability to tweak at will (should you even want to) and you have a massive winner of a product.

My biggest worry was any effect I'd have on speed of play with the game consoles--no issue... It not only has a game mode but takes Wii-Widescreen 480p and puts it out at a solid 1080p/60 and looks great doing it.

Films on Blu-Ray with 1080p/24 are stellar (minus the extra stars in the black sky from compression issues.)

All in, I heartily recommend this product--and you'll note that I am fairly even in pans, middling reviews, and OK product discussions, but rarely give a rave.

This is a rave and applause to the DVDO crew. Our household has two and counting now.

[Consider this a laughter-and applause-filled standing ovation.]

I have both the Oppo DV-981HD and Oppo DV-983H for up-scaling DVDs and both of these DVD players are first class up-scalers. However, Oppo's latest flagship model, the BDP-83 Blu-ray / DVD player, fell very short on features, especially being unable to play multi-region DVDs. I have also recently put our home videos and other media onto a Vista 64Bit Media Server, using a PS3 as the client to view various media on our Samsung LNT4065F 40" HDTV via our home Ethernet Network. I needed an up-scaler that could handle multiple source inputs, multiple audio sources and act as a hub for our media center. I have to say, the DVDO Edge has simply been MARVELOUS!

I currently have my custom built PC, PS3, Oppo DV-983H DVD Player and Cable TV Box hooked up to the Edge, outputting to my home Yamaha audio receiver and HDTV. I use my PC to serve Internet TV from [...] as all software players for Internet TV are no match for the speed and quality of the FireFox Web Browser. I have a high end custom PC, so I watch Lost from Hulu at 1080p, up-scaled from 480p by my twin SLI GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 GPUs on my PC, then out to the Edge for extra refinement for my HDTV. The image is near Blu-ray quality from the Internet! I have a lot of home video content too and I use a Vista Media Server to stream content over Ethernet to my PS3. The Edge is superior at adding that extra razor edge clarity to my videos and photos. Of course, it is source dependent and if your video source is really shabby, don't expect it to look tack sharp through the Edge as there is only so much that can be done with a bad video source. However, if the source is reasonable, the Edge definitely adds a lot of clarity that makes the picture look vastly better. I play our DVDs through the Oppo DV-983H and use the Edge to add extra color dimensions and clarity to the video. I also have some movies on hard disk and playing them through the Edge is better than playing them through the Oppo. Both the Edge and the Oppo do work very well together, so long as you turn down all the Oppo picture settings to zero. The Edge's Deep Color mode also looks awesome and the video looks as if it has had a color treatment and been remastered. I don't care much for Cable TV as the video is not only very poor in image quality and content, but riddled with noisy adverts. The Edge does add some extra clarity to Cable TV, but the SD video over Cable is so bad that no up-scaler could make it look that much better. We don't watch Cable much and if we did, we would use the Hi-Definition service, but paying for TV seems pretty stupid when you have to spend so much time watching ads. I prefer online TV, as it is free and the picture quality is better.

You need to be patient when you first set up the Edge as getting the sweet spot is very dependent on the intrinsic characteristics of your equipment. Many TVs have their own picture enhancing modes, so you need to experiment to see which functions add or subtract from the image quality that you desire. Luckily, you can tweak the video settings for every input source into the Edge and those settings are saved for next time. That way, you can tweak every piece of equipment you have until the sweet spot is reached and not upset settings for other inputs. I found that it was best to cable audio via HDMI and Optical. Some DVDs have issues outputting audio via HDMI, but the Optical connection seems to always come to the rescue when that happens. I default to HDMI audio and revert to Optical if there is an audio handshaking issue. So far, I have watched over 60 DVDs on the Edge and only one DVD didn't play audio correctly over HDMI and it was a very old movie. It was fixed by switching to Optical. Other noteworthy features are the ability to stretch or shrink video on the horizontal and vertical axes independently and also underscan to shrink a video source on your TV screen. Now you can hide those picture artifacts at the top of the video source or zoom in / out according to visual preference.

If you want a solution that will last a very long time and cope with numerous sources, the DVDO Edge is an ESSENTIAL component in a home theater system for the casual consumer. I would give this kit 10 out of 5 if I could as it will clean up any video source that I throw at it and I have never been able to do that before, without having to suffer great expense.

I purchased my Edge after having numerous other DVDO products. When the unit works, its above average. My biggest problem though is the unit is so flaky (even with firmware updates), that I'm going to have to disconnect it and will most likely return it.

The originally shipped firmware had issues with audio dropping (I would change TV channels and the audio would stop working, requiring me to reset the unit)... this got 90% better in the 1.1 firmware, but still exists.

Now I'm having problems with the unit hanging, or failing to respond to the remote. This seems to happen when I change inputs... it happens at a fairly high rate, and the solution is to power cycle the unit. A soft reset will not always work (even then, the reset button is a small button on the back of the device and difficult to access).

What makes the 2 above problems worse, is the "solution" of power cycling it, causes me to lose all my settings... so basically I'm stuck using factory defaults until they fix these issues because I don't want to go through the setting any more.

I've also had issues going through the setup menus with it occassionally locking.

I've got this unit on my main TV, which my family uses. They just know that once I put the new box on, the TV no longer works reliably. I get calls at work 2-3 times a week "the TV isn't working".

I've been working with their customer support on these issues, they've been helpful, but given this is our main TV in our house and basically its been flakey for over a month, that's just unacceptable for us.

Hold off. Its a neat idea, but its just not ready yet. I've had great luck with their other products... this just seems to be a case of a product not being ready for market yet. I'm sure they'll get it right.

I have wanted to try a video processor in my system since I installed a Projectiondesign front projector about four years ago, which is being used with a 100" Stewart FireHawk screen. The scaling in the projector is adequate, but I've always thought that a high-end video processor would be able to deliver a better picture. The EDGE processor proves that I was right.

The EDGE has been in our system for several weeks now, and my wife and I love its performance. It was very simple to set up, and it makes a significant improvement to every source. We use the projector for a fair amount of television viewing (as opposed to just DVD or Blu-ray), so it does a lot of upscaling of DirecTV SD sources. As you might expect, the quality of the SD channels ranges somewhere between tolerable and miserable when viewed on the large screen, so we hoped to see improvement there. We were not disappointed, and in fact were genuinely surprised to see how much the EDGE improves SD image quality. Standard DVDs upscale very well, and are much more enjoyable than they were with just an upscaling DVD player. 1080i broadcasts are way better as well. Simply put, things are just sharper and clearer.

Perhaps the best endorsement comes from my wife, who wants things to look and sound better, but without a lot of tweaking. She spends more time watching movies than I do, with a mix of DVDs and DVR recordings, and she is very enthusiastic about the improvement EDGE makes. In particular, she wants me to mention how effective the mosquito noise reduction is.

As I said, it was easy to install, and it's simple to operate. It doesn't have the range of calibration controls that you might find in a processor that sells for four or five times its cost, but there is quite a bit of range for the basic video, aspect ratio and audio (delay) adjustments.

Another benefit of the EDGE is its six HDMI inputs. I wish that it had come out about a year earlier, as it would have made life a lot easier when I added HD-DVD and Blu-ray players to my system. I went through six different HDMI switchers before I found one that would work with all of my devices. Now I have a Radiient switcher that I no longer need, and I've even been able to eliminate some audio cables from the rack by feeding audio from source components to the EDGE over HDMI 1.3.

In conclusion, the EDGE is a great processor, especially for its price. I recommend it for anyone with an HDTV display - the bigger the screen, the more you'll appreciate it.

With the advent of more and more HDMI devices all vieing for those precious HDMI inputs on my displays, the DVDO EDGE was a revelation to my system.

EDGE is now my essential central hub to my AV system where everything is fed into the one central unit, and then distributed accordingly to my audio and visual equipment, thus making things so much easier.

Picture processing results are highly impressive, with many of my most difficult sources and viewing material being handled with aplomb. Although EDGE will allow you to just plug it in, and let the automatic settings do the hard work for you, the advanced controls and test patterns were fantastic for serial tweakers such as myself to really get the best performance possible.

Thanks to DVDO, my system really has the 'EDGE' now that was lacking before - something that was previously unheard of at this price!

I recently set up an LCD HDTV (VIZIO E240VA 42") after having a CRT for years, and it was great for watching TV. My main hobby, however, is video games and to that end, many classic games (NES, Super Nintendo, N64). Unfortunately, the rumours I heard were true; classic era video games look horrible on HDTVs. But beyond that was the dreaded input lag (Google 'HDTV input lag' for plenty of horror stories). The latency was also apparent with the Wii, where even the hand on the menu would have noticeable lag. On any platforming game where jumps and attacks are crucial, this simply made the game unplayable.

Then came the DVDO EDGE, which fixed ALL of those problems. I was skeptical that anything could rectify the input lag, but not only does this product make old games look great (comparatively speaking, of course...you're not going to get PS3-quality graphics from NES games obviously), but when I route the game systems through the EDGE and set my TV to Game mode, the input lag is eliminated, giving the games real-time control. Since the super-fast upscaling processor in the EDGE does all the dirty work it allows the TV to just focus on displaying the image and not having to use its own bargain-bin processor to do any upscaling, it's just like playing the games on a CRT without the need to keep an ugly CRT around. It's also got standard RCA audio and video output for those (like me) who use an old RCA switching box and stereo for their setup instead of full HDMI.

For anyone who plays consoles other than those that run natively in their HDTV's resolutions (I believe for 1080p native TVs, only the PS3 and X360 qualify) and are serious about playing classic games, this product is a must-have. The price tag is kind of a shock, but it's worth EVERY CENT.

I gave only three stars because I expected a big improvement from DVDO EDGE for the images in SD, such as those from DVD players or SKY boxes. Unfortunately, there is only a slight improvement. I expected much more from this product which, in truth, is not cheap.

The most noticeable improvement I've noticed is about the images that are already in high definition (1080i). Indeed the product, bringing them to 1080p, gives them more stability, sharper and better colors. For images already at 1080p, like those from Blu-ray players, I have not noticed any difference.

In summary, do not buy this product if you want to greatly improve the quality of images in standard definition. It's not worth of it, it costs too much.

If you need any other functions that the product offers then you can think to buy it and I would reccomend it.

I received a DVDO Edge as a gift, and has been great. The Edge is loaded with features so I will only focus on my favorites. First, it has plenty of inputs so I just run one single HDMI cable to the TV - everything else connects to the Edge.

My wife thinks the best part is the automatic input switching. She was constantly getting confused on how to change the TV inputs for the DVD player, satellite box, Wii, etc. She would call me at work and I would once again go over the process with her. That does not happen anymore. With the Edge, I just tell her to turn on whatever she wants to use (and turn it off when she is done). The Edge takes care of the rest automatically.

I hate some of the wide screen DVDs that only use about 50% of my display. The Edge does a fantastic job scaling it vertically without getting stretched people.

DVDO edge is worth getting if you care about how your video looks. It can't work magic, but it makes everything look better, like the signal was improved, or you upgraded your components. I am not sure why video scalers/processors are not more common in home theater setups. This is definitely better than the chips built into nearly any low to mid-range component.

I've been looking for a quality video processor that can split audio from the video signal. This is the perfect product for me: the video up-scaling just looks incredible - even SD TV over Dish. HD continues to look wonderful. Its features and on-screen options are better than most high-end receivers. For the price, it's seriously hard to beat.

I have a 2-channel audio setup, and wanted all audio input from the AV input sent to my DAC/PRE. This makes for a perfect marriage (highest quality audio + highest quality video) - much happier than with other receivers I've had in the past. I would recommend this even for those with 5-channel audio - just get a nice receiver for audio, don't pay the extra $$$ for HDMI processing on the receiver. With this great price, you can still get a great sounding AV receiver, and end up with a better setup for less money than a quality HDMI receiver.

Highly recommended. Very good build quality. Everything just works.