Up and Running

Apr 15, 2002

The Leeza has been in and working for a while now. My impressions are that it is every bit as good as the HTPC ever was (possibly because I never got the HTPC tweaked sufficiently), and a heck of a lot easier to operate. The only complaints I have about the Leeza are the relatively slow boot-up (25 seconds), lack of a 1440x960 resolution, and lack of a 48Hz refresh rate. The latter items could be fixed in software, so I'm hoping and waiting.
I don't think the Leeza does as good a job at deinterlacing as some Faroudja equipment I have seen (though it's very close), but it is much more flexible and probably better at scaling. Plus it has source switching, and I use most of its inputs. The deinterlacing quality should continually improve with software updates.
I'm starting to want a SDI capable DVD player now, but that's more big $$$. The Panasonic A-310 player has always been of questionable quality and it has problems with DTS audio dropping out halfway through a movie.
I also bought a close-out Panasonic TU-HDS20 HDTV tuner. I'm only using it for over-the-air HDTV (4 channels in Atlanta), but I'll probably go with DirecTV eventually. HDTV looks great on the system, and the Panasonic tuner can do all the HDTV formats natively. This tuner is ideal combined with a CRT projector.
Finally, I've taken some screen shots. The movie is The 5th Element. My digital camera is pretty mediocre with only JPEG file storage, so you will just have to trust that the actual picture is much sharper than these photos would indicate.
Screen shots: A B C D E F