Faroudja Vidikron LD-200 Line Doubler

These units employ a multi (4) rail power supply with a built in protection that prevents start up in the event certain conditions are not met.  The lack of any documentation on these supplies (built by Skynet) makes troubleshooting difficult.   

The remaining unit had the power supply fail while in controlled storage, and is not working.

Prior to being placed in storage the unit was fully tested and was working perfectly. 

It is being sold AS IS, and will require repair.

Faroudja Technologies Vidikron LD-200 Line Doubler. The list price on this home theater component was $9,950.00.   What follows is data from the manufacturers manual.

You can view the entire manual here:  http://www.meridian-audio.com/faroudja/products/archives/LD200.pdf

A few notes regarding the 2 units for sale:

    1.    They have been fully tested with a Sony PVM Monitor, using RGB inputs.
    2.    All Test Results were Exactly the same for both units.
    3.    RGBS output produces two side by side images with the Sony PVM monitors as a result of the monitors maximum scan rate.
    4.  SVideo and Composite inputs worked the same
    5.    The remotes are not included with the units

Specifications:
Inputs
    1.    NTSC    1.0 vpp looping BNC
    2.    Y/C 3.58 (S-VHS or Hi 8)    4-Pin Mini Din
    3.    VGA PassThrough    DB-15 Connector
    4.    RS-232    ASCI11


Outputs
    1.    RGB    0.7 V p-p
    2.    Horizontal Sync    31.5Khz 4.0 V p-p
    3.    Vertical Sync    59.94Hz 4.0 V p-p
    4.    Composite Sync    4.0 V p-p
    5.    VGA "D" Connector    0.7 V p-p/ TTL Sync

Electrical
    •    Voltage    95-120 vac 47 to 6OHz
    •    Power    100 Watts
    •    Physical Size    17"W X 2.62"H X 16.5 "D
    •    Weight    19 Pounds

From Faroudja Laboratories:
     
Faroudja Laboratories presents the LD200 Line Doubler, specifically designed for high-end, home theater and boardroom applications. The LD200 incorporates patented technology used in the award winning Faroudja LD100 and VP400 Line Processors to deliver video images which have the clarity and presence of film.

The heart of the LD200 is a three-stage processor. The first stage, universally accepted as the best broadcast quality decoder in the world, uses proprietary adaptive technology to separate standard video into pure Red, Green, and Blue components for processing. In the second stage, a patented Film Logic circuit recognizes whether the source material was originally film or video and automatically selects the proper algorithm to prevent the creation of motion artifacts. This stage also contains the Line Doubling circuitry to eliminate scan lines. The third and final stage uses patented Bandwidth Expansion technology to improve picture detail and color quality to achieve the look of film.

The LD200 can be operated by infrared remote control or by front panel, soft touch buttons. On-screen graphics display the status of all controls. Custom presets provide push-button selection of optimum alignment for up to eight different video sources.

Award winning, internationally acclaimed broadcast technology and user-friendly controls, allow the LD200 to integrate easily into any home theater system to produce a remarkable and unique video viewing experience; video images having the power and presence of film!



LD200 TECHNICAL HIGHLIGHTS – The LD200 is far more than simply a “line doubler”. It is a truly unique product in the world of high performance video. The LD200 is actually a complex image processor that consists of three distinct elements – all utilizing patented Faroudja technologies and engineered into one chassis; the decoder , the Faroudja proprietary line doubler, and Faroudja’s innovative bandwidth expansion circuit that allows for the sharpening of image details. Line doubling by itself is simple and inexpensive to achieve. But simply doubling the lines of information is worse than doing nothing at all because the visual result is a picture of lesser quality. To achieve film-like quality, a great deal more is required than just doubling the lines. The block diagram below provides a simple view of Faroudja’s multi-faceted solution for perfect pictures. The technical and visual benefits of each of these special circuits are explained more fully below.


SECTION A – The LD200 SuperNTSC Decoder: Eliminates COLOR BLURRING – The engineers of the 1940’s (and the 1950’s, before and during the development of color broadcasting), had no idea that video images would one day be presented as large as they are today. They therefore designed the color section of the NTSC standard with severe bandwidth restrictions. This causes colors in various video images to “blur” and “smear”. These effects are further aggravated by storage media, such as VHS tapes, that further degrade the chroma or color signal. e.g. – note how deep reds smear on VHS tape images.  The Faroudja LD200 utilizes proprietary circuitry to recreate and correct color details. Technically, this is accomplished by making use of the sharper black and white transitions to develop a correction signal that is then used to sharpen the color transitions. The result is colors that are restored with sharp details and video images that retain their original crisp look.

RAINBOW PATTERNS – When you notice the fine detail of a striped referees shirt rippling with colored rainbows as the camera pans by, you’ve seen video cross-color interference. This annoying artifact is caused by imperfect separation of the color (chroma), and black and white (luminance) signals by the color decoder circuitry. Simple techniques used commonly to separate the two signals can be effective most of the time, but occasionally are fooled by finer pitch detail areas like the referees shirt. The decoder in the LD200 has patented digital adaptive comb filter circuitry that eliminates decoding errors of this type and enables the reproduction of sharper, cleaner color images.
 
DOT CRAWL and HANGING DOTS – This phenomena is easily seen with large, highly saturated, stationary graphics like titles and credits. Dot crawl is a rapid upwards movement of colored dots on sharp vertical transitions. Hanging  dots lie underneath all the colored horizontal transitions.  Both of these color aberrations are artifacts that appear due to an imperfect color decoding process. The LD200 has two separate and patented correction circuits that work to eliminate both of these distortions. The impact is color transitions that are clear, sharp and natural.

THE LD200 Patented Line Doubler: eliminates VISIBLE SCAN LINES – The secret of the LD200’s
uncanny ability to double the lines of information without adding digital artifacts is in its unique ability to detect motion and interpolate correctly to “fill in the blank lines”. The Faroudja LD200 does this better than other line doublers thanks to its proprietary, patented circuitry. It can detect the difference between a film image that has been transferred to video or video image that emanates from a video camera. After detecting the image type, the LD200 selects its algorithm to compensate accordingly. This is critical because today’s home theaters are primarily used to show films that were transferred to video whether on tape, laserdisc or off the air (virtually all prime time programs are film transferred to video). The inability of other line doublers to detect motion correctly is what causes most of them to be unwatchable due to digital artifacts. The LD200 offers sharper, uniquely clean, artifact-free filmlike images without visible scanning lines. Historically speaking again, electrical engineers back in the 1940’s knew the resolution of a picture tube depends on two different mechanisms. Horizontal resolution is a function of bandwidth (frequency response) of the circuitry while vertical resolution is a function of the scanning frequency (the number of scan lines in each picture). Given these mechanisms and the average size picture tube being 8-10”, they designed the 525 line broadcast standard so that viewers would not see the scan lines when watching TV. They had no idea that someday people would be projecting home theater video images with diagonal screen sizes of 10’ and more. Based on those original NTSC parameters, using a 10 ft. diagonal screen, would require the viewer to be located more than 45 ft. from the screen to see the picture as i was intended, without scan lines! Unfortunately, today’s large screen installations have scan lines that are quite visible, especially with some of the latest high resolution monitors and projection televisions. The LD200 eliminates this problem by scan doubling, or digitally doubling the 525 lines to become 1050 lines. The result is the elimination of visible scan lines. The image produced by the LD200 is clearer, continuous and virtually film-like.


The LD200 Bandwidth Expansion Circuitry: SHARPENING OF THE IMAGE DETAILS – There is a
major limitation with most contemporary NTSC program sources — lack of frequency response. The best video sources such as satellite dish reception and laserdiscs can provide acceptable resolution (400 plus lines of horizontal resolution). Other more common sources however, such as VHS tapes (230 lines), are clearly deficient. The problem is compounded when one doubles the scan lines and performs other signal processing. The lack of high frequency detail becomes very obvious with almost all sources. The resultant picture is free of scan lines but dull, with a serious loss of definition. The solution is to expand the high frequencies without producing annoying and picture degrading artifacts.  The bandwith expansion circuitry in the LD200 is unique, using Faroudja’s double differentiation techniques to sharpen the edges of both horizontal and vertical details. The result is a sharply detailed line doubled image that appears crisp and three dimensional with no visible negative side effects. This process increases the apparent bandwidth and therefore the resolution of the incoming signal.

FAROUDJA LD200 APPLICATIONS – While the technical accomplishments of the LD200 represent years of intense research and development, its use is straightforward and direct. The block diagram (above), illustrates a typical home theater system configuration and shows how the LD200 would be inserted in the signal path. Many entertainment sources benefit greatly by the LD200’s unique attributes; laserdisc, VHS video, S-VHS video, cable TV, broadcast TV, etc. The LD200 has proven to be an invaluable tool in other presentation disciplines where image quality is important – computer data displays, professional installations in boardrooms and media rooms, military installations, government agencies and academic uses in schools and colleges. From the quality of its individual parts to its state-of-the-art patented circuitry, the LD200 is truly in a class by itself.  There is simply no finer video processor available.