Picture Quality Aspirations, Arcana HD Fury

Bothe ends of the Arcana HD Fury, which looks like a simple splitter in & out device with a nice fluorescent screen on which you do parameter settings to effect the picture & sound quality. The only thing I dislike about that display is that the text size use is too damn small!

I must say the promise was there when I heard my buddy told me that this little black box called Arcana HD Fury was capable of helping our Full HD projectors to cope with 4K movie source or at the very  least made them bearable. And so with such recommendation, I decided to get one. All you need is one extra HDMI cable for it to work, he said. Don't get those fancy cables, just the one that came with your Blu-ray player will be fine, he said.

I waited 2 weeks for my order to arrive my door step. Installation seems easy enough, plug the input HDMI cable from source(Oppo UDP-203), the output the HDMI cable to projector(Optoma UHD50). I ran the Arcana HD Fury in default mode, and at first play, a BD that I am very familiar with, Midway. WOW! I am impressed, the colors really "pop" out the screen with it's rich vivid tone, like I had just upgraded to a JVC projector or something! I thoroughly enjoyed Midway all over again. I was happy as a kite! 

The package that came, the Arcana HD Fury, and wallwart power supply & power cable which is optional, but I bought it for voltage combability assurance.

If these text pops out on the left bottom corner of the screen, means good, it works!

The happiness didn't last long unfortunately, the next moment I throw in a 4K disc of the same movie, and what greeted my was a red washed out screen! And so my trouble begins with the Arcana HD Fury! Another call to my buddy reveals that there compatibility issues between the Arcana HD Fury with certain brands of BD players, projectors or just HDMI cables. I must agree that it could not all Arcana's problem either, as from the very start, I felt the Optoma had rather weak connectivity to my Oppo BD player. I had tried many HDMI cables to get that connectivity to a reliable connectivity level. However even then, sometimes I still need to reset the projector or BD player or both to get them to work together.

I tried like about 5 different kinds of el cheapo or OEM bundle HDMI cables in order to try and make things work. Also tried various setting combos on the Arcana HD Fury, but none work! Certain setting you get that red washed out screen, and yellow or cyan washed out screen with other setting combos, or even pixelated black & white screen with other setting combos. There's a few parameters that one can set to try & make things work or make the picture quality better.

Regarding the setting parameters, you need to be very technically inclined to make it work! Otherwise, please just stay with default settings. 

This is what I got when it doesn't work, available not only in Red, but Cyan & Yellow as well depending on HDMI cable choice & parameter setting combo on the Arcana HD Fury! This happens when I used 4K movie source materials.

Now, when the Arcana HD Fury works, the picture quality is actually brought up a notch! This is with Full HD source material. Hacken Lee in concert!

Then one day, after more than 3 weeks working on making 4K movie files of BD work with the Arcana HD Fury, a slightly bright spark can in to my mind, to connect the Arcana between my Denon X-4400H AVR & the Optoma projector. Again lots of HDMI cable swap and parameter setting combos were made to make it work. Finally after fiddling for a week, I finally found a working combo using an old HDMI cable which was bundled with my Pioneer BDP-450 player and default settings on the Arcana.

With the 4K movie compatibility issue fixed, again I plomk in the same 4k Midway BD in to the system, and behold. There was some improvement compared to 4K movies running without the Arcana. As the beer budget Optoma doesn't throw enough light for 4K source materials, I almost always prefer to watch Full HD only BD or files. Using the Arcana in the AV system the improvements were slightly brighter picture, better contrast, and as result, make 4K source material that bit more bearable, especially in darks scenes where the Optoma projector naturally struggles the most. In dark scenes, the Optoma typically adds lots of visual noise to the 4K source material being played. The same 4K playback via the Arcana in the system gave less visual noise, making dark scenes that bit more bearable.

There was one draw back when using the Arcana in between the Denon & Optoma compared to Oppo direct to Optoma, leaving the Denon only for soundtrack duties. When used as such to make 4K source materials work, the Full HD experience suffers. When I say suffers, I mean in relation to picture quality attained as when used between Oppo & Optoma. You see, that vivid, rich popping color effect I got earlier is now being diluted. Having said that, the picture quality performance still got a small lift compared to as without Arcana in the loop.

With that, I settled down and just enjoy my movies as is. The entire Arcana HD Fury experience was NOT as positive as my buddies. I think it's because they all have JVC & Sony projectors. Me on the other hand, have 2nd rate Optoma. I read in many forums that the Arcana HD Fury doesn't work well with other 2nd rate brands such as BenQ, Epson or Vivitek either. Many feedback in those forums also commended the excellent consultative response from the Arcana people if you run in to issues as consumer. I did not contact them with my issues so I can't vouch for them. From my experience, the Arcana HD Fury is not something one buys on a whim like me. I paid steep price for it in terms of performance compromise & compatibility issues. All I am saying is do more research on the WWW before you commit to this product. I also feel that this product requires competent technical knowledge in regards to the parameter settings offered. It's not a plug & play product, and YMMV caveat certainly applies. 

I hope others will have better experience then me on this.