Grass Valley TURBO iDDR

Since the offset, the TURBO has output an unusual signal over DVI which tends to confuse a lot of pro video switchers and scalers – I’ve had issues interfacing the TURBO with Vista Systems Montage, Spyder, Barco Encore, ScreenPRO II, ImagePRO HD, and other Barco / Folsom switchers and scaling mixers.

Grass Valley did release a software revision for the TURBO in order to fix the issue, however, I’ve still experienced issues since – maybe because I’m in PAL land here in Australia.

I’ve found the composite and SDI outputs from the TURBO to be standard and reliable, however the SDI only outputs PAL/NTSC, not HD formats. The DVI output can output analog YUV/RGB with some success using a break-out cable, when running 1080i format, however for best results so far, I prefer to stick with setting the TURBO to output 1536×768 for HD material, and putting up with the slight effect on resolution, as, in my experience, this output format tends to work best with the switchers I’ve mentioned above.

You might notice that even when the TURBO is set to output 1536×768, various scalers and switchers might interpret the signal differently, however I have found that regardless, they will tend to lock onto the signal with success, with the expection of sometimes needing to manually set the aspect ratio to 16:9.