Brian Kyle is an audio video "enthusuiast", and I should captialize the word ENTHUSIAST
He shared the VMPS room at CES, with his cables and contact enhancer.
I beleive there are two grades: Silver and Gold
I also heard him enthusiatically singing the praises of the new GOLD version and how well it worked, even on video.
Well to make a long story short, I was getting bored watching the play offs this last Sunday and began looking for video deficiencies in the picture of my 36" standard def Toshiba TV.
I was running Dish Network, and had it hooked up 2 different ways:
1) I ran the antennae out from the Dish Receiver to the TV and used channel three
2) I ran the signal via S-Video connetctions through my Receiver.
Both yielded a slightly different picture quality, with the S-Video/Receiver route being the most clear.
The Coax cable route produced serious "dot crawl".
This looks like small ants crawling along the edges of light colors and darker colors where the edge should be sharp and motionless.
Colors, detail, and contrast in both routes were not the greatest. I had contrast, brightness, and color all set to 50. 50 is the factory setting.
Generally when adjusting a video monitor you set the brightness, sharpness and contrast "LOWER" than factory, but in this case it simply looked to bad, even in a darkened room.
So I made my observations "particularly" the dot crawl, which was a big negative visually that was totally apparent and not adjustable out of the picture with any of the on board controls.
Then I applied Xtreme QuickSilver to all the connections on the coaxial side, from the wall, to the power conditioner, to the TV.
I also applied it to all the S-video connections from the DISH receiver to the AVReceiver, to the TV.
While I was at it, I also did the Component connections from the receiver to my Front Projector, and from my DVD player to the Reciever to the projector, also component.
The results:
Dot crawl is not TOTALLY GONE. Not reduced, not a little better, but NON-Existant
Color saturation on the Coax input was now oversaturated, and both brightness, contrast, color and tint could now be set well below the factory settings with excellent results.
The S-video had slightly less improvement, but that is because it was slightly better to begin with. However it to now had no dot crawl, and ever detail was now better.
So later that night afternoon (as it got darker) I flipped on the projector (In Focus ScreenPlay 4805) and after it warmed up, it was VERY apparent that the DISH TV broadcast was vastly improved.
Color before was "dull, dull,dull" and I put it down to S-video, Upconversion to component (in the receiver) and simply bad broadcast, blown up to a 120" picture.
Well I was wrong. The colors now were totally improved and the whole picture was not "toned khaki".
Brightness was also vastly improved. The increase was so dramatic that I had to go into the menue and "dial down" both brightness and contrast, which is normally a good thing for the picture.
So while you can spend big bucks to get that kind of improvement in your video system, I thought I should share this experience, and find it intersting to hear what other might have found on the video side, with this product.
You know with audio, it "IS" possible to think you heard an improvement, when you only have a delicate audio memory to rely on.
Let me tell you, dot crawl is not imaginary, and it is either there or not there.
Mine now is non-existant.
I phone Brian to tell him of what I discovered and that I would post the results and he told me that the Silver (like I have) is $65, and the Gold is normally $159 but on introductory special for $135.
I have to add:
1) I know Brian, but am not a dealer for his products
2) He "gave" me the product to try
3) I can't guarrantee the same result, but would suggest if you have any of these problems that you take a chance (he might even have some type of guarrantee) and check it out.
4) I like finding product that work and sharing that.
I have tried MapleShade QuickSilver on my audio system and found I liked the improvement.
Soon I will use the Xtreme version on the soundsystem and see what I hear and report.
Brian has a website at
http://www.xtremecables.comIf you try this stuff, let me know what you find.