If I Were To Ask Right Now, At This Very Moment, Straight Up...

Peter Marlowe

No, of course they're not upscaled.

Peter Marlowe

Thanks for your thoughts on the 55's upscaling....was the DVD upconversion really that good? Did you have the deck set to 1080p for DVD?

Peter Marlowe

Thanks for your thoughts, Daleb; I wouldn't be using the BD55's analog outs, so from all accounts, the 35 should do the trick -- video wise. I'm just concerned with pulling the trigger on a piece of equipment that costs about half of what first generation buyers paid for pieces of shit like the BD10A...

Yes -- I have heard the same thing about the Pioneer's menus; read that in a Home Theater review. The same thing about the then-flagship Denon, which was quoted as having painfully slow response times. Doesn't make sense at that price range.

It seems the concensus is that these expensive decks don't really warrant the cash unless they're in extreme installations; I thank everyone for helping me discern through all that. I shall consider it.

Indeed; so I have been hearing as well. I will perhaps wait for the Oppo, or pull the trigger on a Panasonic perhaps if I want to get a deck before they're out...

I have some more questions about other players we can consider, but didn't talk about here:

How about the new Yamaha player? Any word on its quality?

Would any of the Sonys be recommended, since this will be hooked up to a Sony SXRD display?

What about the new Onkyo player -- any word on this yet? Initial photos didn't impress me.

ROCKBOBMEL

My Samsung plasma 42 is 1080i not p. I sit 9 feet away and it looked excellent! You don't need to set it, It upscales automatically to the screen res. I would say it was 90% compared to BR 100%

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Peter Marlowe

Oh, so you have the player's HDMI set to AUTO resolution, yes? I have my BD10A set that way too -- but my Sony display is 1080p; yours is 1080i, and the DVDs look great at that resolution, too...

Interesting. Thanks for the info. Which DVDs looked best on your player?

daleb

I find it interesting that most of us recognize a well adjusted picture on a display, and appreciate the improvement Blue-Ray makes (and what HD DVD made), but are quite split on up-conversion.
Whether it's Oppo, Toshiba's XDE, or the later processors used by the major brands in their BD players, there seems to be less agreement on which is better.

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Peter Marlowe

Indeed, because this is the area where the most mistakes can be made with the scaling/upscaling, etc; each deck seems to have its own properties of doing this correctly or incorrectly, and it seems most don't get it right.

The DVD upconversion on my Panny BD10A is so bad it exhibits horrible jagged edges especially through red lettering on my screen and bad pixelation/macroblocking at 1080p...

PFC5

Based on that description, I think you have a defective player. The BD10A is said to have better upscaling than the BD30 & BD50, but far inferior to the BD35 7 BD55. Who knows how the newer Panasonic models will play SD DVD.

First gen players/devices ALWAYS cost more than comparable 3rd gen devices so i would not let the lower price fool you. I paid $450.00 for my HD-A1, but the HD-A20 does just as good a job or better with HD DVDs, and also for SD DVDs and I paid 1/5th the price, but I got a deal on them. It was still half price based on MSRP, and that is the nature of the CE industry. Just like computers have dropped so rapidly from when I got my first in 1997.

If I used that criteria for buying CE devices of spending as much or more, I would be getting one of the most expensive computers out there now, instead of 1/10th the price for a much/worlds better computer.

Just go by what pro reviewers have said and what people you trust say and make a decision. I bet you have less than a week to find a decent deal on a BD35 and even at Amazon.com, they are all selling ABOVE the MSRP last I looked. They will be gone very soon. As was stated before, just return it if you do not think it is worth the price, but if you like it, you can move the BD10A to the bedroom even if no HDTV just so you can play the BD movies in there.

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Chris Gerhard

I agree, there isn't much agreement on the best standard DVD playback and for good reason. I think for the most part, it is a big fuss about not much. Just for the sake of discussion, let's say on a scale of 1-100, Blu-ray is 100 and the best DVD player I have seen, the Oppo DV-983H is 75. My other good players would all fall in the 70-74 range and nobody I watch movies with would care about the tiny incremental improvement and couldn't pick out the slight differences. Of course this is just my silly subjective rating of these players. There probably wouldn't even be agreement that the DV-983H is best if they were forced to pick one. Who is to say they are wrong? There is agreement that the players using Anchor Bay Technologies, Silicon Optix, Mediatek, Faroudja and Marvell processing all make DVD look very good.

The differences between players for Blu-ray performance is even smaller, making the DVD performance variances seem huge in comparison and the DVD player variances aren't worth all of the fuss.

Chris

dsskid

Besides, all the traffic lights on Sunrise Hwy makes doing 95 nearly impossible, and would certainly increase your risk of having another severe accident, hurting yourself and possible others. Sounds pretty irresponsible to me.

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Displays are like 100% cotton t-shirts. Always buy a size larger than you think you'll need, because they tend to shrink over time.

Professional reviews of displays are an excellent tool, but the final decision should come from using your own eyes.




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ImRizzo

WOW ! Are we to assume that you were texting your postings to this thread yesterday, while speeding at 95 MPH (quite a task on Sunrise Highway at 11 Am on a weekday) a roadway which has traffic lights approximately every 1/8th to 1/4 miles apart. And doing so after experiencing an accident recently, God your good, at what I'm not quite sure of, but certainly a lot of long winded postings. Your friend, Da Rizz.

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daleb

Another factor could be that individuals are not necessarily making assessments based on the same DVDs. Obviously, good transfers are still a major concern with SD, much less with BD as time goes on. And players have different adjustments available for SD picture quality. Some more or less than others, some more effective than others.

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Peter Marlowe

Are you KIDDING me? THE ACCIDENT WE WERE IN WAS NOT MY FAULT -- A DRUNK DRIVER HIT US AND PUT US IN THE HOSPITAL. I was driving COMPLETELY responsibly.

I don't drive that fast at all -- I was merely making an analogy here. From Bigelows I will definitely make a small stop at South Nassau Medical Center to visit a bud who's sick, and from there probably hit Lynbrook Diner, across the street from the LIRR station -- you know the one.

Peter Marlowe

No, you don't have it right -- and I'm plenty good at plenty of things. At least I don't go into an internet discussion site and piss on people I don't even know to make myself feel better; you seem to know me because you have "spoken" to me via threads online? THAT'S how you know I'm not good at much?

There isn't a better example of a human being not knowing what they're talking about than this statement by "MY FRIEND DA RIZZ" and fellow Lawng Islander...

Keep up the good woik.

Peter Marlowe

I'm not nearly the only BD10A owner -- or reviewer -- who has complained about the same symptoms of this player's DVD playback...it was a chroma error of some kind, a bug that wasn't worked out at the factory...I will supply quotes backing up the claims of this...

Well, that's true.

That's what I plan to do if I like the new player, whatever I get...and add it to a Home Theater In A Box system for the bedroom.