Just bought a new 42" HDTV. Now I need a DVD Player *Help*

muscl3s

Hi I'm new to the forums and I'm also new to HDTV. I just moved into a new house in St. Petersburg, FL and I bought a new Hitachi 42" HDTV. This is it: http://www.hitachi.us/tv/browse/lcd/lcd/42V710.shtml

I need to buy a DVD player to go with it but I have no idea what to get since all this upscaling etc. stuff has me a bit confused. Should I get a cheap DVD player or a DVD player that has an HDMI connection?

Any help/info is greatly appreciated.

RSawdey

A cheaper progressive 480p player should do fine, your TV will upconvert. Save for HD-DVD or BluRay...

PFC5

Congrats on both the house, and the new HDTV. Welcome to the club!

I understand your confusion about what DVD player to buy. It can be fairly complicated to decide whether to just go with a progressive scan DVD player or an upscaling DVD player.

I wish I had a simple answer to give you but it depends on WHICH upscaling DVD player you want, or can afford. Some of them have the Faroudja deinterlacer which is very good at turning an interlaced signal into a Progressive Scale signal, and it does a very good job at scaling too! BUT, and you probably knew there was a but coming, it can cause something called Macroblocking which is basically a lot of noise and moire distortion on solid color & dark areas of the picture on SOME displays.

I do not know if it will with your HDTV, but it does this on a lot of different displays. I am in the camp that since Faroudja admits the problem exists in their chip, but does not "fix" the problem, I will not give them my money until it IS fixed. If this seems like a reasonable position and you exclude all Faroudja based players, you have limited your possible alternatives with an upscaling player. The remaining players fall into basically two categories. Expensive ones that can cost $600.00 + which use the Silicon Image chip (instead of the Faroudja), or other players that use lesser chips but can cost much less than the SI chip based players.

Even if you decide to buy an upscaling player, no one knows if it will look better than just running a progressive player at 480p. It might even look better at 480i (interlaced) if your TV has a better deinterlacer than the player has.

Personally, I have tried 3 different "upscaling" players with my RCA DLP and my old 6 year old JVC PS DVD player looks better. You have to remember that what these upscalers are doing and not doing. They are not extracting more info from the DVD movie to upscale the picture, but they are creating more data by using algorithms to do this. Some do them better than others but I have not seen any that do it better than my HDTV. But that is me with my TV and the palyers I tried. Even if you do see an improvement with an upscaler it will not be dramatic, and would most likely be barely noticable.

You have to remember that your TV already has an upscaler built-in to it. That is how it takes any signal and displays it at your TVs native resolution of 720p.

The chances that a 100-300.00 player has a better scaler than your TV does is not that great given your TV, so my advice would be to just use the DVD player you have if the picture looks good right now, or just buy a regular PS DVD player. I don't mean the cheap $30-50.00 players but something in the $80-150.00 players.

I don't know what your budget may be, but considering the new house and HDTV purchase it will be lower than you would like.

Do you have a DVD player now, and how does it look using the component RGB cables (not composite-yellow) to connect it? If it looks very good I would sit tight for now. There will be plenty of time to catch the upgraditis later. By then, you may get a better play that is cheaper too! And don't forget about the upcoming HiDef DVD player that will be coming out around the end of the year and first quarter of 2006. They will be expensive at first, but wouldn't you rather wait if the HD dvd players catch on fast and use the money towards that?

Good Luck & congrats again!

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The_Cable_Game
Take the high ground and be happier
PSN: PFC5

PFC5

Yeah, what he said too!

Sometimes breavity is not my strong suit.

__________________
Denon AVR-887
Klipsch RP-5 Pwred Towers (mains) (525 watts peak each 12"Subs)
All Klipsch RC-25(ctr),(2)SS1(surr),(2)SS1(rearSurr)
Toshiba (2)HD-A20,PS3,BD35
For SACD/DVD-A Samsung HD-841
Panny 50pz80u plasma SETTINGS
RCA HD50LPW162 50"DLP w/HD2+
SA 3250HD
47" LCD+Yamaha5790+HD-A1(bedroom)
Harmony 680 + (2) 670s (amazing remote/support)
Game room with Onkyo receiver & B&W Speakers
The_Cable_Game
Take the high ground and be happier
PSN: PFC5

muscl3s

Thank you

Unfortunately I didn't bring my old DVD player with me when I moved into my new place. The last thing I want to do is buy a $50.00 dvd player now and find out it doesn't look good so I guess I don't mind spending $150-$200 bucks. These are the players that have caught my eye that I'm considering:

OPDV971H
http://www.oppodigital.com/opdv971h.html

Samsung DVD-HD850 This is the one I'm really leaning towards because its $50 bucks cheaper
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage....=1099394611091

borromini

No kidding ...at least you have the sense to make paragraphs. There are some who create a single monumental block
of text that just makes it impossible to read!

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iserum

This Panasonic player comes with hDMI cable, also play DVD audio, if you are hooking up home theater system this is excellent choice.

http://www2.panasonic.com/webapp/wcs...00000000005702

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muscl3s

Well I ended up just buying the Samsung DVD-HD850. I got extremely lucky at bestbuy because they had it for $79.99. It was an open box special that was just reput on the shelf when I got there. Everything was still in it's original packaging w/HDMI cable included

I hooked it up and honestly I'm not that impressed. I have it plugged in directly to the TV via the HDMI cable and I upscaled using 720p and 1080i without seeing much difference. Unless I'm missing some other setting I don't think it would have been worth paying full price for it ($150.00) so I'm so thankful I got it for about half.

Wiley

All being said and done, it in part (for my thinking a big part) of the old GI-GO. Garbage In Garbage Out. Forget for the moment the upscaling issue, what you want is a good dvd player, one that does the layer change without a noticable hiccup, that reads all the proper flags for encoded info on the disc and all the dozen or so things a player does when playing a disc. Check out the "Secrets of Home Theatre" page regarding dvd players and you will find that the OPPO ranks far and above lots of major brand dvd players (like all save stepping up to a player costing ten times the price).

The thing is this: one adjusts the set to show the best picture with a particular player thru a particular input port on the monitor. If you have a mediocre player you will find that colors are wrong and hard to adjust, that blacker than black (commonly referred to as BTB) is impossible to obtain and that on the whole the set isn't giving what it is possible of displaying. It isn't always the disc's fault! If the player doesn't deliver, the monitor can't display! The player does more than upscale! It's the "cheap tires on the Ferrari thing".

I keep reading "just get a progressive scan player and sit tight and wait for the HD stuff to arrive". Thing is the new players will have all the same issues of present dvd players regarding BTB, layer change (times more than one, imagine how bad it will look to see the hiccups over five or so layers!!) etc. etc. Besides at first they will cost an arm and a leg both for the new discs and the player and it will probably take several years for a player to be marketed that actualizes the potential of the discs. Look how long it has taken for a player of OPPO's capability to reach the $200 price range. Remember how bad the first dvd players were? Remember how expensive they were just five years ago? And how long before they go back and remaster older movies in the new format? forget about any tv series (grand daughter just got "Firefly" as a multi disc set, don't ever expect to see a HD version of that!) and I still enjoy the Monty Python series and that will never get to hd dvd. Oh, they might have a disc with it in the format but the image is a "fixed" thing, the resolution is set (unless someone comes up with "something completely different" (sorry couldn't help myself))

I would suggest that unless one has lots and lots of money to throw at the new players one should get the best player one can afford now and then sit and let the dust settle on the HD stuff. Relax and enjoy the best of what your new set is capable of delivering today!

The movie industry can't even resolve which format for crying out loud! That's why we have 18 different hd broadcast formats, talk about wasting money, influence and corruption, lack of govenment leadership, but that's a whole different thread. And water long gone under the bridge.
Wiley