Technical question about DVD players

[wickerman71]

I am not much of a tech head - so please bear with me. I have a JVC XV-SA602 progressive scan DVD player. It is an all region player with a PAL to NTSC converter.

I also recently bought a Hitachi 57 inch widescreen TV (57SWX20B).

The picture seems to be clean, but some of the DVDs I have played have been less than spectacular. The onscreen menu of the DVD player will indicate a MBPS number that ranges from 4-6 or all the way up to 10 with cleaner picture quality. I am assuming this number is directly related to the DVD picture quality - but I could be way off base.

Anyway, I wanted verification of that. With DVDs that seem to have more "pixelization", for lack of a better word, is that a software issue or a DVD player issue? Any recommendations or assistance would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Spencer

[videoworx]

With DVDs that seem to have more "pixelization", for lack of a better word, is that a software issue or a DVD player issue?

It's actually a combination of both, but mostly the pixels are a result of poor encoding by the producers. Once you dip below 4 Megabits, the image tends to look wet. And although your player can detect Mbits up to 10, the combined audio and video can be a maximum of 11. Video data rates are generally no more than 6.5 Mbits to allow for enough audio space (like mulitple audio tracks, etc)...
Each player has an MPEG-2 decoding chip, and each varies in quality. Some do a decent job with crap encoding, some don't...hence a poorly produced DVD might look decent on one player and absolute garbage on another. Generally a DVD with a nice compression job will look good on ANY player.