DVD Changer Advice

[WAID]

Now that I have an HDTV (Samsung DLP) I notice the quality of the picture of my DVD's is not great (seems I have read that the superior quality of th HDTV is great but it magnifies the shortcomings of a standard DVD). The player I use is a Pioneer Elite DV-F07, which has been a champ since I bought it in 2000 (except for some servicing issues early on). I really like having the 300-disc capacity although I now have far more than 300 DVD's.

Question is: How does the picture quality of an up-scaling DVD player compared to my non-abled player? Sony has a 400-disc changer with up-scale capability (is this the same as progressive scan?). If the picture has a noticeable improvement I may look at this as a replacement. I don't see getting an HD player anytime soon so making the most of my standard DVD library is the main goal.

Thanks for the input....

[sub780lime]

Whats the model of the Sony changer? I can't remember which TV you bought, but I am assuming it is 1080p. I will tell you I did notice a difference for my SD dvd's when I went from 720p to an upconverting 1080p player. You would probably see a similar difference if the Sony changer is pushing 1080i. Also, if you are buying it in a retail store, take it home and try it. Return it if you arent happy.

[WAID]

The TV is a Samsung HL-T6156W which is 1080p. As for the Sony player, there seem to several variations on what looks like the same model. I have pasted a sentence from one of the description pages. I don't know what it means to up-scale to high def (1080i/720p), so I don't know if that is as good as up-scaling gets.

I'm pretty price-sensitive, so while I have a Fry's nearby that sells the thing for $400 (which is still a reasonable price), some of the online stores would save me $100. That means I'm somewhat buying on faith. For $300 I would consider buying two of them!

"The DVP-CX995V 400-disc DVD/Super-Audio CD (SA-CD) changer up-scales video to high definition (1080i/720p) resolution and transmits high quality audio through a High Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI)."

[sub780lime]

In this case referring to upscaling means it is increases the native size of the image. It is upscaling to 1080i which is 1920 × 1080. This refers to the number of pixels. More pixels for your HDTV the better. So in this case, upscaling the image to 1080i which your display can handle will provide a better image (due to increased pixel count) than if it was at only 480p which is only 704x480 so it has much less pixels. I dont know if that helped or made things more confusing.

[WAID]

This DOES help...thanks! What's still foreign to me is the 1080i/720p info. I'm not sure what the "i" vs. the "p" means, and my first thought when I read the product description was that it will upscale to a max of 1080p but 720 in some cases. Maybe the 1080 and 720 are meant to be integrated, as in lines of resolution and pixels??

[chlngr1970]

The "i", and "p" stand for Interlaced, and Progressive. On old tvs, the image was scanned onto the screen in an Interlaced fassion. The odd fields were scanned first in 1/30th second, then the even fields in 1/30th of a second making a frame in 1/60th of a second. The newer HDTVs ( Most notably ANY Digital display ) only scans in ALL lines progressive (1-1080 ) in 1/60th second. DVD is encoded on the disc at 720 X 480 Progressive. The Upcon DVD players essentially make the picture 1920X1080 and send that to the display. Many people ( if not all ) see an increase in picture quality. The other notable diference, is only ONE cable needs to go from the source ( DVD player ) to the receiver/TV. I don't know about your TV, but some only send PCM stereo out of the TVs Digital Audio out, so it may be prudent to invest in a new receiver that can accept HDMI audio, if you plan on going that route ( not a bad plan for stepping up to HDM IMHO )

I have seen the Sony player you are looking at and have to say, it looks good with it's upconversion. If you can get a good deal, I say grab one or two, (since you have so many movies ) and fillerup

j

[WAID]

Done!

For some time I was tempted to buy another changer to daisy chain and for the price buying a pair (THAT sounds just not right!) seems like the right way to go. Last year my Xmas present from my wife came early with the "50 Years of Janus Films" collection, and this buy may be for this year (early again of course).

[sub780lime]

Originally Posted by WAID

Done!

For some time I was tempted to buy another changer to daisy chain and for the price buying a pair (THAT sounds just not right!) seems like the right way to go. Last year my Xmas present from my wife came early with the "50 Years of Janus Films" collection, and this buy may be for this year (early again of course).

I love buying myself early Christmas presents

[rixrex]

Challenger's 99% right but he got the scan rates backwards for interlaced scan.

I-scan, interlaced scan, as originally as set up on the old 525 line sets (480 actual visible lines typically because of masking) due to analog broadcast signal limitations, would scan odd lines first, left to right & top to bottom as you view the screen, in 1/60th of a second, then even lines next in 1/60th of a second, for a full frame scan of all odd & even lines in 1/30th of a second, or 30 frames per second. Each odd or even scan is called a field, so 60 fields per second, odd then even, hence the name interlaced. This cycle was decided upon thanks to AC current being 60 cycles per second and giving out a regular timed "signal" for sync purposes.

P-scan, progressive scan, merely does away with the interlace system and scans each line in sequence regardless of being odd or even, and does so at a rate of 60 full frames per second. Therefore the term of "line-doubler" given to devices that enhance I-scan to P-scan. You could also call it frame doubler I suppose. Of course, actual originated P-scan images not done by enhancement devices require that the carrier signal have the ability to carry a significant increase in information, digital signals can do so without an increase in broadcast bandwidth, etc. PC monitors have pretty much always been progressive scan.

Recorded visual information on formats such as Beta, VHS, Laserdisc and even standard DVD are all interlaced. Certain TV sets, most DVD players and enhancers like the DVDO devices create the P-scan image and do this through electronic computerized enhancement systems, and they do a pretty good job of it, at least the high end ones do, and the DVDO's are the best at it. The problem with I-scan has always been that of "flicker" effect, dot crawl, contrast edge fuzziness and color rainbowing, all especially visible on larger screens. P-scan helped to reduce a lot of that for the big screen TV viewers.

So 720-p, meaning 720 lines of resolution with all 720 shown fully at a rate of 60 frames per second, is obviously going to be better than 480i or 480p, plus it has the added benefit of often being originally produced P-scan information, not digitally enhanced. 1180i and 1180p are further resolution advancements of video image quality, with 1080p being the top. I am not sure yet which I prefer between 720p or 1080i, each has it's benefits.

[rixrex]

Sorry, I forgot to mention that I have tried a top-quality Panasonic DVD player that had built-in standard DVD enhancement to 720 and 1080, and while it worked well, it still could not come even close to the DVDO device which will accept 6 different legacy analog signals and also digital signals.