troy evans
Screenwriter
- Joined
- Jul 2, 2005
- Messages
- 1,294
So I pulled the trigger and picked this player up. You never know what to expect when you here claims like "best upconverting ever" or "near Hi-Def PQ from your sd dvds." I have a lot of sd dvds. Over 2500 titles. So when a player comes along that says it can make them look, at least somewhat better, I get excited. The upconvert players I've previously and currently own are Samsung DVD-HD850, Toshiba HD-DVD A20 and A35, Sony BDP-S300, Samsung BD-P1500, Denon DVD-1910 and the OPPO DV-983H. Now, to get to this players features. Everyone here knows about the 3 picture modes which are SHARP, COLOR and CONTRAST. As many here have no doubt figured these modes artificially enhance whats being displayed on screen. If you have your display properly calibrated, or even close to it, these modes will be of no use, since all they do is push the color and contrast. You could do as much with the settings of your own tv. Now, the SHARP feature has me scratching my head. Automatically you would think EE, right? Yet, that's not what it seems to do on the whole. What I noticed was an improvement in background detail rather than EE on everything in plain sight. That was nice, as it made some of my dvds come to life a little as I've never seen. Even without the XDE features, the upconverting of this player at least rivals the Oppo I mentioned and is superior to all the other players I've mentioned. Now, it's my understanding that this player is on par in its up-convert to Xa2. Those owning that player will probably not be as impressed, if at all. This player is PAL/NTSC and can be made region free. I was able to play some of my region 0 PAL discs with this player right out of the box. That was very cool. Bottom line, I'm very pleased with this player, since it's been the best up converter I've had. Just so I've said it, No, this does not make sd dvds look like hi-def blu-rays. However, it has delivered on the promise of making my sd dvd collection look better then it ever did before.