Best DVD player for video and CD audio... (no DVD-A/SACD) (1 Viewer)

[Shane Martin]

Kevin,
I'm considering that player as well. The only other ones that I know of are either the LG one which is a clone of this one in Canada and the smaller name ones from Momitsu and companies of that sort.

This is the only one I know of right now with 1080i thru component. For $200 shipped I'm pretty interested in it. I'm going to see if I can get one from a local dealer and see if the upconversion is worth a hoot. I can confirm from an AVS thread that it will indeed upconvert to 1080i thru component.

It's not supposed to be allowed and I anticipate this player to go away shortly if you know what I mean. The build quality and smallest nature scares me alot and I personally wouldn't think that the sound will blow my doors off for cd audio if that's a concern. I do anticpate it to blow my doors off video wise if this upconversion is what its cracked up to be.

I'll let you know if I pick one up.

 

[Kevin C Brown]

Yes, let me (us!) know.

 

[John-Tompkins]

Below is part of a review done be keohi for the LG Canadian version. The Zenith dvb318 just came out and by all acounts so far, its a winner. It may or may not even be an improvement over the Canadian LG, but nobody has done a direct a/b..


This player outputs 1080i via component on all DVD’s … not just my test discs. There is no “active” copy protection that prevents the playback of regular DVD’s. 1080i from this unit here is actually very good. Very good indeed. It was clearly better than the RP91 on 480p and then marginally better than the RP82 with SDI processing through a HTPC to 1080i ($1500 in added equipment costs to do this scaling).
On the DVD resolution patterns, there was much less moiré than the conventional players. Amazing at how stable the 1080i scaling was via component.
Next up, we looked at it versus the Bravo D-1 scaling to 720P via DVI. The Bravo D-1 is a $200 US DVI capable player with one of the best scaling images out there for 720P. The drawback of the player is that it is buggy and the build quality smells of “cheap” plastic. So the comparison was now between the 1080i Component output from the LG with the Bravo’s DVI 720 signal. Looking at the 720 P image on the TVL 200 pattern, it was fairly solid as expected. Then the surprise as we flipped to the component input and looked at the 1080i signal from the LG. Aside from a minor difference in overscan, the 1080i image was just as solid as the 720P DVI image and it showed slightly less moiré patterns than the Bravo D-1. The LG 1080i was better by a hair, but for all intents and purposes, the performance was identical. This slight difference could never be seen on a real film.

I just ordered one and Im going to compare it to my Denon 2200 (via Panny ae500 projector) hopefully by next weekend.