PaulKH
Second Unit
- Joined
- Oct 3, 2001
- Messages
- 413
Well I was at Best Buy, torn between getting a JVC XV-SA75GD (they only have the gold, not the black 70 model) and the Toshiba 4700. My main motivations for getting a new DVD player (to swap out my old Toshiba 2109) are to get better, progressive video, and so I can use the 2109 in my basement for exercise DVDs.
So I got the Toshiba 4700 today simply because it's black and I didn't really want a gold unit with all my other black equipment.
Got it home, connected it up (coax digital, component to TV, switch on the back to progressive output default). Turned it on - nice picture built into the player is displayed.
Setup - trivial (maybe more trivial because I'm used to my old Toshiba). Hit 'setup' on the remote, selected a 16:9 TV and told it to show 4:3 material in 4:3 with black pillars.
Next, I stuck in DVD of 2001 - the new anamorphic version. First thing I notice is the menu is shown 4:3 automatically with black pillars either side. Cool. BUT, when I go into scene selection, the 'cursor' is not positioned correctly over the scene selection. Maybe the DVD player is not adjusting for its reformatting? Seems like a bug.
There's a scene, after Floyd Haywood uses the (ahem) zero G bathroom where a huge shot of the moon is shown crawling slowly up the screen. On my old Toshiba, this looked like crap because as good as the Pioneer Elite is at deinterlacing, it couldn't cope with this image in any of its modes and it just ended up looking 'chunky' with doubled up bits of the image as it crawled up. (As an aside, the Panasonic RP56 had made this image PERFECTLY CRISP, but I returned it for other reasons, like it didn't allow switching of interlaced/progressive from the remote, nor could it do any scaling of any image to fix aspect ratio issues.) The 4700 showed the picture PERFECTLY in progressive mode also, and the same (chunky) as my old Toshiba when in interlaced mode (selectable from the remote, conveniently).
The color and contrast seem excellent also.
THEN we got to a bit in the movie where the spaceship is descending onto the moon and the interior is shown which (for those not familiar with it) is shot in an eerie red light. Ba-da-bing - chroma bug shows up. For those who haven't seen or noticed it, it's when you have a pretty saturated red picture and the scan lines look blurry and spread apart.
So I stick in Toy Story 2 and went to the obligatory chroma bug scenes - the big Toy Story 2 logo in the credits, and then the Zurg control room scene. Neither looked anywhere near as bad as my old Toshiba 2109, but noticeable nevertheless. Can I live with this? Probably.
So to net it out so far:
- Very nice setup and menu operation.
- Excellent progressive picture - MUCH better color/contrast balance than the Panasonic RP56 in my opinion
- Does have the chroma bug but not as bad as my older Toshiba
- Doesn't have the flicker problem like the RP56.
So I got the Toshiba 4700 today simply because it's black and I didn't really want a gold unit with all my other black equipment.
Got it home, connected it up (coax digital, component to TV, switch on the back to progressive output default). Turned it on - nice picture built into the player is displayed.
Setup - trivial (maybe more trivial because I'm used to my old Toshiba). Hit 'setup' on the remote, selected a 16:9 TV and told it to show 4:3 material in 4:3 with black pillars.
Next, I stuck in DVD of 2001 - the new anamorphic version. First thing I notice is the menu is shown 4:3 automatically with black pillars either side. Cool. BUT, when I go into scene selection, the 'cursor' is not positioned correctly over the scene selection. Maybe the DVD player is not adjusting for its reformatting? Seems like a bug.
There's a scene, after Floyd Haywood uses the (ahem) zero G bathroom where a huge shot of the moon is shown crawling slowly up the screen. On my old Toshiba, this looked like crap because as good as the Pioneer Elite is at deinterlacing, it couldn't cope with this image in any of its modes and it just ended up looking 'chunky' with doubled up bits of the image as it crawled up. (As an aside, the Panasonic RP56 had made this image PERFECTLY CRISP, but I returned it for other reasons, like it didn't allow switching of interlaced/progressive from the remote, nor could it do any scaling of any image to fix aspect ratio issues.) The 4700 showed the picture PERFECTLY in progressive mode also, and the same (chunky) as my old Toshiba when in interlaced mode (selectable from the remote, conveniently).
The color and contrast seem excellent also.
THEN we got to a bit in the movie where the spaceship is descending onto the moon and the interior is shown which (for those not familiar with it) is shot in an eerie red light. Ba-da-bing - chroma bug shows up. For those who haven't seen or noticed it, it's when you have a pretty saturated red picture and the scan lines look blurry and spread apart.
So I stick in Toy Story 2 and went to the obligatory chroma bug scenes - the big Toy Story 2 logo in the credits, and then the Zurg control room scene. Neither looked anywhere near as bad as my old Toshiba 2109, but noticeable nevertheless. Can I live with this? Probably.
So to net it out so far:
- Very nice setup and menu operation.
- Excellent progressive picture - MUCH better color/contrast balance than the Panasonic RP56 in my opinion
- Does have the chroma bug but not as bad as my older Toshiba
- Doesn't have the flicker problem like the RP56.
