Ok, no holds barred, no price limit, what is the absolute best DVD player out there? (1 Viewer)

[MannyE]

I think the question of which is the absolute best is very hard to answer. I can assume that as the question was stated, it refers to the best DVD MOVIE (both sound and video) player bar none, regardless of price. Sine this in the Home Theater Forum, I will assume it also refers to a consumer player.



Referreing back to the original poster's comments indicating he was unaware of the mega-buck Krells of the world, I will also assume he is a relative newbie, which is fine!, by the way, and I think he has asked a great question.



A great question which is very difficult to answer.



I, for one, am not qualified to answer that question becuase I have not had a chance to sit down and compare, say, the latest cheap Apex or(insert any other cheap Asian brans here) with a DVI output that upconverts to 1080i or any of tht other HD formats, to say, a Linn Unidisk. Chances are, that the Linn Unidisk will be better...thousands and thousands of dollars better? I don't know. Maybe. I'd have to see it to give up a BMW for it.



Is the Denon 2900/3800 better than a Linn Unidisk (I'm not picking on Linn..just put in your favorite mega-buck player)? I don't know because I have not sat down to compare the pictures side by side.



What I will say, and this, I do think is absolutely correct. The best player out there is going to be unveiled at the 2005 or 2006 CES. It will have a blu-ray (or whatever they call it) laser, output a picure vastly superior to the 1st generation standard definition players at any cost, and if I went out today and blew 2 grand or more on what I consider a lame-duck player, I would be very upset because I'd be stuck with that player for many years...much like I am stuck with a DVD player now that has NO DTS... ahh the price of being an early-adopter..



So, go out and get a mid-priced universal player, don't worry about who has the best picure right now, because first of all, chances are you can't afford to buy the player with the best picture, and if you can, I am envious,

But even if you can afford a 5 figure player, you will feel compelled to keep it even after better, cheaper players hit the market (the blu-ray thingys), unless of course, you can afford to blow 5 figures on a player every year, which makes me green with envy again!



If you get a 200-300 dollar player now, you can wait a year or two while enjoying what will be a great (if not the absolute best) picture, while you wait for the true HD players to come out, and you won't kick yourself for having blown a grand or two on what will soon be in the same category as a standard definition TV.



THat's what I'm doing, because I've already been bitten by that dog more than once...anyone want to buy one of my very expensive Laser Disc players?????

 

[John S]

Hmm, I'm always looking for backup, or better LD players, so if the price is right??? lol



2006 CES? So in 2007 we may be able to get Blue Ray HD DVD? I wonder what titles will be available?



Heck, I didn't even think the HD DVD format wars were over yet? Multiple HD DVD formats forever? Should go over well, like SACD and DVD-A don't ya think?





How long before the current DVD format is dropped completely? Will it make it ten years? Heck, it took this long before there was this massive base of DVD player owners for Mr. Lucas to even release his early Star Wars stuff. I guess sort of the same with Indy Jones too....





So many unkowns still with it all, so much so, that I give HD DVD very little thought yet.

 

[MannyE]

John



You do have a point there. I also suspect anyone reading my post that just plunked down a grand or more for a player is pissed at my opinion! lol I've been there!



And you are right, the format, or changeover situation, more correctly, becuase I do think that the format is pretty much agreed on (anyone know different?) is still going to take a long time. Some of the people at local stations here in Miami are speculating in the 7 to 10 year range! Congress, I don't think has made any real progress yet on what the changeover date will be...so HD blu-ray DVD may yet be a long way off...



or not. Home video can actually overtake the pros in this case.



I'm not advocating a wait and see before you buy, but before you blow a wad at this particular moment in time, when a new generation of machines is about to hit the stores.



Like the first wave of players, these will be backwards compatible with CDs and regular DVDs, but unlike the first wave (where I got caught without DTS) they will probably have all the popular audio formats for HT (7.1 in all its incarnations), video options up the ying-yang (yes, that is a techinical term), and quite possibly , but hard to say in first gen offerings, SACD, DVD-A.



So buy something today...just don't spend more than 300 bucks or so and you will be happy. In just two years, which go by so quickly, you can have a little more chance at "future proofing" yourself or getting that much more advanced player which will have options that keep you ahead of the software.



And don't worry who has the best picture right now...they are all pretty close.

 

[EricRWem]

This HD-DVD war reminds me a lot of where SACD and DVD-A are right now. It's not going to sweep in and overtake DVD and conquer like DVD did over VHS.

Early adapters that jump at first light on HD-DVD are going to be falling into a very simillar scenario that the people who bought Betamax players back in the 70's did. Haste will most certainly mean waste in this circle for the next few years at least.

I think and hope DVD is going to be around for quite some time.

 

[Rolando]

oops... I meant Denon's top line in general. The 5900 and now the 5910 seem to really have their folowers...



I guess I should go test them out...

 

[John S]

I just can't blame anybody for stepping up and purchasing a more impressively built DVD player product.



Geeesh, the DVD players out today for the most part suck on build quality period. Light weight, flimsy trays, ect..ect.. Really quite shocking how bad their build quality has gotten.



So, I'd still give a big thumbs up on something like a Denon 5900 really.



I mean I love my Zenith DVB-318, but that thing is and I use the term loosely, "built" really cheapiefied and is one thing I really don't like about it in general.

 

[Rolando]

You wanna hear something really crazy? I am leaning towards the Denon 5910 because it sounds like it has the picture quality I am looking for but darn it... I just so LOVE the look of the Elite 59DVi. It just looks impressive...

 

[EricRWem]

How can we see anything about the 5910 right now? There's NO concrete information out there whatsoever. There's no way to know what kind of PQ it's going to give off or anything. We won't know anything about it until the CES.

 

[Chris_Liberti]

Like others have said the Panasonic RP82, XP30, and XP50 still have about the best picture and are cheap compared to the esoterics. They have accurate MPEG decoders that do not suffer from the chroma bug, they do not suffer from macro blocking and they have a decent deinterlacer built in althow I am sure it could be improved by going into a teranex or snell & wilcox processor by way of SDI.

 

[ChrisWiggles]

AGAIN!



This question may sound like a useful one, asking about the best player, but it really is a rather dumb one.



The question should be: "What is the best picture I can get with DVD as a source?"



Talking about HD-DVD, blue ray, WM9 sources, D-VHS, are completely a different topic.



When it comes to DVD playback, for the best picture possible from DVD, you're not talking about players AT ALL, but rather scaling capabilities.



SDI-modded player (really becomes just a transport) to a high end video processor, or an HTPC.



This is the best you're gonna get, talking about players is very novice, even scaling players which are cheap, and whose scaling capabilities are not even close to that of dedicated scalers, processing computers.



This kind of setup, of course, will cost thousands, and can easily cost tens of thousands, and also break into the 6-figures, and also needs a top display to take advantage of this.

 

[Rolando]

ok...



I guess I am just dumb then. Sorry to have offended with my novice question.



So for a typical RPTV like the Panny 47X54 or Toshiba 51X84 which are the 2 I am considering for this week-end, should I not bother with a better than average player?



Sorry for another newbie question but what is a "SDI-modded player". I take it we add an output to the player and send it to another processor? how much would this processor cost? Where can I get it?

 

[ChrisWiggles]

It's not a dumb question, but when you say price no object, what's the best DVD player, the better question would be either to limit that question by a realistic price, or to open it up to "the best picture possible from DVD," which then opens the question to literally sky's the limit video setups. That's an interesting discussion, but unless you're a millionaire here, actually interested in that kind of setup...



The sky is the limit with price, you can spend 6 figures on a Teranex, S&W, etc, and such setups, with very expensive displays, etc.



An SDI modded player uses a digital out to an outboard processor that does decoding and scaling/processing, etc.



And these are not sources that get sent to little RPTVs, and such here either...



In mentioning your RPTV choices, you're probably better off setting a real budget, and getting a good player for your purposes. When asking for the absolute best DVD picture, you can EASLY spend $20K on a video processor, and you can easily spend many multiples of that if you wanted to. It seems obvious to me that you're not actually wanting to do that, since that is the kind of money spent on sources to drive the absolute best projectors out there, not just regular RPTVs and such.



This will get you more useful advice

 

[Jim Rakowiecki]

Count one vote for the Lirpa labs DVD 7000 which was introduced on April first of 2004. Professor Lirpa himself has come out of retirement and dedicated two years of his life to building the ultimate DVD player. Those of you that have been around the audio world for a while are probably fimiliar with Lirpa's accomplishments and his reputation for building nothing less than the best and most innovative products on the market.

Pricing is hard to nail down as these machines are hand built and optimized for the system in which they are intended to be used and you really can't put a price on that kind of quality and service.

 

[Phil Nichols]

"The sky is the limit with price, you can spend 6 figures on a Teranex..."



I've seen a +$100k Teranex throwing a 30 foot 1080 progressive screen image via a huge front projector - Star Wars I originating from some lowly DVD player.



Spectacular is the only word ... but is this combination a best in class "DVD player" or a best in class "player of DVDs"??



BTW, I own a non-skipping, no Y/C Delay, no chroma bug, no layer pause Denon DVD 3800 feeding $50-per-foot component cabling and it's image on my lowly 58" CRT driven screen is spectacular too. But screen size and how far back you sit are the big equalizers. My Faroudja digital-sine-filter-equiped VHS player puts out at 25 feet viewing distance an image identical to my 3800 at 12 feet viewing distance. Our human vision systems can be seduced and/or fooled.

 

[Phil Nichols]

Jim,



"Lirpa labs DVD 7000"



Just curious ....... any idea what patents Professor Lirpa holds on deinterlacing algorithms? Are it's video DAC's at least 14-bits/216MHz units using 8X progressive oversampling and NSV technology to eliminate all video noise? Is the 7000's video response envelope user adjustable for any shape you want in case you don't like flat? Does it offer individual x-y pixel scaling so you can set the image aspect ratio of any film to anything you want? Are individual red/blue/green gamma adjustments available to the user? Does the 7000 incorporate individual horizontal and vertical infinitely adjustable filtering? Is individual red/blue/green delay adjustment available? Does it's DVD turntable load from the top instead of from the front? And most important of all - does the 7000 incorporate adaptive read capability so it will play any DVD made that any other particular DVD player will play - assuming a non-defective DVD - and always of course with no layer change pause whatsoever? (My ultimate pet peeve is when one player will play some DVD when some other player will not play the same DVD - this is unacceptable and should-not/need-not be.)



....just a sampling of mostly video stuff I'd expect in a world class finest available DVD player, hand-made or otherwise.

 

[derekP]

quote:quote: makes cds sound like vinyl. That's disturbing

Not at all. It's the goal. The reason SACD and DVD-A are so appealing is that the data they contain is truer to the original analog wave, while retaining the convenience of the shiny disc format. Close, but no cigar anyway.

 

[EricRWem]

I'll tell ya. Early indications really have this Integra 10.5/Onkyo 1000 unit looking like a king. I've even been seeing Krell owners tip their hat towards it already.



Might want to look into those...

 

[Jack Briggs]

Rolando, no question is "dumb" here.



Agreed about the build quality of most DVD players. My bedroom player's disc tray now is making rattling noises (so I have a disc inserted all the time). Completely unacceptable.

 

[John S]

Geesh, just look at the great info it has spawned in this thread...



Not a dumb question at all, lots of great info for perspective buyers in this thread.

 

[EricRWem]

Jack, what player is in your bedroom?

This thread definitely is getting