RP91 and non-enhanced DVDs...WOW! (1 Viewer)

[Gruson]

I finally bought an RP91 as my second DVD player for my home theater. I had heard it's scaling features were really good for non-enhanced DVDs.
That is an understatement!!!!
I put in Top Gun and it looks like an anamorphic DVD now.
Before my RP91, non-enhanced DVDs looked horrible on my 65" Mitsubishi 65907.
There are no jaggies and the colors are vibrant. Even my girlfriend could see the difference
Worth every penny!
As for enhanced DVDs, I really did not see much of a difference between the RP91 and my Toshiba 6200.

 

[Jeff Hoak]

Sounds like it arrived in one piece. You never know with UPS...

I'm glad you're enjoying it.

 

[HankM]

The RP-91 is great. I have had mine for almost 1 year. The scaling feature to me is essential!

 

[Sean Moon]

I couldnt afford a Panny RP91, so I got a JVC 75GD, which has scaling. I cant live without this feature right now, it is a wonderful feature that I wish all progressive players had. Hear that Faroudja?

 

[Mitch Davis]

Does anyone know if the RP 91's successor (whenever it's finally announced) will do scaling as well? I can't believe they didn't issue a variation of the 82 with this feature. From where I stand, it's absolutely essential.

 

[Juan_R]

The scaling on the RP-91 is great. Even though my HDTV does not lock with a progressive signal, the scaling on the RP-91 is superior to the one on my 65HX81. I am very happy with it.

 

[Sean Moon]

The RP82 uses the Faroudja chip, which does not do scaling. The 91 has the Genesis chip(i think) which does do the scaling. JVCs have the Mediamatics chip, which does scaling as well.

 

[Dmitry]

A little off track -- does anyone know if JVC XV-S60BK has the scaling feature and how good it is?

 

[Mitch Davis]

Or for that mattter, does JVC's XV-S500 (http://www.hkflix.com/hardware/jvc_xv-s50x.asp) do scaling?

 

[Mitch Davis]

Oops - Hank, just noticed that you actually HAVE a JVC 500! How does it compare to the 91?

 

[Lyle_JP]

I have the JVC 502 (the silver sister of the black 500). The scaling for both non-anamorphic widescreen and 4:3 material leave something to be desired on this machine.

First off, scaling non-anamorphic widescreen (letterboxed) discs: This looks great, but only works when the disc has been properly flagged as letterboxed. There is no manual override on this player, so if the letterboxed disc is not flagged as such, it will treat it like 4:3 material and just shrink and add sidebars to the already letterboxed image, making it the size of a postage stamp.

The 4:3 scaling is a major improvement over the 4:3 mode on my Mitsubishi TV (which features bright grey bars which are never centered, and which over-squeezes the image to about 1:1), but it still has noticeable problems. It introduces "vertical jaggies", which are like the problems the worst early DVD players had doing anamorphic downconversion, only they happen on the vertical plane. This is really only noticeable with animation (the hard edges really show it) or any text on-screen that moves in a vertical fashion, but when you do notice it, it's very distracting.

The JVC 500 and 502 are simply no match for the RP-91, but hey, I got my JVC new from uBid for only $109 + shipping, so I'm not exactly complaining. In its price range, nothing even touches the JVC on features.

-Lyle J.P.

 

[Sean Patrick]

i was just about to post some glowing praises for my RP91 after I tested all my non-16:9 discs in it this week (to set user settings for misflagged discs, etc).

I SWEAR that there are some non-enhanced titles that look better than some 16:9 dvd's with the RP91. The scaling is THAT GOOD.

I have noticed something, though. When i raise the "gamma" in the user settings a few clicks with discs it upconverts, I get a much more pleasing image. I've decided to set my non-16:9 dvd's this way in the user settings. Any reason why this might be?

I'm also curious if us RP91 owners could start a list of DVD titles that people have found to benefit from one or more of the MANY user settings you can save for each dvd (well, up to 200). I tried adding some NR and/or adjusting the sharpness for titles with excessive EE but have decided not to do that in the future because of the additional loss of fine detail.

thanks
sean