Superbit (1 Viewer)

[Antonio S]

Many of the new adopters have checked in with good reports of how well the new players are presenting standard def DVD. I'm curious if any have checked out Superbit titles. PQ etc.
Thanks.

 

[Travis Hedger]

5th Element in DTS looks great!

 

[Antonio S]

Many thanks.
Most likely won't buy into the new format untill next year, when I upgrade my display.
Still buying DVD's, however.

 

[JohnRice]

Sure, in DTS. But how does it look in DD?

 

[Jeremy Little]

Much much worse, John.

 

[GerardoHP]

I'm curious too about standard DVD display by way of a HD player. The people at Best Buy claim HD players highly improve the quality of standard DVD's and I would really appreciate some verification, not just Superbit.

 

[Paul_Scott]

initially i felt the image on sd content was every bit as good as what i was getting with my Panasonic RP56 (which is and remains the best player i've yet used and its over 5 years old now!). However, i started noticing an anomoly that is showing up on fast pans in certain scenes (i believe it's referred to as dithering by some people). Now i have to be careful because what i am seeing has commonly been a criticism of the display technology- however the effect was much more diminished on the Panasonic (but still visible on certain scenes).
also, this could be something that is exacerbated by the settings i am using, or by the component/RGB connection i am using.
i have to play around and see if i can reduce it- as of now, I prefer the image on the Toshiba to the Malata i also use, and because it has a coax audio connection (until i can hook up the 5.1 analog connections)- it trumps the Panasonic and its optical only audio connect for sound quality.

if i can minimize the effect of the dithering, i'll have no problems packing the Panasonic up and stashing it away as spare- because at that point i would be able to say the Tosh is a net plus over the best i've had.

 

[ChrisWiggles]

Guys, it's just upscaling. Nothing new with regards to that from SD sources like DVD. Also, there's nothing special about superbit DVDs either.

 

[Paul_Scott]

well, just like any other tech feature, some brands/models will implement this better than others- but then i've never understood the rationale that a $200 dvd player should have higher quality scaling than a $2-5000 display.
i would have thought that just sending the digital signal (at 480p) to the display and letting the display scale it should have been enough.

i should add that i only have an XGA display, so anything i upscaled would just get downscaled by pj- which is why i haven't bothered before. But now that i have the Tosh and will be getting a HDMI cable for the HD content, i'll be curious to see whether there is a difference in my projectors upcaling vs it's downscaling. Maybe one will be noticeably different than the other.

 

[Antonio S]

So there would be no difference in PQ of Superbit over s DVD?

 

[Phil Menard]

Ok, I'll bite. I have the new Toshiba and I can clearly see an inprovement in most SD dvds, with a few negligible exceptions (older, poorly authored titles). I also have both the standard and Superbit CROUCHING TIGER HIDDEN DRAGON. The Superbit has an exceptional picture that is, on my Samsung HLR5668, significantly better than the standard def. There is a smoother picture that is more film-like and better detailed.

Superbit seems to divide people into passionate positions. I have a more middle of the road approach (that's one with a lot of "ifs" and caveats). It can depend on individual titles, or on the original masters. A lot depends on the dvd player (my pioneer for instance, when compared to the Toshiba, adds a distracting bit of noise to sharpen the picture) and the presentation system. I really noticed a difference with Superbit watching them on HDTV.

So if you have a SDTV, chances are Superbit won't impress you.
If you have a low-end dvd player, chances are Superbit won't impress you.
If you have a better dvd player and a HDTV setup, then SOME Superbit titles will show a definate improvement over their SD counterparts.
And finally, some titles look like garbage no matter how well encoded they are (ex. RIVERDANCE).

edited: pronoun trouble.

 

[Antonio S]

Thanks Phil.