The Panasonic RP62 discussion thread (1 Viewer)

[Randall Z]

Thanks BobJ

 

[EnzoP]

Has anyone picked up the RP62 yet? any opinions?
I just sold my DVD player and looking to buy a good progressive scan DVD player.

 

[Jon Duke]

Does anyone know if it does random play of mp3's? I've heard about just about every other feature on this player except for this.


Thanks

 

[JohnnyG]

Does anyone know if it does random play of mp3's?

Definitely. Within folders too. It's MP3 support was very impressive when I saw a demo.

 

[Richard Slay]

Could anyone comment on whether the 960i image that this player puts out is better than the 480p image?

Where did you hear about 960I? Which player are you talking about?

 

[MarkPayton]

Hmmm... Larry, I'm not sure where you got your 960i question from. According to the Panasonic literature, both the RP62 and RP82 output only 480i or 480p, so unless you're talking about running the 480i through a line doubler, those are your only choices. I brought my RP62 home yesterday and have only had a bit of time playing with it, and have yet to do an A/B comparison of 480i vs 480p. Will try it tonight and let you know, if that's of any interest to you.

Randall, my experience with the unit so far has been great. Here are some preliminary observations:

I got the RP62 in silver, simply to have some contrasting colors in my rack. In my opinion, this really is an attractive unit, and quite slim.

The build quality is a huge step up from the Panny A120U it replaced, but that may not be saying much.

The image quality in 480p is noticeably improved over the A120's 480i, at least in a few sample scenes from Lawrence of Arabia and Jurassic Park.

Have not yet tested the CD-R/RW read capabilities- will burn a disc tonight and see how it works.

My only issues with the player are: 1) the remote looks good on a coffee table (small, angular) but is very uncomfortable in your hands, lacks backlighting, and has some very small buttons that are tough to find in the dark; 2) the unit takes a long time to load a disc, at least twice as long as the A120U - perhaps this is because it is able to read so many formats that it has to go through an extended process to see what's there to play; 3) the unit tends to run quite hot - after 2 hours of operation it is VERY warm to the touch, whereas the A120 was only slightly warm.

This last issue is the only one that really causes me concern, as I have my equipment in a Salamander rack with a glass door, and I don't like the idea of anybody getting really hot in there (the Denon 3801 on the shelf below is just fine, but since getting the RP62 the temp is noticeably warmer after viewing a film). I'm interested to know if other owners are also encountering this concern with the heat of the unit.

Anyway, that's all for now - if anyone cares to know, I'll come back with more comments after some more playing tonight and tomorrow.

 

[EnzoP]

Hi MarkPayton, I would be very interested in any more comments you have about the RP62 as I would like to purchase this player sometime tommorow. Right now the only concern to me is this flicker problem everyone mentions, but I don't think even that would make me not buy this dvd player. The RP62 will be replacing my old 2 1/2 year old pioneer DV-525, which does not to progressive scan. I'm looking forward to seeing a nice improvement in picture quality, do you think I will be disappointed?

 

[Jon Duke]

I brought my RP62 home yesterday and have only had a bit of time playing with it, and have yet to do an A/B comparison of 480i vs 480p. Will try it tonight and let you know, if that's of any interest to you.

If you wouldn't mind Mark, I'd like to hear how an A/B test would work out between 480I and 480P. I hope you can share the results on here

 

[Randall Z]

Thanks for the input. i picked up an rp62 yesterday! Took advantage of BB's $200 rebate for 2-years of MSN, then I got three disney DVDs for 50% off (with the purchase of any DVD player). so when all was said and done I got the rp62, and 3 DVDs and only it only cost me $21.

Anyway, I hooked it up as soon as I got home. It is a noticeable improvement over my 3 year old JVC player. I will post more detailed review after using it more extensively this weeekend.

 

[MarkPayton]

Enzo and Jon: I did some extensive A/B comparisons last night and this morning of the prog scan vs interlaced output and found no evidence of the flicker bug people have fretted over in the RP56. I ran through many scenes in Toy Story 2, Bug's Life and Shrek to check for flicker or chroma bugs - re-running each scene at least 2 times in each mode. The net is I didn't find any evidence of the flicker bug - but I was hugely impressed by the clarity and sharp delineation of colors in these computer-generated images.
It seems a few other folks are testing for this same "problem" and not finding much. Here's a link toanother thread with some other folks' findings. This seems not to be a a big issue with the RP62.
As for the difference in quality of the prog scan versus the interlaced, I could not honestly see one. This does not necessarily mean the two outputs are equal in quality, but rather that a) my untrained eye could not detect a difference, and b) my Toshiba 40H80's internal line doubler improved the 480i image to the point where it was indistinguishable from the 480p signal. The good news here is that the image on both was beautiful!
So my advice to those on the fence about this player is to go ahead and get it, do testing of your own to see how good the image is on your own display, and if you don't like, you can always return it.
Interested to hear other RP62 owners' impressions...

 

[EnzoP]

I just picked up the RP62 today and right now I am happy I did. The first thing I did was pop in 5th Element and man, the picture was beautiful, I couldn't imagine it being any better. I often went from progressive to interlaced mode and there was no comparison, I don't think I could watch in interlaced mode any more
The next thing I did was try out the various features that came with this player. The MP3 feature was very impressive, you can scroll from all the songs on the cd and it will also move from folder to folder, in case you have your mp3s in various folders. Also, the audio quality was pretty good but I did not test this extensively as it was late at night.
The VCD feature was good, it played all my VCD's but it did have trouble on some of my poorly encoded VCD's, which is not the players fault.
After this I went on to check for the red flicker problem in Toy Story 2. After close investigation I must say that there was a little vibration/pulsating in the red cap where woody was making his speech. Now this is not a really a big problem and I will not be returning the RP62 because of it since it really doesn't bother me and I could not notice it in The 5th Element and other movies I tested so far.
I will post an update on the audio quality sometime this weekend when i have more time to test it.

 

[James St]

Enzo and Mark, how would you rate the layer change on the RP62? I plan on getting the RP82 and expect it to perform about the same as the RP62 on DVD Video. Thanks.

 

[MarkPayton]

James, good question. Well, I followed this link to find a list of discs with layer changes and where those changes occur, and then tried a few discs. I don't know of any movies with particularly troublesome layer changes, so I just did a random sample of RSDL discs from my own collection. After about 15 minutes of flipping discs, I have to say that unfortunately, the RP62 does still often pause at the layer change, although the pauses are brief.
Here are my specific observations:
Abyss: about a 1 second pause, noticeable due to activity in scene
Almost Famous: no pause detected
Apollo 13 DTS: 1 second pause, noticeable
Beatles Yellow Submarine: barely noticeable pause, on black screen during a quiet moment
Close Encounters: brief pause, though on blank screen (camera facing closed door)
My Fair Lady: no pause detected
Sound of Music:

 

[EnzoP]

I watched GLADIATOR today and noticed that at the 60th minute there was a 1 second pause, which was due to the layer change. The pause was very brief and did not disrupt the video or audio, it just continued playing the movie like it had been. I will let you know if I encounter this pause on any other DVD's I watch in the near future.

 

[James St]

Thanks, guys. Although maybe not seamless, it doesn't sound like it's going to be that bad from some of your impressions. At under $300 I guess it will be hard to complain if the layer change is not completely seamless.

 

[BobJ]

At under $300 I guess it will be hard to complain if the layer change is not completely seamless.

It's actually under $200, so it's even better.