which dvd player? (1 Viewer)

[Frank joe]

hi , i am looking to upgade my current dvd player(a simple toshiba). i was thinking of pioneer elite 45a or 47ai. what other choices should i consider. my toshiba does have that zoom feature. i now most people consider that no good. but it does get ride of those annoying black bars. my tv is r/p 60" mitsubishi ( not h/d). can i still use a progressive scan dvd player?????? in the future i will get a h/d tv.
frank

 

[ChuckSolo]

The Pioneer players are great units. I have a friend with one and he loves it. I don't know about the zoom feature though since he ALWAYS views movies in their Original Aspect Ratio (the way it was shown in theaters for the most part), the reason for the black bars by the way. Yes, you can use a progressive scan player on a non digital TV, but.....you cannot utilize the progressive scan capability unless you TV is digital. You can however use the player's component output connections to your TV's component input connections and get a pretty darn good picture in non-progressive mode. By the way, check out the Panasonic line of DVD players. Most of them do have the zoom feature if you really must use it. I have one and am very, very happy with it. Keep in mind that zooming a DVD movie to fill up the screen is cutting off most of the viewable sides of the movie you are watching, plus, the nice resolution you get from watching the DVD un-zoomed also suffers. For some people it takes a while, but you'll be surprised at how you forget about them once you stop zooming your picture and watch a movie as it is supposed to be viewed, i.e., in its Original Aspect Ratio. You won't find too many people on this forum that cotton to zooming a letterboxed movie.