Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater do i need a new dvd player???

k. i have a Pioneer 275s dvd player which i use for my music (mp3's etc) and movies. i was wondering what kind of improvement would i see if i got a Denon 2910 or the like? is it worth it? would i get better audio and video? or should i expect just about the same? i have a 55" Samsung 5515W rear projo tv....pioneer 1015tx receiver, and now some Axiom M60Ti towers, and the rest is infinity with paradigm subs. TIA

From what I have read on the 2910 the short answer is "Yes"... The 2910 is a bit pricey for a DVD movie only player, but if you are into the DVD audio formats, it should be pretty nice. You are paying somewhat for that "universal" playing ability. The Pioneer has done you well, I am sure, with it being a progressive scan unit, but, and this has been debated high and low here, so this is only my "opinion", an "upconverting" player like that makes a nice difference in perceived picture quality. By that, I mean that it tries to similate HD from a regular DVD, and will do a very good job at it, filling in missing data between the 480 lines on the DVD and the 720 lines for HD. It does NOT make a regular DVD magically transform into a HD-DVD or Blu-Ray type true HD DVD, but a good upconverting player will get you as close to that as possible without actually being HD. I have a Panasonic S97 DVD player and it does, in my opinion, an awesome job with the video and has some enhanced audio features too. You can really fine tune the picture and audio with it... The Denon 2910 should be the same with a lot of configuration options and choices to tickle your fancy. Because of these tuning abilities, I would say that you COULD get better sound too. Of course, you can tweak it completely "wrong" and get worse sound, but a wuick reset of the setting and you could start over again. Match it with the popular 1015tx receiver and you may notice that little extra _______ (fill in the blank) that you've been missing. It won't be as noticable as getting your M60Ti fronts over whatever you had in the past, but there is a possibilty.

I wish I had more of a definitive answer for you, but since audio and video quality is so subjective to each person, what is better to one person, may not be for another.

Good Luck!

um. for upconverting....my tv does only 1080i, or 480p, it does not do 720p. will this still work for me then? can i upconvert to 1080i instead of 720p? is this basically the same thing? TIA...and actually, the M60ti's are great, but...my Inifity Reference 2000.6 towers are pretty damned good, and they should be since they were $2000.00 in 1997 for the pair

Man you got ripped off dude just joking....

Yes, most upconverting DVD players will upconvert to 1080i. I'm a bit suprised your TV won't do 720p if it will do 1080i, oh well. For my Sanyo Z2 projector, I've found that 720p looks better as that is the native resolution of the projector. You may also find that 480p looks better than 1080i, it all depends on the TV and/or DVD player you select. Some TV's have a better scaler than the DVD player, so you may find just sending a 480i signal to the TV and have it do the line doubling will achieve a better result.

well, i bought this Tv 3 years ago...so ya...technology changes very fast indeed. 720p was not even around at that time.

I was talking about the Infinity's

oh. well, rest easy my friend. i didn't pay that much. that was just retail price. since i worked at the store, and the price dropped in the computer, i got them at cost for 465.00 back in those days. so i'd say i scored there too. i tend to always find good deals, such as my new M60Ti's...i'm a cheap ass you see

I own the Pioneer 535 and the Denon 2910. I have them both hooked up to my system. I use them at the same time, and usually will have a DVD in the 2910 and 535 at the same time, switching between them.

I just bought the 2910 recently (a couple of months ago) to improve things.

My experience is that while there were improvements in picture quality, they do not justify the price difference. DivX support with my Pioneer is much better than the 2910. The 2910 can play MP3 better, but it supprisingly lacks any decent features for MP3 (play lists, repeate ... etc).

I have a dedicated CD player. The quality of the 2910 is not much better than the CD player.

Saying all that, I will still keep the 2910 because of the nice playback features and the picture customisations. However, I still maintain that the quality difference does not justify the price paid.

Hi Jinx,

A moderately priced ($220) Panasonic DVD-S77 with HDMI outputs and upconversion gets a very high rating from my former colleague and ultra-critical reviewer, Sound&Vision's tech editor David Ranada. It also has excellent DVD-Audio playback (no SACD) and, according to Ranada, "superior progessive-scan video. . .free of jaggies on diagonal edges".

He ranked this model far ahead of a Toshiba and a Samsung, both of which he noted had "mediocre progressive-scan video".

Regards,

And the S97S is even better