Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater Looking for a DVD player

Greetings,

I am looking to purchase a DVD player for my home theater system. I have a Panasonic TH-50PH9UK (50" plasma - 720p). I have one HDMI input available on the TV, plus a component input. I know very little about DVD's, and I have a few questions.

1. Do HD DVD's even work with 720p native resolution? Is there any reason to even consider an HD DVD player? I am thinking that even an HD DVD player (or my TV) will downscale the 1080p HD signal to my TV's native 720p, so there would be little benefit to purchasing an HD DVD player. Am I correct? I hope I am wrong, but think I am correct, so on to the next question:

2. I have heard mixed reports on my TV's internal upscaling abilities, so I do not know whether it is worth it to get an upscaling DVD player or just use a basic player and allow the TV to do the upscaling. Is there any way to determine this prior to purchasing the DVD player?

Since there are numerous upscaling players available under $200, budget is not an issue. However, if my TV will do the upscaling as good as or better than a DVD player, then I could just buy a good, regular DVD player and spend the saved money on something else.

One thought is that it would seem that upscaling an image from 480p to 720p is creating an image from something that wasn't there in the first place, whereas downscaling an image from 1080p to 720p is simply using less of what was there, Does that downscaling result in a better picture? (This is a layman's analysis and could be completely off base.)

Any recommendations on particular players would also be appreciated. Thanks in advance for your help.

Check out the Oppo DV-981HD, around the $225 mark, competes with much higher priced DVD players. HDMI only though.

95% of the movies I watch are rented, until my local video store starts supporting HD / Blu DVD, I dont' see the need to go to that format.

Paul

You could look at one of the low end HD DVD players like the toshiba A3. MSRP is $299, you may be able to find it cheaper than that.

These players only output 1080i or 720p. I have the A2 and find that it does a great job of upconverting standard DVDS, and HD DVD looks amazing even on my 720p TV.

I am hesitant about buying tons of HD DVD movies incase the format flops, so I use netflix.

If HD DVD does not make it on top of the 'format war' I still feel like I have a great upconverting DVD player out of the deal.

1) Yes, you can set your player to output at 720.

2) I just got a Panny BD-P1400 Blue Ray player and it resolved my TV's inability to properly convert 24p to 60p (3:2 pulldown). For instance the opening scene of Revenge of the Sith used to stutter during the pan down to the ship. The internal processing of this player can do this properly.

I would personally get either a Blue Ray or HD DVD player (your choice) instead of a regular DVD player for these reasons:

1) You'll be able to play Hi Def DVDs
2) Internal Vid processors
3) Internal processing of DD True HD and DTS HD will allow you to pass it to your receiver via PCM. This is great if you have an HDMI receiver that doesn't have these decoders built in (Like me)

An A2 would work great if you can find one. I agree that the upconverting of dvds is great.

yeah, now when you pause an SD DVD, you get a nice clean pic...no jaggies or any of that.

I agree with something like the A2, for the same money or a couple dollars more it makes sense to get a good upconverting HD player.

Amazon has a promotion on Toshiba HD-Dvd players where you recieve 10 free HD-DVD's with the purchase of a player.

Our local video rental stores don't rent HD movies either, but I tried out Netflix about 6 weeks ago, and I will never go back to driving to the video store. Netflix has tons of movies and for the price, can't be beat. The way I lookat it, for the cost of 1 DVD, even at the cheap 1st day release price of about $15, I can get a decent Netflix plan and have access to all of the movies I want, including the HD-DVD and Blu-Ray formats. If you factor in the cost of a HD movie, then it can really be a no-brainer.

I love netflix. I watched like 10 HD DVD's so far this month for $13.99 (actually it was free b/c I am still on my trial period.)

We have one video rental store that has HD DVD's and it is on the complete other side of town. They are $5.00 a pop, and they have a VERY limited collection.

You do the math