Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater Progressive dvd shootout

Came across this article that readers might be interested in:
the link

Heh. I linked that earlier in a thread in the stereo forum. While great for those concerned about video, it didn't really cover audio in any shape I could find.

Chess, my illusions continue to be shattered. First, about a year ago I had $2,000 saved up for a pair of bookshelf speakers, then I try the $320 Axiom M22s from factory outlet and find out that they sound at least as good.

Now, I happen to have $8,000 around, so I'm about to run out and get that $8,000 Krell DVD player because I want a "high-end" picture, when I find that I can save about $7,800 by buying that "crappy" Panasonic. Wonder how many DVDs and CDs I can get for $7,800.

Quite a few...

The problem with the Panny is that it's nearly impossible to find because it was discontinued. Seems it was canibalizing Panny's higher end sales. If you can't find it, I believe the 72 is the same internals but with a 5 disk changer.

That's a great way to look at it John:
$7800 extra for dvds,
at about $25 a pop...works out to312 dvds
at about 95 minutes average viewing time
comes out to about 494 hours of viewing.
Assuming you don't go to work but stop for regular breaks that is about 70.5 days of straight movie watching!!!

Personally i have a Panasonic and even though it is rated at the top, i'm not liking it and we're going to go looking for something else.
The picture is fine i suppose (not progressive scan though which is the primary reason it is leaving) but many other things about the Panny have turned me off.

I don't know how much stock i can put in that test they did but it sure looks more thorough than the standard video tests performed.

The RP-82 has been rated the top for video quality below $1k by every single reviewer I can think of.

The latest models from Denon (1600 and 3200 I believe) are very highly regarded. Pretty much all the manufacturers besides Panny and Denon are still shipping players with the chroma bug...

Personally I've never looked back since moving to an HTPC.

Good lord, man...with that kind of dough why not get yourself a projector setup?

I love my Toshiba SD-4700, has the chroma bug, but I guess I'm not that sensitive to it, so it's not a big issue. Great OSD, great flexibility, DVD-A, MP3, CD-R, CD-RW, DTS, progressive scan etc. I was looking for the Panasonic, but they weren't available. I'm not the least bit sorry I bought it, and it's a workhorse, with three kids constantly playing Toy Story, Monsters Inc etc, you begin to appreciate what a fine unit it is. Sometimes it runs nonstop for 12-14 hours easily, if I were to buy another DVD I'd really have to check out the Toshiba's again.

My big problem with the Panny is the layer transition time. Nearly 2 seconds is ridiculous and would slowly drive me insane. My Denon DVD-3800 is seamless at about .25s. If you don't know the exact moment of the transition and really look for it, you won't even know it's there. Even then, it's pretty hard to catch.