BEST 480i ? UPSAMPLING NOT NEEDED.

[toyz4boyz]

I am in the process researching plasmas and DVD players. I MAY go with one of the new Fujitsu 40 series plasmas, which sport the superb AVMII processing.

As far as I can tell, I probably don't need an upsampling DVD player, as the Fujitsu probably would do a better job of scaling than many DVD players.

So what would be a good choice for a high quality DVD player with 480i output, minimal artifacting, fast layer change, great colour, tweakablility, and an HDMI output? It would be nice if it could pass pluge via the HDMI and also below-black.

I don't want to spend a fortune, as HD-DVD/Blu-Ray is just over the horizon.

I know that Arcam has a good player, but the 'Secrets' review of the chip Arcam uses was only lukewarm.

Suggestions?

[Bob Pariseau]

Keep in mind that not all players with an HDMI output actually implement 480i over HDMI. The Pioneer Elite 59avi is one of the few that does, but may be beyond your desired price point.

If you are willing to let the player do the de-interlacing and just leave the scaling to your plasma, all the HDMI players will support 480p output. The Panasonic S97 gets lots of good comments here for example, given its low price.

The "Options/Impressions" thread at the top of this forum has a summary table in the first post that will get you started on finding HDMI players at specific price points.
--Bob

[Paul Bigelow]

The Sony DVP-NS975V outputs 480i via HDMI.

Paul

[toyz4boyz]

Bob

Thanks for the good advice, and for showing me that I have to choose my terminology carefully! (ie. I must differentiate between scaling vs upsampling vs deinterlacing):o

I saw the 42" Fujitsu ED in just the setup you described: The Fuji was fed a 480p signal from a Panasonic S97. The image looked great, with no artifacts and great noise-free blacks. Of course, since the Fuji is an ED, no scaling was required.

I guess the question is....which device will do the better job of deinterlacing? The Panny DVD player, or the Fujitsu AVMII processor?:confused:

And then scaling becomes an issue with the Fuji HD panels. I am quite confident that there would be nothing lost if I were to have the Fujitsu do the scaling to it's HD resolution.

And Paul...thanks for pointing out the Sony. Does it get good reviews?

regards

toyz4boyz

[Paul Bigelow]

toyz,

For this forum, start here:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?postid=4597176#post4597176

I have the player. Secrets of Home Theater has reviewed it and has given it good marks. I think it very nice as well. There have been numerous reports of a tray locking problem that requires service, but, so far I've had no problem after owning it for about 5 1/2 months. Others have reported a problem after a few days. There does appear to be factory update that resolves the reporte "tray lock" problem.

Paul

[Bob Pariseau]

I use a Fujitsu P50 (30 series) HD plasma with a Pioneer Elite 59avi player. I recently completed a re-look at calibration and setup and concluded that I slightly prefer sending HDMI 480p to the plasma and letting the plasma do its own scaling. Now the 59avi has highly regarded scaling, so it's significant I think that the Fujitsu still appears to do a better job. Since the 40 series panels are supposed to be even better than the 30 series, I would expect this would hold true with the newer panels as well. [The 30 series doesn't allow 480i digital video input, so I can't do that experiment.]

Note by the way, that if you send HDMI 480i to your plasma you will avoid any "Macroblocking Bug" issues in whatever player you select. A lot of the lower cost players shipping today use a particular Faroudja chip that generates this Bug, but the Bug is only triggered at 480p or above.

Do make sure you pick a player that properly passes along Blacker than Black and Peak White data at HDMI 480i or 480p (whichever you choose to use). A number of the lower cost players have problems preserving the full digital range of data coming off the DVD and the Fujitsu plasma, when its levels are properly calibrated, *WILL* make good use of that data as long as you select a player that properly passes it along. The video imaging digital data range has Black at digital 16 and Reference White at digital 235. The Blacker than Black data is luminance (gray scale) data in the range from 1 to 15 (0 being a reserved value) and the Peak White data is data in the range from 236 to 254 (255 being a reserved value).
--Bob

[toyz4boyz]

Paul and Bob

You rock! :D

Great advice. Thanks a million!

toyz4boyz