Home Video Asylum

TVs, VCRs, DVD players, Home Theater systems and more.

The Pannys are a mixed bag...

...apparently the 56 & 62 suffer form MPEG artifacts and can give a flat videoish look, though their deinterlacing performance is reportedly exemplary.

The RP91 has the superior picture and freedom from MPEG issues. The killer with it? Combs on poorly flagged film material. On properly flagged films its beautiful. But if the DVD has improper flagging the player will switch back and forth between film and video mode at scene transitions until it settles back into film mode and you get combs. Drives me nuts on about 1 in 4 DVDs where there will be 10 to 50 combs. Sure, they are momentary and 3 out of 4 discs don't have a single one, but once you see them you start noticing them without even trying and they really break a films continuity. Rumor is that the Kenwood Soverign changer (of all things) has the RP91s picture quailty with superior deinterlacing properties due to using the Sage/Faroujda chip. Havn't seen one to judge for myself though.

It's becoming apparent to me that the DVD consortiums ineptitude in DVD-A is also apparent in the video side as well. Inconsistent DVD mastering / flagging plagues even new releases and the various players & chip sets all introduce their own artifacts and vary widely in their ability to deal with the consequences. Its as though they never created the equivalent of CDs redbook specs to guide content and hardware producers. Or if they did, they made the compliance with them so loose that no one really follows them.

The other thing that's striking is the infant level of player assesment in the field. Each new chipset / player has its own set of artifacts and the reviewers and users who get them compare them to last years players stumbles and proclaim them champions if they overcome them. Problem is they miss the 2 or 3 new problems they've never seen before for 3 months until they figure those out and then all you hear is how bad this player is for this new issue or that new issue. Then the next highly anticipated "killer player" comes along and the whole cycle happens all over again. I surf AVS Forums at times but the amount of useful thought demonstrated by most of the people posting there on DVD hardware is inconsistent at best.

Frankly, it's all a steaming pile of.....

joe


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  • The Pannys are a mixed bag... - Joe S 08:36:26 07/11/02 (0)


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