DVD players

Posted by: HansW on 04 April 2002

I am considering buying a dvd player and would appreciate some recommendations.

It will be used primarily with a 29 inch television set and occasionaly with a projector on a large screen and plugged into my Naim system (52/135/sbl/av1/250/Kan).

I looking for a reliable machine with excellent picture and sound quality for movies but do not care about its CD, DVD-A, SACD, MP3 etc ability or performance.

Natural contenders are the Pioneer or Sony machines. Is there any real value in going for Arcam or another specialist brand?

Thank you in advance for your input.

Hans

Posted on: 04 April 2002 by Frank Abela

The picture quality on a good machine is palpably better, particularly obvious when viewing through a projector.

The Arcam has a decent picture, but for the same money I would buy the Cyrus DVD7 which has a cracking picture closer to the Arcam FMJ but for DiVA price.

Regards,
Frank.
All opinions are my own and do not reflect the opinion of any organisations I work for, except where this is stated explicitly.

Posted on: 04 April 2002 by Scott Mckenzie

My personal favourite is the Pioneer 545, it is a slimline model but is currently winning all of the prizes in its price range...it has more lines than standard DVD players which seems to give a much better and smoother picture. PLus you can pick it up Multi Region for about £250 from superfi.

The Arcam is not actually all that good compared to others at the price range. The best sub £1000 player is the Denon 2800 (link here)

It was apparantly the best player around until Denon released their uber great one, for about £1500.

Of course their is the Meridian 8000 series, if you have cash to burn

Scott

Posted on: 05 April 2002 by Greg Beatty

Progressive Scan is a term you are likely to hear when you chat with the sales droids. My (limited) understanding is that PG gives a better picture but requires a PG-compatible TV (or projector?) to get the benefit.

We ended up with a $199 USD Panasonic that works well. We have had no problems playing any DVD or accessing any features of the DVDs. The on-screen displays are smallish with the Panasonic, but it rates as a solid, hasstle-free, reliable player. It also timed better than the Toshiba we tried

Most players also offer options for tweaking the picture. When we compared the Panasonic and Toshiba players, the Toshiba had a better picture. However, we were able to adjust the Panasonic (turn up contast and color a tad) to get a close to the Toshiba.

If you are using a smallish TV, the zoom feature is handy. This will let you zoom in a tad on letterbox movies to view then at full screen. You lose the outside edges but the image you see fills the screen. The Panasonic we have does not offer this feature.

- Greg

Insert Witty Signature Line Here

Posted on: 05 April 2002 by Top Cat

...does everything I ask of it, including playing all regions' discs. Sometimes the picture gets a bit garbled - fingerprints on the dvd are the usual culprit - but in the main it's given sterling service for 2 years now and I'm quite happy with it. If I come into a lot of lolly then I might upgrade, but no pressure.

TC '..'
"Girl, you thought he was a man, but he was a Muffin..."

Posted on: 08 April 2002 by HansW

Thanks for your input.

Will keep it in mind when I go shopping.

Hans

Posted on: 08 April 2002 by Peter Gear

I was told at the Bristol show (by demonstrator whos name I cant remember in the demo with AV2/175 etc) that Naim have plans to bring out a DVD player early next year!
Could be worth the wait.

Any comment from the guys at naim?

I'm thinking about the cinema route myself.

Cheers
Peter

Posted on: 09 April 2002 by Vik

Most recent versions should be able to place VCDs as well, the earlier ones could not do a proper job - heavy tracking errors. Philips should also learn how to layout menus on their remote like Sony.

Otherwise, truly brilliant, by any exacting standard.

vik