Hd Dvd??

[marco10]

Is there someone out there who can suggest a good High Definition DVD player? I have been looking at the Bravo 2 and the Samsung HD931. Are these any good? I have the Sanyo Z2 so it accepts DVI inputs. Is there any other company that makes these kinds of DVD players?

[JonMarsh]

I'm guessing that what you're really referring to is an upscaling DVD player. That's all the Bravo and the Samsung are. There are no true HD-DVD players released; the format hasn't been finalized, though it's getting close, and Sony is leading an alternative effort in the BLU-RAY group that wants to go their own way without the DVD consortium.

With regards to upscaling players, there are a limited selection currently shipping. The Samsung has black crush issues on DVI, and only does upscaling on DVI output.

I have one of the Liteon LVD2001, which does upscaling on component otuputs, but though it has a great MPEG decoder, their is some edge enhancement and loss of HF definition in the upscaling.

A better solution, in my opinion, is the Zenith DVB318, which has DVI and component outputs and upscales on both, and has a very clean, sharp output on 1080i component, using HD colorimetry. :T

It also has some other interesting features, like independent X and Y zoom, and an autoplay feature which bypasses the menus, FBI warnings, mandatory trailers, etc, and just starts up at the main movie feature. I picked one up a month or so ago, and have been quite happy with the quality, especially now on my NEC-9PG+ projector, running through a Key Digital transcoder and converted to RGBHV. Very natural and dimensional look on good material. It does have a little white crush on DVI, so polar bear wrestling on ice floes may be disappointing....



If you have HD component inputs, I'd give this one a try- for ~ $200, it's a no-brainer.

~Jon

[Sonnie Parker]

Yep... thanks to Jon... my 318 is on it's way.

You can pick one up at http://www.gochnauers.com/ for $160 shipped. A steal IMO.

Samsung has just released their 2 new models (HD841 and HD941) but I'm not sure how they perform.

[marco10]

Getting connected to DVI

I just got the samsung HD931, connected it with the DVI cable it came with and the picture on my Z2 is better at 1080i than on my Pany prog.scan at 480p. Now since the DVI cable it came with was too short I had to purchase a longer one (12 feet). The guy at the home theatre store told me that a DVI-D cable will work when DVI-I is called for, so I bought the Ultralink cable for $100. I connected that cable and could not get a picture, just snow, I then connected the cable it came with back again and voila! there was a picture. I then connected the Ultralink back again and tried to change some setting on the DVD palyer and the projector but could not get it to work, connected the other cable back again and it worked fine. My question is ... can a DVI-D cable be used in place of a DVI-I cable? If so what am I doing wrong?

[Brandon B]

DVI-I has the 4 small pins around the "+". These are for carrying an analog VGA signal. It should make no difference which you use since you are using the digital part of the cable, the big bank of pins. The fact that your 12' interlink cable is not giving you anything but snow leads me to believe it is a bad cable. Since 12' is well within the DVI spec at any bandwidth, the Interlink is probably defective.

You can get a decent DVI cable at that length for a lot less than $100, but at the very least I would take it back and exchange it. If you want to try another brand, I am sure I and others can give you some suggestions.

BB

[marco10]

DVI Cable

Brandon. I think you may be correct about the cable being bad. I have done some research and have found that the DVI-D cable should work. But I do have one concern ... on the Sanyo PLV-Z2 spec sheet it sates that the DVI connection is DVI-I. I don't know what the difference is between dual link and single link? do you?

[Sonnie Parker]

Hey Marco... welcome to the guide.


Here's some good info from The Projector People that might help you understand DVI better.