DVD player to match infocus 4805

[JW_in_Philly]

I'm sure this has been covered ad naseum, but with 30+ pages of posts, it's hard to find. Have a ~5 yr old panasonic rv30 dvd player that works great, but am about to upgrade the Quasar 27" (that's right, Quasar) with an Infocus 4805 projector. I figure I would be wasting my time without having a progressive scan dvd player with the new rig (right?), but since I haven't shopped for a dvd player in 5 yrs I'm out of my element. What I've come up with so far...

Costco (where I'm buying the projector) has a toshiba 3960 which is really damn cheap ($58 ) and reviewed well by hometheaterhifi.com, but will I gain more by upping the ante a bit into the $100-200 range or do I really need to jump into another bracket >$250 to see much improvement? I understand how 480p works vs 480i, and the pj is 480p so a player that ups to 720 or something is pointless (right?). Other than needing component out I'm unfamiliar with new processing technology or other guts/features that would improve my viewing pleasure.

Not afraid to spend a bit since I only buy a new player every 5 years but prefer to avoid super high end (the old panny was $250 connected by optical which seems to have disappeared on the budget players).

Will be mating with a Denon 2800 (and infocus 4805 pj)

Thanks for the help on such a vanilla question.

[Bestinshow]

"I understand how 480p works vs 480i, and the pj is 480p so a player that ups to 720 or something is pointless (right?). "

[Bestinshow]

oops sry for the above ^^^^^

anyways you said that, i have the 4800 which is basically the same as the 4805 except you get the component hook ups in the back and i have to use an adaptor. anyways the projector will support 480i (normal TV), 480p (progressive DVD) , 720p (HDTV) and 1080i (HDTV)

So, im not sure if there are DVD players out there that can upgrade 480p to HDTV, but that would be awsome and i would need you to lety me know...


also I BOUGHT MINE AT COSTCO TOO ; )

[Shane Martin]

For the money you should get the Oppo 971. Extremephono.com is the place to get it from. Feeding DVI out to your projector will produce the best image quality. With DVI you are not doing any D to A conversion like you would thru component.

Having owned and returned 3 Toshiba players, I can not recommend them to even my worst enemy.

If you don't use the DVI connection on the Oppo, it won't pass progressive scan. It's one of the top players on the market and only $200.

[AndrewM]

The 4805 has the Faroudja processor in it, so you can hook up just about any DVD player to it and get great results, even through a standard S-vid connection. I have an X1 (older brother to the 4805) and that's how I have an older Panasonic player hooked up (CP-72), I tried hooking it up with the progressive out from the DVD player and I couldn't tell any difference between the two methods.

Some people have reported good results using an upconversion player to the 4805, but I wonder how "real" those benefits are as you are going from a 480i source upconverting it to 720p or 1080i and then the projector is down-converting it back to 480p, that extra processing step seems un-needed and could cause more problems I would think (lip-synch/delay issues), but I have no experience with it so take my advice with a grain of salt.