Suggestions for my video woes

[jrd]

Hope to hear some excellent suggestions (as always) from this esteemed group. TV is a Sony KDL52XBR5 LCD. HD cable box, Panasonic DVD-S97 standard def DVD player, and an old Sony ES receiver. Cable box and DVD player are connected directly to the TV via HDMI, because the old receiver doesn't have any video processing. The dilemma is this--HD channels look spectacular, standard def channels look very average, and some DVDs look great, but others, terrible. For example, Raiders of the Lost Ark looks terrible, but Cars looks great. The Panny DVD player outputs 720P. I wondered perhaps if the HDMI cable was bad, but then I couldn't explain some movies looking great. So, there are several questions:
1. Any guesses why some movies look great and others not so much?
2. What would you change to improve video performance? Had my heart set on replacing the Sony receiver with a Denon AVR-3808ci, but I read a review that didn't care much for the video processing provided by the Faroujda chip. 5803 is a little out of the budget. I would consider a Blu-ray player that upconverts standard redbook DVDs, but am still on the fence. Perhaps an outboard scaler? Immediate priority is improving movie viewing, and budget is about 2K or less. As always, I appreciate and welcome all responses.

[George Bellefontaine]

Dvds tend to vary in picture quality but these are usually older releases prior to 2000, and even these ( unless they are non-anamorphic ) usually look pretty good upconverted. It's my understanding that the Panasonic S-97 is an excellent upconverting player. Make sure the player is doing the upconverting and not the TV. And I often find that 1080i often looks better than 720p, so perhaps that's worth a try. My dvd of Raiders looks very good on either my 720p Yamaha projector ( upconverted to 1080i ) and of course looks even better when upconverted to 1080p on my BenQ projector. Anyway, check that the player is doing the upconverting and perhaps try 1080i.

Good luck.

[jrd]

Thanks George. I bought the S97 because I had heard and read the same--that it was a good upconverting player. I've got it set to output 720P--I will try 1080i and see how that looks. Unless I'm missing it, I can't find any settings on the TV to choose its output. It is helpful to know Raiders looks good on your machines; it helps me narrow things a bit.

[George Bellefontaine]

Once you set the resolution on your player it will do the upconverting and override the tv. If you choose 480i in the player then the tv would do the upconversion. You can always try that too, to see if the tv upconverts better than the Panny, though I really doubt that.

[jrd]

Your suggestion to try 1080i was just the ticket!! I previously had that DVD player in the bedroom, attached to a Sony 26 inch LCD that can only do 720P, so I had set the Panny to 720P. I switched it to 1080i and noticed an immediate, significant improvement in several of the movies that looked rather poor earlier. Thanks again, and stay warm up there...

[George Bellefontaine]

Thanks again, and stay warm up there...

I'm trying, jrd

Glad to hear 1080i is working better for you.