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Best Upscaling DVD Player

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Best Upscaling DVD Player

Old 05-07-12, 05:02 PM
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Best Upscaling DVD Player

What are some of the best Upscaling DVD Players?
Old 05-07-12, 05:15 PM
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Re: Best Upscaling DVD Player

Okay, I'm by no means a Blu guy. That being said, I've always heard that the best DVD upscalers are Blu players. Personally, I'm using a Philips upscaling DVD myself but that's primarily because it can be region unlocked and takes both PAL and NTSC natively. If I just wanted to upscale basic region 1 DVDs, I'd get a cheap Blu player.
Old 05-07-12, 06:29 PM
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Re: Best Upscaling DVD Player

Yes to the above. Spend 100 bucks on a blu-ray player. No reason not too.
Old 05-07-12, 09:08 PM
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Re: Best Upscaling DVD Player

I don't think being a blu-ray player has anything to do with abilty to upscale DVD's. I think there are two different paths taken internally, so it just depends on what chipset technology a player uses, regardless of DVD or Blu-ray player. Problem is, there is no longer a focus on DVD players anymore. So straight DVD players that were the best may no longer be in production. Oppo is probably still among the best, but they no longer produce a DVD only player.
Old 05-14-12, 11:58 AM
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Re: Best Upscaling DVD Player

You can get a Blu ray player - (panasonic, sony)

Some combo players ( dvd/vcr) still available do upscaling ( Panasonic and Toshiba )

Also don't forget some the newer receivers also do a very good job of upscaling - depending on the chipset. ( Onkyo, Pioneer etc )
Old 05-14-12, 04:24 PM
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Re: Best Upscaling DVD Player

Originally Posted by mdnitoil
Okay, I'm by no means a Blu guy. That being said, I've always heard that the best DVD upscalers are Blu players. Personally, I'm using a Philips upscaling DVD myself but that's primarily because it can be region unlocked and takes both PAL and NTSC natively. If I just wanted to upscale basic region 1 DVDs, I'd get a cheap Blu player.
What model Philips are you using, though? If you're using the later models that disabled TV system switching (i.e. you could no longer select PAL or MULTI and it was forced to NTSC), then it couldn't take PAL natively: an NTSC conversion is "forced", unless you're lucky enough to get a hacked firmware.

Even at that, these same players cannot upscale PAL video properly through HDMI: what these players do (with HDMI) is they downconvert the PAL signal to NTSC (480) before upscaling, in effect, enforcing a standards conversion before upscaling. I also think they force everything to widescreen, even if it's encoded as 4:3. The only way around this on those players is to use component instead, which is what I have to do on my DVP-5992 that's on one of my "lesser" TVs.

Anyway, for someone wanting the best upscaling of both NTSC and PAL, I'd have to recommend either the out-of-production Oppo DV983H DVD player, or one of their Blu-Ray players (pretty much any model except the BDP-80, whose scaler isn't as highly-rated as the 983H or any of the other Blu-Ray models).
Old 05-15-12, 01:55 AM
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Re: Best Upscaling DVD Player

I brought my brother the Yamaha DVD-S1800BL 1080p Upconverting DVD SACD Player back in 02/28/10 from Amazon.com's Warehouse Deals for $66. It was a returned model. It is also region free. To this day it is still going strong.
Old 05-15-12, 07:47 PM
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Re: Best Upscaling DVD Player

The best are Toshiba XA2 and Oppo 93.
Old 06-09-12, 03:29 PM
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Re: Best Upscaling DVD Player

I had no need of upscaling until I got my 32 inch Panasonic LCD. About the same time, I got a Panasonic Blu Ray for $60 off Amazon (cheapest, most basic model at the time). When I compare its upscaling to my Pioneer region free DVD machine, the Blu Ray is clearly sharper and more vivid. My advice is, get a lower priced Blu Ray; won't cost more than $20-30 more than a new DVD. Then you'll be totally fixed for the foreseeable future.

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