Malata 520 good enough to be primary player?
 

Is this player good enough to be my primary player?

short answer- yes.

seems to be a very decent player in most respects.
i've only had one disc so far that showed de-interlacing shortcomings of the mediamatics chip.
after several days using this soley for everything, i just disconnected the cables and hooked them back up to my RP56.
i feel a little more comfortable with watching good NTSC stuff on the panasonic (the picture is consistently stellar),
but if i could only afford one machine, the malata with its all region versatility would probably be it.

its amazing to think, that a year ago at this time, i was still waiting for a truly good, afforadable prog scan player to be released.
all i could find was Toshibas and Denons and they both had issues and were in the $500 range.

now, for almost the same amount you can get two players (one with a flawless froudja chip, and another that converts Pal to NTSC).

amazing.

I just got my 520 in a few weeks ago. The progressive scan works great and looks gorgeous on my 55" widescreen. I just received an order of region2 titles that didn't get anamorphic treatment here in the states and weren't the greatest quality (Crimson Tide, Top Gun, GI Jane..also Eyes Wide Shut uncensored, though full screen, of course) here, but are top-notch region2 titles. Crimson Tide has animated menus, behind the scenes, rehearsals, joking around on the set, etc...and of course its anamorphic (as are TG and Jane). I had no idea what I had been missing until now.

I saw complaints on the older model's user-friendliness as far as menus and the remote, but to me the new 520 is very intuitive. The remote isn't top-grade, but the button placement was done fairly well and you "memorize" the layout fairly quickly. MP3 cds played without a hitch, too. Haven't looked to see if you can program track order or anything else yet, though.

The 520 replaced my 1st-generation Toshiba model, and no complaints so far.

i am also interested in what people have to say about this player as a primary player. i am considering upgrading to a new dvd player this fall and would like to have all-region playability (for the HKL bruce lee dvd's among others) if it could also handle all of my R1 NTSC titles well. are there noticeable chroma bug issues? how is the prog scan and non-prog scan output? etc. any other insights would be much appreciated. thanks!

i'm leaving mine unhooked until i can get a new breakout cable sometime this week, but
i don't recall chroma bug issues being much of a problem if any at all with this player.
the progressive scan is good, about as good as you'll get outside of a froudja based player like the Panasonic rp56.
i saw one NTSC film based transfer that combed badly. other than that, everything- PAL to NTSC looked very good.

don't have months and months of experience with it yet, and unless the build quality is so substandard that it blows out in 6 months (who can tell at this point) i would probably recommend this as a primary player.

its just so damn versatile.