Zenith DVB318: Any early reviews?
 

I read some of the reviews about the Zenith DVB318 player over at avsforum.com that a DVDTalker referenced. Has anyone here bought the Zenith? If so, please share your opinions, as I'm in the market for a new player and this one sounds great.

My Sony S560 has finally fallen victim to the apparently well-known 00:13 NO DISC error/frequent seizures & skipping, etc. Such a shame, I got a lot of use out of it, and it has a very well-designed remote. Sorry to see it go, even though it's been highly annoying to have it crap out near the end of about every 5th movie I watch (including my fresh-out-of-the-shrink-wrap ROTK).

I ordered mine, $160 shipped and it is due to arrive tomorrow. I will share my initial thoughts then. BTW, I have the Pioneer 565 and the Panasonic XP30 (outstanding!!!), so it will have to go against the best, IMHO. I will post tomorrow evening. :)

Um, that should read Pioneer 563.

Can I ask where you found it at that price? Maybe I'll buy one myself at that excellent price..... (after I hear your report, of course). -wink-

I don't have it, but have been keeping up with all the latest DVI players. The only real negative to the Zenith model is that it crushes whites over DVI. It's fine over component. They are supposedly working on a firmware upgrade to fix it though, but who knows.

Here's the place that has it for $160:
http://www.gochnauers.com/

I have it. It's very cool. Here's a quick round up of pros and cons:

<b>Pros</b>
1080i image for most better DVDs is beautiful
Component image is great
DVI image (despite some crushing of whites) is also very good
slim shape

<b>Cons</b>
white crush on DVI (but, as I said, not so bad)
weird ghosting sometimes when an image goes to black suddenly. Barely an issue
remote sucks (who cares)
limited picture controls (adjustments must be done on the TV)

That AVS thread (link) is incredible - and incredibly long. I've been quite active in it. There is also a FAQ about the player there (link) but it's very much a work in progress.

I also have it and love it. Saw Monster Inc. (again or 1st time depending on point of view w/family.) It looked awesome and there were amazed. I only use component out, so I can't talk about DVI. but people are starting to report that the new fireware (Unit build date of Feb 2004, Which I just got.) might have fixed the DVI white crush.

I should have also added to the <b>Cons</b> that 480p and 720p seem to have some color bleeding. It's obvious on the "DVD" screen when you start the player but less evident with program material.

Thanks for the info; I've also heard that the 318 does not handle 4:3 material (e.g., TV shows on dvd) or non-anamorphic 16:9 material correctly. Is this true? If so, how have you dealt with it; has it bothered you?

It handles it OK, but it doesn't have a pillarboxing function.

So if your TV locks into 16:9 mode when you feed it HD @ 1080i (which a lot of TVs do), you're going to end up with skinny-people vision. You will need to switch to 480p for 4:3 - and the 480p and 720p over component has quite a bit of color bleeding. Or you can switch to 480i via s-video. I wouldn't have the player if I had this problem, myself (my X1 doesn't lock into 16:9). My setup is complicated enough!


There's another issue with green under-saturation. This is another issue feeding DVD via 1080i - the simple version is :

NTSC and HDTV have different color matrixes.

Apparently some sets automatically use the HD color matrix when fed 1080i. The Zenith is outputting SD color matrix @ 1080i. This causes the colors to be off on some sets (the green is particularly noticable). Some folks have found service menu settings to fix it. There's also some little radioshack video attenuators/adapters that you can use to fix it given a little work.


(I've had one since last month, but I've been on honeymoon. Not much time to play with it at this point).

Just don't buy it from Best Buy, it's $259.99 there. :eek:

Assuming I can get one with 1080i over component, would the DVB318 qualify as an upgrade over my Panasonic RP-56 for use with a Panasonic 53WX42 HDTV (I don't know if my set locks into 16:9 for 1080i)?

Thanks for any input.

The only benefit the Zenith would have over the Panny is 1080i output. At 480p the Panny kicks it's ass. Also the Zenith has no formating options other than zoom for 4:3 material so if your TV locks into full screen mode with a 1080i signal you'll need to put the Zenith in 480p mode to use the TV's formatting options. So if you get the Zenith I'd keep the Panny around for 480p mode use.

It pains me to say it but i'm not in love with this machine. I don't regret buying it since other machines I auditioned had other problems of their own, but it's not blowing me away. When an image is nice and bright it looks great. But dark images have a green tint and there is noticable ghosting/artifacting (also most obviously in dark images)

Again, it's a fine player for now but someday I look forward to replacing it.

Gil are you using a DVI connection? I've read about a known issue with oversaturation on green when using a DVI cable for hook up and outputting at 1080i. It also has poor Y/C delay on 480p output only I believe which could appear as ghosting.

I was also wondering about whether he was using DVI, have also heard about oversaturation/white crush problems over DVI; 1080i over component cables doesn't appear to have any problems like that (maybe negligible Y/C delay, but nothing like with 480p), and the 1080i-over-component feature is the reason I'd be buying this model. No DVI connection on my 53WX42, and I like the idea of upscaling to achieve (if it works) the best possible dvd picture on this HDTV.

Yep, I am planning to keep the RP-56 for non-1080i viewing.

Alas I am using DVI right now: My TV (the Zenith C32V37) exhibits an annoying scrolling white line on 1080i component that I wasn't able to overlook. The whitecrush problem is not that bad on DVI for my viewing but the green tint and artifacting both appeared on both component and DVI... maybe a little less on component, but it was there. maybe I'll fool around with it some more and see if I can't find a happy medium.

Like I said, this is a good player with some very strong points, but it's not perfect.

I have the same TV and I have been thinking about upgrading to a DVI DVD player. It sounds like I will not be picking up a unit until a "Perfect" one hits the market or until my current DVD player (which is awesome) with DTS surround sound dies.

One question for GIL, will the Zenith TV remote also work with the DVD player.

Dunno. I have a Harmony universal remote. All the other remotes are in a trunk somewere.

this dvd player is great, i have it!

Wonderful. But could you give us a bit more insight to how you're using it. What kind of display is it connected to? How is it connected? Which output resolution are you using? What other players have you compared it to?

Saying it's great means nothing without a point of reference. You could feel it's great simply because it works but that says nothing about PQ.

I just received mine yesterday from G's and I am very happy with it so far.

I have it connected through component to my Mitsubishi WS-65819 using the 1080i resolution. I wasn't impressed with teh lower resolutions but the1080i was amazing.

My Mits doesn't have DVI so I can't compare but I am very impressed with the video quality in comparison to my Toshiba
SD9200 which is a high end progressive player.

Without even doing any calibrating yet I am very impressed with the image. I'm not sure if having that input calibrated to a Zenith DTV1080 HD DirecTV receiver helped with that or not.

One con I would add to Gil's list is lack of DVD-A / SACD.

I do not regret this purchase at all and consider it the best bang for my buck since my $99 Tivo.

My wife and I both gave out ooohh's and ahhhhh's while checking it out. That wife factor didn't come easy either since she didn't want me to buy it. When she saw the picture her words were
"Boy are you lucky!" :lol:

Same on this end but I have the RP-91K and just love it.