Pioneer DV-696 ..first impression
 

went from a JVC all region progressive scan which was pretty decent to a Pioneer 696 all region with upconversion, sacd, dvda, etc....
the pic actually looks worse on my plasma on this unit going via HDMI then the JVC did going through component ..very grainy and darker with very reddish skin tones to boot

Have you properly calibrated?

the plasma set? no..its gettting isf calibrated in a couple weeks though
my point is hd through dish looks great and the old prog scan dvd player looked good too without the calibration done yet..

which plasma do you own?

You should probably reserve all judgement until calibration.

Samsung 4253..looks excelelnt with everything else..just not this player via HDMI

I think Josh's point is that you have to recalibrate for the new player. They look different, doesn't mean they are necessarily worse, just need new calibration to look correct.

how is it connected?

are you going HDMI directly to your tv?

are you going hdmi to your receiver and then to your tv?

if you have the plasma hooked into an input you have not used, it may be uncalibrated.

until i got my new receiver, i had everything hooked into separate inputs on my tv and had to calibrate each input differently.

hdmi directly to the second hdmi port on the tv..first hdmi is used by sattelite... i just realized there are a whole slew of video setting on the dvd player it self(color, tint, contrast, etc) as well..ill play with those as well

i also have the hdmi output set to 1280x720p and not 720x480p..is this correct?