Originally posted by: John
Originally posted by: isekii
Everything looks fantastic on my 42" Aquos with the upcoversion.
LCD/DLP/Plasma sets already upconvert so unless you have a high end DVD player chances are your TV is going to have a better scaler.
You are right about that, but in practice there might actually be some benefit to using the scaler at the player level.
For example, I do notice a sharper image by feeding my 720P Philips LCD a 1080i signal from this DVD player. Feeding a 480p or 720p signal does not achieve the same result. The effect is subtle but noticeable.
You would have to deconstruct the signal path with each component mix to figure out if there is an advantage, but it just could be that in my particular case the solution the player/TV combination uses is a bit better than the TV alone.
I am upgrading to a high end LNT5271p Samsung LCD next week as well as picking up another of these refurb DVD players, so I'll get a chance to play around and see if there is any real difference with that configuration. My guess is that it will be minimal.
There are a lot of good reasons to buy into this bargain. Good audio DACs, region free, easy DivX playing swayed me. That it has good upconversion if you need it or believe in it will be a benefit to some.
In response to the question about region free somehow breaking your ability to play region 1 discs - I have never had any problem at all with any NTSC format discs from any region. Of course, you can just as easily switch the player back to Region 1 only if you do experience a problem. If you buy or rent movies from outside the US this is a super benefit.
Others have commented that they are able to play PAL discs on US NTSC TVs with no problem. Maybe even SECAM discs will work, anyone ever try this?
I don't know that I would claim this is a "universal" DVD player, but it certainly comes close at a small fraction of the price players with that label cost.