Sony DVP-NC800H/S HDMI/SACD/CD Progressive Scan 5-Disc DVD Changer, Silver
By: Sony Average Rating: 5.0 Total Reviews: 1
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 On: 2008-05-09
Hopefully this review will help clear up some confusing things which first-time HDTV owners may face.
I am a first-time HDTV buyer who recently purchased my first medium-level, 32" HDTV (720p, but can receive 1080i). When I first got the unit I planned on seeing exceptional visuals for television and for my movies. I knew that an HD signal would be needed to truly see an HD quality picture, however, I quickly got frustrated to see that both standard DVDs and regular reception from my basic cable looked pretty pathetic even compared to a standard T.V. This HDTV I purchased looked great in the store, so I knew there was something going on I didnt understand, so heres a quick sample of what I learned and how it relates to this DVD upconverter.
All of my DVDs are standard (not Blu-Ray or HD DVD). Using a standard Sony DVD player on my HDTV the picture from my DVDs was not good. Color was excellent, but the clarity was not good and the resolution looked poor and had a very blocky look (jaggies). At this point the DVDs actually looked better on a standard TV. Also, cable reception looked equally bad on the HDTV. The fact is, HDTV is only as good as the signal coming into it. Another issue is that when watching a widescreen movie on a 16x9 TV the image will be bigger since the aspect ratio on the 16x9 TV can handle more of the widescreen image. So, on top of the standard DVD having less resolution than a HDTV reproduces, that low-res picture is also being enlarged to fill a 16x9 screen, and as like what happens with the cable, because the HDTV can reproduce an excellent image, all the imperfections of a non-HD signal (for both cable and standard DVDs) are in a way being magnified and look worse than on a standard unit.
So, after learning this I realized that as far as cable goes, the picture will not look very good unless you have HD through your cable provider (and you are watching an HD broadcast of course). Obviously if you have an HD DVD or a Blu-Ray player you are also not going to have an issue playing those make of discs.
Even though I planned on getting HD with my cable and I knew that would look great, I almost took back the HDTV because I have a lot of regular DVDs and wasnt planning to upgrade to Blu-Ray anytime soon. Watching my DVDs the way they were looking from my standard DVD player was not good enough. Thats when I looked into an upconverting DVD player (specifically this one).
Now, I have read a lot of articles and reviews with people saying that upconverters dont work and others saying it will look just as good as HD or Blu-Ray and both are wrong. After hooking up the upconverter to the HDTV (which was very simple with a HDMI cable and running the quick setup) I was watching my DVDs again and was more than pleased and was more than thrilled with the results. For the $120 for a Sony upconverter, it exceeded my expectations (which are pretty high).
With the upconverter, my DVDs looked great on the new HDTV. I personally felt that they looked better at 1080i (which my TV will accept) than 720p which is my TVs native resolution. But this may be a matter of taste/preference. I would say with the upconverter the standard DVDs looked much better than they looked on standard TV, and of course the size of the 16x9 screen makes them come alive even more.
Is the picture with the upconverter as good as a HD DVD or Blu-Ray disc? No. Is it much better than watching a standard DVD on a standard TV? Absolutely. It really is a perfect in-between if you have quite a library of DVDs and dont plan on doing the Blu-Ray thing for a while, and you will still get a better picture from the DVDs than watching them on a standard TV.
In conclusion, while I can only vouch for the specific unit I am writing this review on, I would highly recommend an upconverter without reservation if you find yourself in a similar situation where you have quite a few standard DVDs and are thinking about getting or have already bought a HDTV and are upset by standard DVDs not looking good from a regular DVD player.
Hope this helps anyone who is a little confused as I was on their first HDTV experience.
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