GreekChat.com Forums - DVD Players: How do you know what's best?

Quote:

Originally posted by TechAPhi
OK. I am in the market for another DVD player. The first time I bought one, I just bought the first one I found that had a five-disc changer.

Now that I am looking for a second one, I am wondering: How do you know which one is best? Is progressive scanning a good thing? What should I be looking for?

If you know about DVD players, I'd appreciate your help!

I'm quoting from an article published in Home Theater magazine published a couple of years ago (March 2001 issue), which had a good article on some of the (then) new features of DVD players. It's a bit technical, so here goes:

Quote:

Progressive-scan output - ... In a nutshell, nearly all DVDs are recorded in what's called a progressive format, also referred to as 480p (480 lines drawn on the screen, from top to bottom, every 1/60th of a second). Our current NTSC television system uses an interlaced system, referred to as 480i (480 lines drawn every 1/30th of a second, with 240 odd lines in the first 1/60th of a second and 240 even lines drawn in the second 1/60th of a second. In theory, this is fast enough for the eye not to notice that the image is split in half). Normal DVD players take the 480p signal and interlace it. Progressive-scan players can preserve the 480p signal at the component output. This requires a TV with a wide-band component input (one that accepts 480p) and an image that can be drawn twice as fast as a normal TV image (one that scans at 31.75 kHz instead on NTSC's 15.75 kHz). If you have such a display, like many HD monitors, a good progressive-scan DVD player will increase temporal resolution while eliminating motion picture artifacts exhibited with poor line doublers. Keep in mind that some widescreen TVs don't offer aspect-ratio control with a 480p signal.

In short, progressive-scanning is a 'nice to have' item but not a 'must have' item.

Some other 'nice to have' items:

Can handle both Dolby 5.1 and dts stereo.
Ability to handle CD, CD-R/CD-RW, MP3, DVD-R and DVD-Audio formats. (Earlier DVD players were unable to read some of these formats or totally destroyed them. (The laser used on a DVD is of a different wavelength than one used for CDs.)
Multi-disc changer - great for playing CDs or multiple-disc DVDs, though most DVD releases are single or double-sided discs.
The hidden ability to unlock region play and play PAL discs. (For those not familiar, almost all DVDs sold in the USA are encoded for Region 1 play; there are nine assigned 'regions'. DVDs encoded for Region 1 will NOT play on a Region 2-only player, and vice versa. Some DVD players will have the ability of
'unlocking' the region lock through extra hardware (like a special remote control) or hidden in the setup. (See the DVD player hack list at http://www.dvdrhelp.com/dvdhacks.php...&Search=Search). European TV signals use PAL as their transmission standard instead of NTSC (common in the US, Latin America and Japan); good DVD players will convert the signal so it's viewable.

More DVD info is inthe following FAQ: http://www.dvddemystified.com/dvdfaq.html . Hope this helps.