New Blu Ray player for my new TV?

[drichardb]

Just got myself a new TV - LG 42LS575T. Hooked it up to my 4yr old Sony BDP-S350 and while the picture looks pretty good to me, I'm wondering if a new player would give any improvement....

Any advice appreciated 🙂

 

[bigboss]

Only a demo will tell you this. In my experience, there is very little to differentiate in blu ray picture quality between players. DVD upscaling quality may differ, & so does audio quality. Some can see a difference.

What is the rest of your system like? If you listen through your TV's speakers, then don't worry about your player's audio performance. Your TV's speakers will not be able to discern any difference in audio quality.

If I were you, I would keep my existing player for a bit longer.

 

[hammill]

Only a demo will tell you this. In my experience, there is very little to differentiate in blu ray picture quality between players. DVD upscaling quality may differ, & so does audio quality. Some can see a difference.

What is the rest of your system like? If you listen through your TV's speakers, then don't worry about your player's audio performance. Your TV's speakers will not be able to discern any difference in audio quality.

If I were you, I would keep my existing player for a bit longer.

+1. Spend the money on Blu-Rays

 

[BIGBERNARDBRESSLAW]

+1 more.

Maybe have a fiddle with your new tv's settings to make sure you're getting the best out of it with blu ray, or even the Sony's settings to see if it changes things to your liking.

 

[drichardb]

Thanks for the replies 8)

I probably should have provided a little more info...

The TV has an adjustable motion processing setting. When watching Sky HD broadcasts this setting has no impact whatsoever on the picture quality but has an odd effect with Blu-Ray.

When set to anything higher than 4 (max is 10) whilst the motion becomes silky smooth and begins to look almost too real - feels like your watching a theater performance - anything that is moving at more than a snails pace has this odd shimmering effect around it which is very annoying and distracting. I've left it on 3 as this pretty much eliminates the shimmering while keeping it nice and smooth. Below that it becomes quite choppy (hope that makes sense).

Is this down to the tv not having the processing grunt to cope with the 24hz ouput from the blu-ray player? or is it due to the player itself? or maybe even a bit of both??

The big money question though is has there been any advancement in blu-ray player tech to affect this?

As for the sound setup BigBoss, I currently us a 2.1 Altec Lansing computer set which served me well for a few years before I upgraded to the setup in my link below. I'm a little frustrated though as the LG doesnt have any obvious analogue outs so I have connected them to the headphone socket. By doing this the TV automatically blocks off the EQ settings in the menu so I'm left with a slightly muddy sound compared to my previous Sharp unit. The TV does have a Scart in/out socket but I havent been able to confirm that it can output analogue sound from all sources and more importantly I can't find my scart to analogue converter that I know is sitting in a box around here somewhere...

 

[bigboss]

Did you try switching off motion processing? I've always found motion processing brings unnatural effects to the picture. Your TV probably supports 24p, but I'm able to confirm this.

Have you tried playing DVDs? Do you still get the same effect?

With regards to connecting your TV to your sound system, your Z5500 accepts optical connections, & your LG TV has an optical out.

 

[drichardb]

The Z's are spoken for until I get my Open University grant in November, then its new amp and sub for me and the TV gets the Z's

I've set the Blu-Ray player to output 24p and with the motion processing off the image is a little choppy for my taste's. With it set to 3 I can't see any artefacts and the smoothness is a joy to behold (compared to my old tv).