The PDP428XP Conundrum

[admin_exported]

Hi everyone,

This is my first post and I'm not that brilliant on all the tech stuff so I'd appreciate views and/or advice on the PDP28XD Conundrum!

I've bought one of these Pioneers and absolutely love it. For space and style reasons I'm going to hook it up to B&W MT30 5.1 Package (please don't give me a had time about this - I was going to get a MA Silver system but have firmly decided on the B&W's).

Now the problem is what DVD player do I get or do I get a Pioneer LX70 instead to have the option of spinning Blu ray discs as well?

The TV has only 768 lines so if I feed it with 1080i or 1080p from a DVD then the 576 from the DVD will have been upscaled to 1080 then downscaled to 768 (i.e. 2 large pieces of scaling) whereas if I upscale to 720p the TV will then need to upscale that a little bit to 768. Seems to me that I'm better off just putting the DVD player onto 720p. Anyone agree or disagree with that?

If I only need 720p then what's the most suitable DVD player? I was thinking of paying between £500 and £1000 for one and I think you can pick up a Denon 3930 now for less than £800.00. But would I see the benefit of a Fancy Dan player when I'm not trying to upscale to 1080p? Is the Realta Chip really only that much better than the Faroudja when upscaling to 1080i/p? Also, is it going to make that much difference on a 42" screen? Given that all the magazines are lauding the Pioneer I think theyought to give some advice about what to match it with don't you?

I'm not that concerned with CD play performance it's really for the movies and if I don't like the music sound I can always buy a dedicated cd player later.

Almost finally, what about the Blu ray option. I envisage mostly playing DVDs on it but it would be nice to have the option so long as the LX70 DVD playback is as good as the sort of DVD player I'm looking at (remembering again that this is a 768 line TV).

Defintely finally, what's going to look better on the PDP42XD a DVD upscaled to 720p then upscaled a little further or a 1080p Blu Ray downscaled to 768? I think we should be told! Do you think the kind people at What HiFi will do the honours?

Thanks in advance for any help and opinions.

 

[FuzzyinLondon]

Of course it's all subjective, but to get the very best out of the tv I would get a Blu Ray player that can send a 1080p24 signal to the tv. The tv will downscale to fit it's resolution and convert the signal to 72hz to give you the smoothest possible playback (it's one of the only tv capable of doing this). From what I've seen in the shops, the result is absolutely stunning. One of the major things you will notice with Blu Rays (or HD DVDs - I'm format neutral) is how much more vivid the colours are and the extra detail. If you set the player to output 720p for Blu Ray, you won't get the benefit of 24fps playback.

For standard DVDs, you can out output from the blu ray player at 720p or 1080p. The tv will do a good job scaling both and I don't think you notice much, if any, difference between the two. On the 428, dvds come pretty close to blu rays for picture quality and a good deck will give a whole new lease of life to your collection.

To conclude, I think it is well worth investing in a decent in a decent hi-def deck to get the best out of your Pio 428. Blu Rays from a good quality player outputting at 1080p24 will definitely look better and I don't think you particularly need a 'fancy dan' player to get great picture with your tv. Which one you go for kind of depends on your budget. I own a PS3 and a Toshiba HD EP30 and am thrilled with both.