I recently got a 28" Toshiba 100Hz TV from Currys (28ZH37P) and I'm now in the market for a DVD player. I intend it to be part of a SCART daisy-chain (RGB) sitting between the above TV and a Pace Freeview box, and am thinking of something around the 200 - 300 quid mark at most. Multi-region would be nice, but not essential.

While looking at various threads in this forum, I 've come across horror stories about pictures that jump off-centre in RGB mode, weird banding effects, dark RGB pictures, 100Hz artifacts and the like. As a result, I'm now terrified to make a move.

My Inner Idiot was thinking along the lines that a Toshiba player should give minimal problems with a Toshiba TV, but my Inner Cynic gave him a good slapping. So, if any nice person out there could give any guidance at all on what to aim for, it would be greatly appreciated.

[Mark Haywood]

Hi

If I'm correct in thinking that your TV has component video inputs, then why not take advantage of them when conecting you new DVD player to the TV? I would have thought that this would give you the best possible picture from DVD.

As far as which DVD player would be a good choice - I think with a 28in TV this is less of an issue than with much larger monitors. You may be surprised at the difference in audio quality that different DVD players offer, whilst differences in image quality is likely to be minimal.

In my opinion you would be very hard pushed to get a better sounding DVD player than the Limit 900, so if audio quality is an important factor (with movies and with CDs/DVD-Audio) then the Limit for £200.00 (or even cheaper if you are very lucky) should perhaps be on your short list. It is multi region (you can set it manually or leave it on auto detect) has progressive scan abilities (if you ever get the upgrade bug) and is a top notch bit of kit for not a lot of dosh!

Having recently owned a Tosh SD900, Denon 2800 MKII, Harman Kardon DVD25 and Sony NS900 I reckon the Limit can hold its own in the picture stakes and is by far the better sounding DVD player of all of those listed.

Obviously, it goes without saying that you can't beat an extended demo of any piece of kit so that you can see/hear for yourself to find out if you would be happy with your impending purchase.

Good luck

Sigs

[Crustyloafer]

Contrary to the above posting I would advise taking the RGB scart route you had initially planned on. Even if your Toshiba television does have component inputs I have found them to be very poorly implemented on the Toshiba sets and that a good quality RGB only scart like the QED AV4110 Sqart does a better job than the component inputs.

100Hz has no bearing on DVD

[bonzobanana]

Toshiba's normally do component better than RGB. In fact some Toshiba sets in the past have simply downgraded the RGB signal internally to s-video. Also 100hz tends to work better with dvds as off air broadcasts are more likely to have grain and some freeview/sky digital feeds are fairly low bitrate. The point is 100hz sets video capture frames and show the same frame twice with minor alterations between the two depending on the level of processing going on. Video capturing works best with strong accurate images like a good dvd rather than images that already have artifacts like grain and blocking as these faults will be exaggerated by 100hz.

I don't know what features you require but in your situation I would definitely choose a player with both scart rgb and component out so you can try both and make sure you get the best possible picture. Something like the Panasonic SE75 should suit you.

Thanks for the advice guys. (You can tell I'm pretty new to this game, though these forums have been an education.)

My TV has 2 scarts - one of them RGB - and no component, but getting a higher spec player with an eye to a future upgrade does seem a sound idea. I'm relieved to hear that my main worry about 100Hz and DVD is pretty much a non-issue. (Smearing is beginning to bug me - for reasons beyond my ken, it's particularly bad in football and rugby matches, and I was concerned that this might also be a problem ffor DVDs.)

I'll check out the Limit machines - it's not a brand I've heard of before (but, with my knowledge, that's not saying much ). I'll let you know how I get on.

Thanks once again for your help - I know it must be a bit of a pain getting newbies like me asking pretty basic questions all the time.