Ok, just picked up a nice PJ, and I'm now looking to upgrade my dvd player to a fancy prog scan model.

For around the £350 mark, what is the best model available?

I'm not to bothered about things like SACD , but they would be nice. Mainly i'm after the best possible picture quality via prog scan.

So far, i'm thinking of pickig up the HK 2550..

any sugestions?

Thanks for your time!

[Dimmy]

Countless threads on this - try a forum search.

I'd recommend the Philips DV963SA - but it seems it's difficult to find as of late.

[cybersoga]

My vote's on the Sony 930.

[Gary Lightfoot]

Harmon Kardon DVD25

cybersoga:

Where did you get your sony 930 from and at what price, can you tell me if it's plays RCE titles automatically.

Cheers

[cybersoga]

Yes it does, I paid £299 (the full retail price) from the sony center in bournemouth, it was the first one he made multiregion so he didn't charge me extra. It can be had for as little as £240 on the 'net. Admitedly I havn't tried other Progressive PAL players so I can't compare, i'll be posting some thoughts about picture quality some time next week when i've got a decent component cable.

[raqman]

I paid £259 from www.multiregionmagic.co.uk and got it last week.
already chipped even for RCE
As for the quality, no complaints, the reason I did not go for the Harmon Kardon DVD25 is that it is much more expensive for an old model

[raqman]

ok, the guys at AV-sales.co.uk were good to their word as usual and got me the cables in 24 hours.
The difference having the DVD plugged in via Component is astounding, however, I did not notice much difference with or without progressive, so not sure what all the hype is about, as I am watching it with a Panny 6 plasma.

[Richard Harnwell]

Originally posted by raqman
I did not notice much difference with or without progressive, so not sure what all the hype is about, as I am watching it with a Panny 6 plasma.

I think some material shows up the benefits of progressive better than others. I find that some of the widescreen, non anamorphic stuff gives the best improvement. Two films I have like this are Bugs life (original R1 version) and Dark City (R2). Both of these show a huge improvement when watched in prog. scan.

In particular, look at well defined edges when they are moving. There's a swinging lamp in a dark room at the start of Dark City. I find it to have horrible "stairstepping" in interlaced, but much more watchable in progresive. The whole film seems much more film-like in progressive, and doesn't keep reminding you that you're just watching a bunch of pixels.

Having said that, the size of display may be important, as I'm projecting onto a 7' screen......

PLumped for the hk 25...

will let you know what i think when I pick it up tomorrow

cheers for your help..

Originally posted by raqman
I did not notice much difference with or without progressive, so not sure what all the hype is about, as I am watching it with a Panny 6 plasma.

I definitely noticed an improvement with progressive on my setup - Philips DVD963SA into a Sanyo PLV-Z1 projector (7' screen). The most obvious improvement I think is with text - e.g. with Gladiator R2, text on the interlaced picture "wobbles" whereas with progressive it is dead steady. This also affects the general picture, but I can't be more precise as I haven't bothered watching it in interlaced since the first week of owning it.

As I understand it, the benefit of progressive over interlaced depends somewhat on how well your imaging device (plasma/projector/whatever) converts an interlaced signal into progressive (as it has to do for digital projectors and plasmas). If your device is very good at it, then you won't see much difference. In my case, I reckon the PLV-Z1 is not that good, and so a progressive source helps a lot.

I guess as a 963SA owner, I'd be expected to recommend it. Only thing is this is my 2nd unit after my first one packed up in a couple of months light use, and I think others have had trouble too. The progressive picture is great, but I hope the thing carries on working! Nowadays, I'd be tempted by the Sony 930.

James