DVD player looks soft on my plasma

[robbster]

Hi

Currently I have a toshiba 510e DVD player hooked upto a hitachi CL42PD3000 plasma screen via component. Last week I went out and bought a nice set of component cables as before I was using a cheapo ones i got with my plasma for free. The new cables did improve the picture somewhat but I cant help but think the picture looks too soft and a new player would improve the picture aswell as boosing shapness.
The thing is I cant decide on what player to go for. I've been looking at the pioneer 757, sony 930, denon 2900 etc, but am stumped on which one will show me the most benifit?? I did borrow a pioneer 737 off my cousin but the difference was minimal.
So what players have you got hooked upto your plasma screens and how do you rate them?

Thanks

Rob

[Nick Laslett]

Some questions you might like to ask yourself:

1. Do you have a High Definition Plasma, a Standard Definition or an ALIS panel?

2. Do you watch mainly NTSC or PAL DVDs?

If the answer to question 1 is Standard Definition, then you are better off sticking with your current DVD player. As an SD panel does not have high enough resolution to do justice to PAL DVDs.

If you answer to question 2 is NTSC, then you might want to upgrade your DVD player because SD panel's are the same resolution as NTSC DVDs.

In my opinion, although Plasma panels are a fanatastic way to enjoy large screen entertainment in the home, they are not the most detailed of displays. I have had a Panasonic 42PWD4B for 2 years. When I compared a Playstation 2, to a Toshiba 2109b, Arcam FMJ27 and Denon 3800, I could see little difference between the DVD players. I put this down to the fact that I was using PAL DVDs to perform my comparisons. The loss of 16% of the visual information was enough to remove the differences between the various machines

[robbster]

Thanks for the reply Nick

The plasma I have is an alis one and I watch a mixture of both NTSC and PAL films. The picture is not soft on all dvd's but the majority are. I find that a film can go from looking extremely nice looking to going bland and dull in a few seconds. Maybe the bitrate of the dvds has something to do with it I'm not sure?