A whole bunch of PAL PS Player Questions...

[Andy.T]

I, like so many others of you on here am in the market for a PAL Prog Scan DVD player. I feel the urge to spend some money and wanted to clarify a bunch of stuff with you guys first.

I have been researching the following players (in no particular order)...

Arcam DV88+
Denon 3800
Denon 2800 Mk II
Harmon Kardon DVD-25
Toshiba SD-900
Sony DVP-999ES

Firstly, are all those machines true PAL-PS, or are any of them converting to NTSC and doing it that way? The Tosh?

Am I right in thinking that out of the players I've listed the only one originally designed with PAL PS in mind is the Arcam? All the others have firmware or hacks applied after manufacture to enable PAL PS?

What concerns me about this is, is it a bit of a bodge job? Arcam have actually sat down with Macrovision and done it properly and thought about adding things like audio delay to compensate for the extra processing time etc. The other manufacturers are not really working to any kind of agreed standard?

I have read a lot of conflicting things about the Denon's, different firmware versions seem to bring different problems and it all seems rather pot luck what you get. So they are not really grabbing me.

The Sony isn't here yet and we still don't know it will be PAL PS out of the box. Reading reviews over at AVS they seem to say it is ok but quite cheaply built.

Other than price, there doesn't seem much wrong with the Arcam, my only concern is that it is perhaps a little over the top for my modest Panny projector. Will I be paying extra for performance I won't see when compared to one of the other cheaper players? What do you guys think?

I feel myself leaning towards the Arcam, so has anyone seen the DV88+ cheaper than £999 anywhere? I may go and audition one this afternoon, but I don't know what projector they will use.

Any comments or pointers would be greatly appreciated, but please be constructive if I have misunderstood anything.

 

[sirjohnofbalham]

I am in exactly the same position except that I have a Panny plasma rather than a projector. At the moment I think the Arcam is the best bet but no doubt there will be plenty of Pal ps models coming onto the market soon at (probably) lower prices. With Arcam you are paying for good after sales service and the fact they don't mass produce like the Toshibas and Sonys of this world. I popped into Richer Sounds last week and they seemed to think they would be getting the 88 plus soon and hoped to be
discounting it (probably £100 off)

 

[keyser]

What about the philips q50, the usa version... aren´t there a bunch of dvd player´s there that do pal/ntsc progressive. I´m in the same spot as you guys. What I need is a dvd player that does pal+ntsc progressive and plays svcd´s and hopefully also mp3´s and has either a silicone image or faroudja progressive chipset. Now that doesn´t seem too much to ask does it.. but are there any out there. Would be nice to get a dvdbenchmark test 2002 with newer models.

Think the usa denons (what´s this negative stuff I keep hearing about denon) or philips is what I´ll get. Gonna wait a few months and see if anything new arrives here.. if not, just buy a usa model.

 

[Reiner]

if not, just buy a usa model.

Besides the different AC voltage you seem to forget that most US players do not support PAL at all.
Exceptions do exist, but they are merely that - an exception.

 

[keyser]

Doesn´t the q50 do both pal and ntsc progressive scan?? If so then most of the faroudja players must also.. If not.. when then it´s patient waiting for the manufacturers to get the stuff over here(actually I´m not that patient... why the heck do they release models here like the q50 but without progressive scan!?).