Detailed review of the HD-EP30

Heres a question chaps:eek:

I will buy a HD 1080PJ next year but I do not want images being scaled twice.

Is there a way that I could turn the SD scaling on the Ep-30 off allowing the PJ to do the better scaling???

Thoughts apreciated (oh and I am looking at the PTAE2000)

Thanks

Dave

I would guess there is a setting for 576i/p output. 576i (if possible) would bypass the player's deinterlacer allowing the purest signal to your PJ.

Steve
 
Alternatively theres the point of view that upscaling is akin to the emperor's new clothes and that looking for improvements in SD playback from domestic sources is a waste of time.
 
Pug, I don't want you to think I personally don't welcome your review, I think all user reports are a great source of information and I have learnt so much from the posters on this forum :thumbsup:

I did think that your original post may appear to suggest that the EP30 is not very good at SD DVD playback, and questioned why so many had given it such a great review if that was the case.

IMO, there's always the question of motive, WRT professional reviews, with some which may be questionable, and may be influenced by factors such as advertising spend etc.. Which is why places such as this forum is so great, as the vast majority, 99% of posters, IMO are honestly sharing their opinons.

I do think though that we need to remember that it is only one opinion, combined with everyone elses it becomes a powerfull tool for anyone looking to purchase a player, but taken out of context and viewed individually, they are prone IMO to errors, possible prejudice, inaccuracies etc.. mainly because of the limited experience of the 'tester' and the variation of the kit avaliable.

This is the point I was trying to make.

As for your particular tests, I'm not surprised that you can't see a massive difference between two good SD players as I expect the upscaling and other processes performed by your display will overide any possible differences. IMO the law of disinishing returns is very aparrent here also and the difference you may hope to see would be relatively small and therefore easy to loose through the display.

In comparison, when I first got my Xbox HD-DVD addon I was a little disapointed. I was told KK was 'reference' material :D That HD was far better than SD. But although in an A/B comparison I could see an improvement I was still overall disapointed. So I spent a long time playing with the settings on my 32" 768 LCD. And eventually I was getting better results, I could see the improvements more clearly.. I still felt however that I was limited by my display.. So I got a 720P PJ, set that up, connected up the Xbox and sat back... I played a few SD DVD's to get a feel for it and get it roughly set-up... then I put a HD-DVD on.. WOW !!! :D I finally understood what an improvement HD was over SD :clap: Which is why I'm now reluctant to judge a component based solely on my experience.. ;)

No problem mate... I'll update when I scale on it and see how it copes... :hiya::clap:
 
OK, just unwrapped it and plugged everything in. I have to say I am very impressed with the picture, but even though I have only tested it on a couple of scenes (of Bourne) I am probably just as impressed with the (excellent) SD playback using Independence Day as a reference.
It may be that I have not yet seen scenes that really push the HD envelope (will watch all of Bourne tomorrow) to get the HD "wow" factor, which I was hoping/expecting.
Anyway, this is not a statement against the EP30 as an HDDVD player, more a very satisfied reaction to what it seems to promise for SD material viewing in the future.

So, now for the new owner question; first thing I did was set it all up to update the firmware. It was showing 1.1/1.1 and all was going OK showing 4/39 when I left the room for about 10 mins. However, when I came back in the player had switched itself off, but as far as I can see it is still on firmware 1.1/1.1. Everything is working fine but is this a failed firmware update, or am I on the latest (I was expecting 1.3)?
 
Got my EP30 today from Dabs and have been playing about with it. Quite happy so far, picked up my favourite movie of all time (Total Recall;)) on HD-DVD earlier today so I could watch it in glorious HD. Well that certainly didn't disappoint, sweet mother of god it looks good, for an older film as well.:cool: Now my views on the EP30s DVD scaling. Very good, but probably on an even par with my Denon 1940. In terms of DVD scaling the Denon is probably a bit better though because you can really customise the video settings. EG. When some DVD transfers are a bit soft you can select a +1 on the sharpness etc. It's a bit like the way people sharpen a picture in photoshop to give the illusion of that extra detail. It's the quality of the process that makes the difference.
 
My 30 isn't as good SD-wise as my Oppo 971
Interesting as the Oppo has the Faroudja chipset I believe, which supposedly isn't as good as the Anchor Bay VRS and suffers from stuff like macroblocking.

Though TommyVecetti says the 30 is on a par with the Denon 1940 and I believe that uses Faroudja also, and again I'd expect the Anchor Bay to be better.

Haven't judged for myself though. I've got the EP35 and yet to unwrap it anyway :D, but I don't have anything to compare it against other than the built in scaler in my Samsung F71 telly. If it's better than an RGB SCART DVD scaled by the telly, then that's good enough for me :)
 
Interesting as the Oppo has the Faroudja chipset I believe, which supposedly isn't as good as the Anchor Bay VRS and suffers from stuff like macroblocking.

Though TommyVecetti says the 30 is on a par with the Denon 1940 and I believe that uses Faroudja also, and again I'd expect the Anchor Bay to be better.

In terms of macroblocking, yes the EP30 is superior, in fact it's definitely more favourable over faroudja. It's just a shame there aren't any picture tweaks for DVD playback on the EP30, maybe there are for the EP35, in which case that might be the better option for those wanting the best DVD upscaling/playback. That said, I've only tried out a couple of DVDs so far, so I haven't spent that much time evaluating it. I did try an old Doctor Who DVD, and the EP30 seemed to like that better than the Denon.
 
Mine arrived on Wednesday.

Updated to firmware 1.1 in about 40 minutes yesterday.
Odd, I updated mine on Wednesday via ethernet and it changed from 1.0 to the newest 1.3 firmware.
 
I've played around with the machine a bit more now. In my previous post I said I thought the Denon just edged the EP30 in terms of DVD playback and scaling. Now I think there's nothing in it really. I found that by selecting 'FILM' mode on the picture settings of the EP30 (rather than leaving it on 'Auto') improved the DVD playback.
 
Loving this player so far, no issues and plays SD and Hd superbly well.

Anyway here is another question.

The Hd films are presented with the usual black bars, now i dont mind them too much but I feel on a 42" plasma its a hell of a waist of screen.

I always chose a picture mode that got rid of them, stretching the image slightly but filling the screen.

Am I right in thinking that you cannot do that with the HD films? even my TV will not let me choose what sort of picture aspect i want so I am stuck with the 2.35:1.

Any suggestions??????
 
Depends how you feel on cropping films. Personally I like to see the whole film rather than crop it to fill the screen (which is not much different to pan&scan).

The 16:9 screen size was a compromise however given not all films are 2.35:1 and TV shows are 4:3 and 16:9. Otherwise we could have had ultra-wide displays at 2.35:1 :D
 

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