Bernard Barnett
Established Member
I persuaded my other half to buy a JVC D-Theater machine for my birthday and had a play with it at the weekend. Bought from CRT Projectors by the way - not the cheapest option but probably the surest, and it came with a very substantial high-quality transformer. I'd had doubts about whether I would see much of a difference compared with DVD on my small 32-inch Sony plasma, but somewhat reassured by comments on this forum I went ahead. The tapes I tested were Independence Day and Men of Honor, both outputting 1080i which my plasma (an ALiS screen) downscales to its native 1024. Does it blow away DVD? Normally I'm suspicious of such expressions but in this case the answer is a definite yes. I'd expected the enhanced sharpness and detail but the richer, deeper colours were a revelation. The reds are a little on the strong side but I'll probably get around to tweaking them via the screen adjustments. With the limited amount of software available I suppose this will never be much more than a toy, particularly when HD-DVD comes along, but it's a pretty amazing one. I can well imagine the effect on a big screen - unfortunately I don't have room for one.