Pioneer DV-696 Owners

E

evilcat

Guest
Hi folks. In my search for a half-decent budget kit, I have decided to go for the Tosh 32WLT66 LCD TV, as it looks good to me. Stage 2 will be a DVD player... ideally with SACD and DVD-A as I intend to add an AV Receiver later.

Currently I have a very old Pio 360 DVD player, which has given me years of good service. It's Multi-region and has been outputting pure NTSC and PAL signals (I have 50/50 each format on DVD) to a Sharp CRT 28" widescreen TV thru RGB SCART.

As far as I'm concerned, the video quality has been excellent and the one problem I ever noticed was that when entering a new scene, the cbrightness seems to adjust itself in 3 steps to the correct level. Barely noticeable to blind people (like my wife, who couldn't tell the difference between Sky via SCART when RGB was flipped off then on).

So, Pio owners, can you tell me what to expect when I go from 28" CRT to 32" LCD and move from RGB SCART to HDMI? How much better will a progressive image seem, and what kind of difference should I expect if I upscale to, say, 720p? Should I upscale to 1080i?

And also, does the 696 have all the PAL problems the 490 suffers from, as detailed here: http://www.dvdtimes.co.uk/content.php?contentid=61831

(I know there's a combined thread for the 490/696 but that's one hell of a thread to search!)

Basically, I want to choose between this and the 92V Sony, and intend to buy in the next few months. Can anyone convince me to skip the Pio, or will it be worth the cash?
 
the 696 doesn't have the pal problems of the 490 as it uses a different chip. i did a particular demo on a scene from star wars ep2 and found some jaggies, but i was looking out for this and sitting with my nose in front of a 50" HD plasma. in normal use i haven't noticed any jaggies, altho i play mostly r1 ntsc discs

i upgraded my 32" crt with an old scart dvd player to 50" HD plasma with hdmi and it was a world of difference, but of course the screen size was about 3 times bigger. in playing ntsc material with hdmi over scart interlaced you should get a smoother picture on the panning scenes

the 696 is a good buy for a cheap machine that "plays everything". there isn't much in the price range that compares. it can be had for £130 multi region, and you need a cable. next step up is the denon 1920 which is £220 ish and has it's own issues
 
evilcat said:
(I know there's a combined thread for the 490/696 but that's one hell of a thread to search!)

There's also a 696 only thread. There's so much useful info there it's really worth the effort to read it before you spend your cash.
 
Sorry to resurrect such an old thread, but having the DV-490 myself and having observed the so called PAL problem with my unit too, I have come to a conclusion that it is not the player to blame entirely but unconsistent coding of PAL DVDs...I have introduced a progressive flag into the dreaded chapter 11 of Star Wars: Attack of the Clones and the jaggidenss problem was solved...so, the 490 doesn't analyse the stream but trusts blindly the flag on the disk...

So for what it's worth, not much I know since this cannot be remedied...
 

The latest video from AVForums

Is 4K Blu-ray Worth It?
Subscribe to our YouTube channel
Back
Top Bottom