ATI and nVidia Crush High-End DVD Players 280
An anonymous reader writes "Hardware.Info compared the video quality of ATI and nVidia video cards containing Avivo / PureVideo technology with 12 stand alone DVD players, varying in price from $200 to over $2000. The conclusion? 'There is no need to invest $2000 or more in a high-end DVD player. A PC with a recent graphics card will produce a much better result for a lot less money. When looking at the final scores of the HQV test, both ATI and nVidia graphics cards perform a lot better than any DVD player we have tested. We would go as far as to say to get rid of your DVD player and connect a media centre PC to your LCD television!'"
Crushed? (Score:5, Funny)
Uhm (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, not all of us would buy a $2000 DVD player. I still cannot see the reason to buy anything more expensive than the $250 one I have at home. What do these multi-thousand dollar DVD players do anyway?
--
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difference in video players (Score:3, Informative)
I opened the Panasonic up in an attempt to fix it, and found the design used the flimsiest of components. It was a testament to their engineers that they could get even 18 months out of the parts t
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Also a few things you, and apparently a lot of people here are not considering, that is not everyone is like you.
For $30-$70 all you get in a DVD player is a 480i or 480p output. That is great if you are running SDTV to an older CRT. However if you are running a HDTV even 480p is painful to
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I must agree though. A media server is a godsend, especially for those with large content libraries. Mine still needs work in the organization and interface front, but even quality aside, the simplicity of not needing to look for the case is awesome. I rip all my movies to XviD at "lossless" settings (100% quality, dunno if it technically would be on a difference map, but I sure can't tell a difference
Re:Uhm (Score:5, Interesting)
The only thing I don't like is that the remote control isn't really easy to use for tasks other than play/pause/menu navigation.
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My HTPC is connected to my DLP HDTV via DVI and the picture is so amazing that it looks almost three-dimensional (and this is with an ancient ATI Radeon 8500 card).
Re:Uhm (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Uhm (Score:4, Funny)
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Well they are SUPPOSED to do a wonderful job at motion-adaptive deinterlacing, and 3:2 pulldown reversal.
Not to mention having high-end video chips that have more accurate color reproduction, prevent aliasing artifacts, etc.
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Not quite. ffdshow has the best inverse telecine filter around (pullup), but no motion-adaptive deinterlacer, I'm afraid. mcdeint was only recently introduced to MPlayer (ffdshow uses mplayer filters) and it is completely unoptimized as of yet, so you only get 2-3fps with it.
On a *nix system (using mplayer directly), the situation is better. You can use tfields (with -vo
One word: audio... (Score:2)
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Re:There is more to movies than pictures (Score:4, Informative)
Something by M-Audio, such as the Revolution 7.1, might fit your bill.
No shit! (Score:3, Informative)
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How loud are they? (Score:3, Insightful)
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Very very loud (Score:3, Informative)
It's hard to explain what's stupidly wrong with the design without needing drawings, so bear with me. Let's just say that as the turbine sucks air from one side (as opposed to above and below) and blows it out the other, this necessarily creates a narrowed bottleneck in the airflow. The air can only enter a centrifugal turbine from above or below, so that incoming airflow has to be narrowed into a duct going under the turbi
Insightful indeed, but... (Score:2)
That's insightful indeed, but if you _are_ interested in 3D gaming, then (A) your main gaming rig will be too loud, and (B) just getting a DVD player might still be cheaper than building a sile
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"Picking a slower graphics card for a media centre PC offers more advantages than just the price; the X1300 and X1600 some in a passively cooled variety, the X1800 and X1900 cards do not. This is the same for the nVidia 7300 and 7600, both are available as a fan less card."
Keep in mind video cards these days are designed to crunch huge texture maps with anisotrophic filtering and apply it to hundreds of thousands of anti-aliased polygons while calculating stencil shadows, vertex s
Simple solution: MacMini (Score:2)
Yes, it also does DVI out as well as optical out (and S-svideo), and happens to be cheaper than a $2,000 DVD player (about $1,500). All you need to do is go spend some of that saved money on a bluetooth
Re:How loud are they? (Score:4, Funny)
Right... because those that want a high quality picture don't really care to use the 5.1 sound system they also have installed...
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Great sound AND it includes the wifemuting feature.
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Oh sure, "PC's" and "LCD" television.. (Score:4, Funny)
trend (Score:2)
$2000 DVD Players (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:$2000 DVD Players (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes they can, but the universe will fire back by creating bigger morons next generation.
The issue here is that humanity has separated itself from the good ol' natural selection, thus morons don't get booted out of the gene pool anymore.
Worse, so few morons die that we actually have to give them awards [darwinawards.com] to try and get other morons to follow suit!
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Well, if you took a statistical sample, I imagine you'd find that intelligence is the way to get booted out of the gene pool, though it's a nice abuse of statistics. Why? Because most of those scoring high on the IQ test have a good education, which is found mostly in rich countries, which generally have low birthrates. In any case your argument is counter-intui
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Ah yes, the Darwin Awards. The people issuing them, and the people that believe the stories, are the REAL morons.
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Morons cannot be stopped.
But they can cheat their way into elected office...
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I'd say my $35 dvd player works just fine. It even supports divx and progressive scan.
good wire article (Score:2, Informative)
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Seriously, I can't speak for the video crowd but I have never felt bad about putting out the additional cash for g
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Gold is a relatively poor conductor compared to silver (or even copper, really). Gold is used for plating contacts because it doesn't tarnish, so if you clean your connectors regularly (or even rewire things once in a while), non-gold connectors are technically slightly better.
So what you really meant is "Gold connectors are better for lazy people." :-D
DeoxIt is your friend....
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And note that gold connectors are only worth it if you're plugging into gold sockets; having one of the two be gold is actually worse, as I recall, than just using whatever connectors tend to be made out of....
Now the people who think that Monster cable (especially optical cables) are better than any other cable....
Except for all the fan noise (Score:5, Insightful)
All that is needed is a "blank multimedia" box for $200, that has DVI/HDMI and S/PDIF, with no moving parts except for the DVD drive.
Then you plop in the Open???Player (vlc based?) CD/DVD/USB and it updates the internal flash to create/update your player to the latest codecs. Or perhaps internal flash is not needed, and the root disc is USB flash.
Save time, but spend a bit more. (Score:3, Interesting)
If you really want to make it more silent (even though they're quiet), you could disconnect the power on the onboard HD and have it boot via network, although I haven't experimented with that. The MacMini is far quieter than the Xbox Media Centre it replaced, and much more capable of decoding higher-resolution movies.
Yes, the software will autoupdate itself.
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Not at all. A $20 investment in some decent fans, and you won't hear them unless your ear is pressed up against the case. Put it in your multimedia cabinet with other components, and you're set. The DVD drive is going to be far louder than anything else.
Recent hard drives don't have the high-pitched whine they used-to. The only noise you get now is from the heads see
Practicality (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously people, if you have the cash for a 2K 1K or even a $500 player you probably dont feel like building one. There are an enourmous amound of benefits to getting a pre-built expensive DVD player, reliability being just one factor.
Before I get a lot of posts telling my of the uptime and reliability of their MythTV box, dont forget that you have to build the thing or hire someone to build it for you if your are not a Linux Geek. Even with Media Center Edition you are still dumping 1300 into hardware and inviting a ton of issues into your multimedia system. Unless of course you love hearing that windows error Dong in full Dolby surround sound.
Seriously... (Score:3, Insightful)
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Seriously people, if you have the cash for a 2K 1K or even a $500 player you probably dont feel like building one.
If you pay $2000 for a standalone DVD-player you probably DO expect it to be competitive in image quality though.
Not a valid comparison for a typical family (Score:5, Insightful)
If you're single and live studio apartment, this might make good economic sense if you really need high end graphics. You can just connect the PC to the TV and continue to use the PC for other purposes.
But in a typical family environment that media centre PC will have to be dedicated to entertainment purposes, so the real price comparison is the cost of the media PC + the graphics card vs. the high end DVD player. Then the comparison doesn't turn out to be that one-sided.
Re:Not a valid comparison for a typical family (Score:4, Insightful)
What family, one of luddites? (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes, it's 10x the price, but you get at least 10x the features, with the only limit being what a computer can do.
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Gee... A $300 computer vs. a $4000 high-end DVD player...
You're right, it's a much tougher call that way. Particularly since the computer can play digital videos of any kind, from any source, and not just DVDs.
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Realistically I think we're talking about a $1000-$2000 media center PC vs. $1000-$2000 high-end DVD player.
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Realistically I think we're talking about a $1000-$2000 media center PC vs. $1000-$2000 high-end DVD player.
My MythTV box is only a 256MB DDR/64MB nVidia MX440/Celeron 1.7 that used to be my 'scratch' machine (it wasn't getting used much, so I repurposed it). That machine cost about 300 GBP to build in 2002, but you could probably buy a low-end Dell for 200 GBP today that would be better. To it,
It's not just HTPC vs DVD Player though... (Score:2)
A) HDTV dual-tuner Media Center PC w/1TB RAID + 600GB non-RAID storage, $1900
B) DVD Player +
HD PVR Equipment & Monthly Subscription +
CD Player / Recorder +
AM/FM Tuner +
(Many things simply not practical or available as individual components) = $???
Besides that, we get a lot of added conveniences out of going the P
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But that means using a media center PC (Score:3, Interesting)
Eh. (Score:3, Interesting)
This test would have been a bit more relevant if they had told us what hardware the PC was using and/or had tested older graphics cards. I'd consider doing this with an old computer, but wouldn't shell out new money on it.
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First of all I assume that you have a 480i TV, or if you are lucky a 480p CRT. If that is all you have for a display of course the $60 is plenty for a DVD player. In fact if all you have is an standard TV then I would say you over paid for that DVD player. Amazon has players with decent features at less than $30.
However if you have a 720p 42-60in Plasma/LCD/DLP or a 1080p 60in+ then you will pr
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True, but this article is talking to people who are willing to pay up to $2,000 for a DVD player... Compare that to what you can have someone custom-build for you for $1,000-$1,500 with one of these cards in it.. sound-dampening fans, time-shifting, 500gB of disk....
Yes, it'll take more power, but -- once again -- we're talking to people who won't blink at the extra $20/month, even if
"Conclusion" (Score:5, Interesting)
"Final scores
The total score for nVidia ends up being 93, where the total ATI score is 118. Both scores [hometheaterblog.com] [ed.] are extremely high, considering the score of the most best performing DVD player we tested (the Marantz DV6600) was only 63. The majority of the standalone players we used did not score more than 40 points in the test. The most expensive ones, the Denon DVD-3910 and Marantz DV9600 scored only 58 and 61 points.
For European readers the cadence tests are not of real importance, so we only take the first eight tests into consideration. The score then is slightly different, nVidia scored 58 in these tests, where as ATI scored 53. A pretty close result, and the slight advantage for nVidia is mainly due to the excellent PureVideo performance in the detail tests.
[score matrix breakdown omitted]"
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Thanks. I tried to RTFA, but "Slashdot and Readers Crush Low-End Website."
List of players + final scores. (Score:2, Informative)
Might aswell as I have the page up...
Denon DVD-1920 (58)
Denon DVD-3910 (58)
Marantz DV6600 (63)
Marantz DV9600 (61)
Panasonic DVD-S97 (68)
Philips DVP 5900 (35)
Philips DVP 9000S (53)
Pioneer DV-989AVi (59)
Samsung DVD-HD850 (30)
Samsung DVD-HD950 (30)
Sony DVP-NS92V (35)
Yamaha DVD-S2500 (53)
Hope I matched those up right...
De-interlacing tests? (DCDi?) (Score:2)
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What about linux? (Score:2)
I've had enough problems with bugs in their linux drivers (demonstrably broken dual-channel dvi configuration), that I could have fixed with access to source code, that I expect something for having to put up with their BS. If they can't even make the video processing available under linux, I might a
GLX crashes X.org (Score:2)
Otherwise, it works great. Twinview, digital vibrance, CRT detection so it does the right thing in docked/undocked situations, etc. Just
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It's similar to ATI's MPEG2 acceleration feature, which has been in their hardware for over a decade. But, that feature is not usable in Linux, because ATI has never released driver source or hardware specs to enable this feature.
The same applies to a lot of the new features that the manufacturers hype.. all the video processing, MPEG4, and WMV accelation. They are all unavailable to Linux users.
If Intel delivers on their open source support claims, I will gladly build my MythTV frontend arou
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Also, note that XvMC doesn't address the advanced capabilities of these new video cards, like all the video processing, MPEG4+ acceleration, etc. Add to that the fact that only Nvidia has (closed/binary) driver support for XvMC (ATI ca
DVR (Score:2)
There are actually a lot of people using PC as DVR for the longest time... nothing's surprising really.
It is amazing... (Score:2, Insightful)
Hindsight is 20/20! There is no research on well-known facts!!
Facts:
1) Video processors in PCs are usually much more powerful, even when compared to the high-end video equipments
2) The CPU is also much more powerful, as a typical consumer product uses a simpler one, typically an ARM processor
3) Most VGA monitors and panels in the market today have higher resolution and finer pitch than most consumer TV sets, even high-end...
Of course there are some
What about interlacing? (Score:2)
I have RTFA (Score:3, Insightful)
On a side note, the other reason most people use component players is their sound. A good Hi-Fi player has a much higher quality sound than any PC. You can probably get close to the quality of the sound of a under-1K$ player wtih a great sound for a PC, but let's face it: latest generation video card + high end sound + the PC... There is no much price difference. And that PC still doesn't play SACD.
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About 2 years ago I bought a new 32" Sony WEGA tv. Since it had the component inputs I went out and got the cables. Honestly, I can't tell the difference between the output on a composite cable vs. a set of component cables for my DVD player. (Yes, the DVD player is capable of progressive scan output, to bad my tv can't handle it). PC video cards are already designed to handle HDTV resolutions, some do it for 2 monitors. DVD players are generally targeting 480i or 480p output. Now, if nVidia or ATI got into
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For a regular old 480i signal, you should see very obvious color and luminance bleeding in the composite signal vs S-Video or component. Put something like the DVD player's setup menu on the screen then switch between inputs. Look at the edges of text or edges between white an
Slightly off topic question (Score:3, Interesting)
I wonder what would happen if a manufacturer created a video card and just let the community write open source software and drivers for it? Save the company the expense of writing the drivers and let the community develop a large potential market for them.
It would seem to have the added advantage of forcing the others to support Linux, but I'm betting that open source drivers would be more widely received, even if the proprietary drivers were better. Just seems that would be a good way to sell more video cards.
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Even with a supportive vendor, getting drivers built by "the community" is slow; someone sitting in their room fiddling with a card on the weekends is going to take a lot longer (and probably do a worse job) then a g
Went that way, switched back (Score:4, Insightful)
-my wife hated to mess around with my pc just to watch a disc
-i did not find a decent remote control
-playback software was a lot more complicated than the one the DVD player has
- problems started after a driver upgrade (spdif sound disappeared on my ASUS A8n SLI after installing recent NFORCE drivers)
I mean these are mostly problems for my family, I am ok, watching with a wireless keyboard, and enjoying the better quality, but for everyone else it is just awkward
Yes, i watched my high bit DVDs, and my matrix collection (at least eyecandy parts) on it and was happy, but for everyday use, it was just a pain
especially, bc that is my gaming rig as well, so if my wife wanted to watch a chick-flick, while I wanted to shoot at people online, a clash happened
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Had the same thing happen to me on my Sagetv box. Did a reload of the OS at one point, but didn't use the drivers (for sound) off of the CD. The drivers on their site for the SPDIF out will only give you 2ch sound, no matter what the source. The drivers on the included motherboard CD will put out a Dolby Digital 5ch signal for every source (including 2ch). This doesn't mean th
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even if they do, most of them do not use an optical or coaxial SPDIF / digital out.
i tried digital once, and never want my humming speakers back, i have like a 7 meter distance between the pc and the AMP, adn as soon as it is not SPDIF i get all these wierd noises all over, since the cables go near 3 other pcs, network cables, and tv signal, and just pick up all the noise, even though i am using gold-pl
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All these are PEBKAC errors...
Buy an IR reciever for $15, and use it with ANY REMOTE you have, to control your PC (just configure LIRC for it).
Use MPlayer (a GUI would just get in the way).
Then just write a script that will start playing your DVD when you press a button on the remote... One that will open your filemanager to the fol
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being a linux admin since linux IS, I would say that that is the very last option I would want for myself
first of all: i do not have "movie files" I only watch DVDs. they have menus, I want a GUI for them to use the features.
last time I checked Mplayer still did not have DVD menus, and took long to find the CCS keys (since linux players still do not have a "legal player".
2nd: i use a surround AMP, last time it was 4 years ago when i started messing with ALSA's SPDIF output.
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A GUI has nothing at all to do with DVD menus. Your DVD player certainly doesn't have a GUI at all.
It's not officially part of MPlayer yet, but the dvdnav patch has been working fine for probably 6 months now.
Besides, I just prefer MPlayer. You certainly can use Xine via a remote control quite easily, if you prefer that over MPlayer.
It's b
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A DVD menu is a graphical representation of the content on your disc and a user interface, so it is a Graphical User Interface for the disc = GUI
My dvd player has a GUI in fact that works by a remote control to set all the features up:)
What I meant with "messing" was that a good few years ago, the SPDIF out wasn't just a recompile of the kernel to include the drivers for your audio card, but a painful proce
Why no purely software decoders? (Score:5, Interesting)
My MythTV system uses Xine to play DVD's via an nVidia 6150 chipset straight into the DVI input on my TV. It uses XVMC motion compensation to cut down on CPU usage (not that MPEG2 decoding and filtering uses much CPU at all these days - my AMD64 3500 sits at 1GHz and uses about 15-25% CPU playing back a DVD with postprocessing activated), and the quality blows anything else I've seen out of the water. Similarly, using ffdshow on my workstation in windows mode results in a really good picture.
If you ask me, most people will be more than happy with the default decoder that came with PowerDVD or what have you. It seems silly to do a "PC's vs. DVD players" comparison and leave out what 80& of people are using. Are there any other MPEG2 decoder reviews around?
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Actually, XWMC is a funny thing. With as fast of a CPU as you've got, I fully expect XVMC is using up more CPU time than software decoding would (assuming non-highdef material).
The quality has nothing to do with XVMC, and everything to do with exactly what this article is all about (videocard and decoding software)...
Future features of Graphic Cards.... (Score:3, Funny)
Bleeding edge discovery... (Score:2)
Frame rate issues kill this though... (Score:5, Informative)
Working with film, this means 24fps. If your display is 70fps, 75fps, etc. that means some ugly pulldown is in store.
What gets even worse, however, is if you use the video output feature of your card in a HTPC setup -- you wind up having it go through ANOTHER PULLDOWN to 29.97fps (NTSC) or 25fps (PAL) FROM THE PULLDOWN YOU DID BEFORE. Even worse it's resampled and scaled for this output.
This is pretty apparent in pans in movies and such -- the pans are never quite smooth exactly.
Also since sound and video are usually totally unsynced subsystems in a HTPC, the audio is often slightly out of sync with the video. This causes an occasional audio or video skip (depending on what the playback software recognizes as canonical sync). For short clips this usually doesn't happen, but the skip will often happen over the course of a movie. If it's syncing to audio, the frameskip/delay is usually not noticeable because it gets lost in all the pulldown issues mentioned earlier.
While it's possible to make a HTPC setup that syncs the video properly to avoid these issues, I've never seen a HTPC setup do it right. I've seen embedded Linux and WinCE devices do it correctly, using custom code to ensure proper video syncing.
Standalone DVD players, even most cheap ones, get everything synced properly to a reference pulldown (29.97 or 25 fps, progressive if supported). Framerate and audio sync is always correct, to the nearest level capable of the pulldown.
It's a shame, because modern LCD/Plasma displays with digital inputs should theoretically be able to handle real 24fps input for film sources, for instance, which is something current DVD players don't do. Try getting your HTPC to output 24Hz and getting your media player, going through all the video and audio APIs of your OS, to sync every frame and every audio sample exactly to it. =P It simply can't be done -- you have to code to the metal.
(In studio environments video editing PCs actually have professional video/audio cards that have custom APIs and synced internal clocks to be able to ensure perfect framerates and audio sync and to make sure playback is timed properly on them. I know someone who's built themselves a HTPC with gear like this and it works great.)
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The effect you're complaining about is judder, not "pulldown". Pulldown is the process through which judder is introduced.
Movies on a dvd are telecined, whereby 24fps video is encoded at 30fps as shown in this wikipedia diagram: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Three-two_pulld own_diagram.png [wikipedia.org]
The judder created by this encoding
Summary for the comments (Score:2, Informative)
- $2000 is way to much to spend on a standalone DVD player. I think we can all agree on that, especially in light of this article
- For many people a $35 DVD player is plenty. People that spent $60, sorry you spent too much if all you got was 480p output, but maybe your player will last longer though, but does it really matter if the player lasts for 18 months vs 3 years if it costs you twice as much.
- For those of us with Plasman/LCD/DLP/etc HDTV displays with HDMI or DVI inputs t
How about SACD support? (Score:2)
A PC is not worth the effort... (Score:2)
Boneheaded article... (Score:3, Insightful)
Please.
Here is a $200 DVD player that will perform better than most $2000 PCs:
http://oppodigital.com/opdv971h.html [oppodigital.com]
I'm not saying you cant do great things with video using the right PC setup, but that article failed to point out the respective costs of the hardware they used for making this comparison. I won't even get into usability comparisons...
Awesome, where can I get the 400 disc carousel (Score:2)
Diff'rent Strokes (Score:2)
Also, I prefer that strangers *not* be able to monkey with my home theater stuff without my help. My technophobic wife can handle it just fine, and that's all that real
Mostly Worthless Tests (Score:2)
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh Please (Score:2)
What a crock of a conclusion. They failed to mention the interconnects they used on each system, what it was connected to and if it was properly calibrated. Not to mention, they left out half of what makes a DVD player a DVD player - sound! And how about:
Re:Why stand alone DVDs are preferable: (Score:4, Informative)
- Don't turn it off
No problem.