Official A/V Thread

fake

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This might sound stupid, but what is the difference between a standard DVD player and a high quality one? Does it really matter if it's being viewed on a CRT? And if you're viewing it on an LCD or LED, isn't the image going to degrade regardless since it's scaling a 720x480 interlaced image to a 1080p screen?
 

terry.330

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I'm got going to go into technical jargon. But just from a build quality standpoint it's night and day. I've had nice Samsung and Sony stuff but it's all consumer grade garbage for the most part. It just feels cheap compared to the Oppo.
 

fake

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So it's more about the hardware than the picture quality?
 

Dochartaigh

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Has anybody tried the new TCL 55 and 65" 6 Series TV's? Been following them a big and am thinking of picking one up for retro video game use with an OSSC and XRGB-mini (and probably my Xbox One). Heard some disturbing reports of banding on solid colors, but tons of happy users as well (and everybody says it's amazing what you get for the money).
 

madman

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So it's more about the hardware than the picture quality?

PQ is much better as well. The UX is much nicer than my prior DVD players. If you have the more expensive 5 series the audio output is amazing, they made great all in one players for optical discs. Other high end manufacturers have OEMed Oppo players in the past.
 

famicommander

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Bought a Sony X800 4K player. Shits all over the Xbox One S. No more freezing or crashing, no more stutter.
 

fake

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PQ is much better as well. The UX is much nicer than my prior DVD players. If you have the more expensive 5 series the audio output is amazing, they made great all in one players for optical discs. Other high end manufacturers have OEMed Oppo players in the past.

Gotcha. Thanks.
 

terry.330

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Yeah and even upscaling stuff like obscure asian movies that are obviously just rips from LDs put on DVD look better than I ever thought they could. It's a world of difference.

If you have a substantial amount of physical media it's worth getting a good player.
 

joe8

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This might sound stupid, but what is the difference between a standard DVD player and a high quality one? Does it really matter if it's being viewed on a CRT? And if you're viewing it on an LCD or LED, isn't the image going to degrade regardless since it's scaling a 720x480 interlaced image to a 1080p screen?
Obviously, a high quality DVD player might have a better picture quality, for the same connection type (for example, component/YUV), than a crappy player. But it's more about which connection type the player and TV have. Composite on a good player and TV would probably be worse than component on a crappy player and TV.
DVDs are natively YUV/YCbCr, so the best connection for them is component. Blu-ray's are full R/G/B (HDMI).

Only OLED TVs are on par with CRTs, in terms of black levels, and color accuracy. Most OLEDS are 4K these days, so you would preferably need a 4K blu-ray player, or some other 4K source, to go with them. I don't know how good OLEDs are at upscaling. Ideally, you wouldn't need to upscale- the result is never going to be perfect.

It's the year 2000. The Sony DVP-S9000ES is the Rolls-Royce of DVD players.

"The distinction between the past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion." -Albert Einstein
 
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Kid Panda

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Oppo players are well known for their Faroudja processing, their upscaling is pretty much unmatched at their price range.
 

madman

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Is joe8 talking about composite output on DVD players? Is this a—what year is this?
 

fake

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Obviously, a high quality DVD player might have a better picture quality, for the same connection type (for example, component/YUV), than a crappy player. But it's more about which connection type the player and TV have. Composite on a good player and TV would probably be worse than component on a crappy player and TV.
DVDs are natively YUV/YCbCr, so the best connection for them is component. Blu-ray's are full R/G/B (HDMI).

Only OLED TVs are on par with CRTs, in terms of black levels, and color accuracy. Most OLEDS are 4K these days, so you would preferably need a 4K blu-ray player, or some other 4K source, to go with them. I don't know how good OLEDs are at upscaling. Ideally, you wouldn't need to upscale- the result is never going to be perfect.



"The distinction between the past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion." -Albert Einstein

So if I hypothetically wanted to upgrade my DVD player to go with my CRT, I'd be looking for an Oppo with component output and with progressive scan output, right?
 

joe8

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So if I hypothetically wanted to upgrade my DVD player to go with my CRT, I'd be looking for an Oppo with component output and with progressive scan output, right?
You would only get extra benefit from having component and progressive scan, if both your dvd player and CRT support those two features. Not all CRTs support progressive scan, it tends to be the newer model (widescreen 16:9) CRTs that do.
 
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fake

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You would only get extra benefit from having component and progressive scan, if both your dvd player and CRT support those two features. Not all CRTs support progressive scan, it tends to be the newer model (widescreen 16:9) CRTs that do.

Ah, OK. So it sounds like the Oppo DV-970HD would be a good buy. It's cheap and has component, so I'd imagine the colors would be better than my current player.
 

Fuckwit1200

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great subject.
okay, audio is two-fold.
a pair of castle acoustics speakers rated @ 75 watts nominal, powered by a kenwood, stack is cornered and can't be arsed to get the id for it. (and a pair of sony headphones when in flight/silent running mode.)
main screen for games is a sanyo ce26ld47-b, piss-poor media codec support, does work as an intended vdu only. :D
computer screen is a sharp lc-20ad5e-bk.
just using it's svga socket for the computer, nothing else attached to it. :p
 

fake

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My dad tried his friend's Bose QC3 headphones and liked them. He was hoping to drown out the sound of my mom's dog who barks all the time. (He was rescued from a home where he was locked up all day 5 or 6 days a week.) I told him if that's the case, he should get good quality sound isolating headphones instead of noise cancelling ones but he was stuck on the QC3s, so I got him a pair for Father's Day. I set them up tonight and I think he likes them but boy these things are shit, especially for $350. Sound quality is not great but not bad. But the noise cancelling is barely noticeable. I looked it up online and there are a bunch of threads saying that each FW update for the QC series has nerfed the noise cancelling more and more, to the point where the current FW has them only cancelling noises that are perpendicular to your ear canals. In other words, if you turn your head towards the noise, the noise cancelling will no longer cancel that noise. Bose directly addressed this and said it's a feature, not a bug. Luckily my dad's pair were manufactured before this FW and he wouldn't know how to update, so at least his are just bad and not terrible.

I fucking hate Bose.
 

greedostick

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Picked up a sound bar sub woofer combo recently.

Tried for hours to get it working via HDMI. Was unable. After hours of trial and error, and reading the entire manual like 50 times, I gave up.

Decided to leave the HDMI cord in since it I was fairly certain it was connected correctly. Then gave in and connected the optical cable. Sound worked right away.

I am able to use the tv remote or sound bar remote to control the volume of the sound. From what I gather using the HDMI just lets you control the volume of any device, in any HDMI port on the TV.

So my question is; Is the optical cable necessary to get sound, or should I be able to get it solely with HDMI?

I did hook the HDMI to the special port on the tv. Can't remember what it's called.
 

fake

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Did the manual mention anything about ARC? My friend has been trying to hook up his new TV - which uses ARC - to his sound system and is having a bitch of a time.
 

greedostick

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Did the manual mention anything about ARC? My friend has been trying to hook up his new TV - which uses ARC - to his sound system and is having a bitch of a time.

Yes. That is what I said I couldn't remember the name of in my previous post. The Bar had an ARC port, as does my television. Both of which I used after reading the manual very carefully.
 

fake

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Yes. That is what I said I couldn't remember the name of in my previous post. The Bar had an ARC port, as does my television. Both of which I used after reading the manual very carefully.

OK, yeah, ARC is supposed to A) let you control everything with one remote and B) avoid cable clutter by sending audio from the TV back down the HDMI cable. Which would be great in theory, but a lot of TVs aren't compatible. I'd double check whether or not your TV is. There are other issues with ARC, too, like I think that a lot of people have had issues getting surround sound to act correctly.

I'd just say fuck it and use the optical cable.
 

greedostick

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OK, yeah, ARC is supposed to A) let you control everything with one remote and B) avoid cable clutter by sending audio from the TV back down the HDMI cable. Which would be great in theory, but a lot of TVs aren't compatible. I'd double check whether or not your TV is. There are other issues with ARC, too, like I think that a lot of people have had issues getting surround sound to act correctly.

I'd just say fuck it and use the optical cable.

Ibwas able to control everything with the tv rrmote. Maybe I have ot set up right and just need the optical cable.
 
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