New to the Home theater scene, figure I would say hi and see some peoples opinions.

So last week I went out and bought a Sony 32" KDL-32ML130 and I LOVE it. Playing games on the xbox 360 using the VGA cable looks flawless. Checked and played some DVD's through the xbox in 1360x768 (the screens max resolution) and it looks great. But, I am looking to get a dedicated DVD player so I don't have to listen what sounds like a jet engine from running the xbox and I don't want to have it on all of the time.

So i did some research on some good up-converting players and I decided to give the Pioneer DV-400V-k with the Mediatek chipset a try. Got a HDMI cable, hooked it up, and tweaked the settings. I played a handful of movies with different environments in them to compare visuals, and on every single one the XBOX was more detailed and smoother hands down. I tried tweaking everything I could, I even switched the Pioneer settings from 720p to 1080i to see if it would look better using the TV to downconvert the picture but it still looks the same. Comparing the two, the Pioneer always looks a hair "fuzzier" in and around everything. There are no signs of a bandwidth problem at all with the picture. The XBOX just looks sharper and more detailed. I know the VGA cable it uses is analog but would the different connection between the two make a difference like that?

The only on-line review I found for the XBOX up-converting without the HD-DVD player said it was awful but it was a couple years old, so I guess microsoft addressed that in one of the downloadable updates for it.

So I was wondering if anyone had any ideas on tweaking the Pioneer. I have thought about the idea of upgrading to the OPPO DV-981HD with the Genesis chipset and seeing how that works as well. Thx in advance.

I have the same dvd player hook to a Sony 46 lcd. I love the upconverting job that the Pio does. I think is pretty good at 720p res.

Well I got in touch with my brother who has a newer XBOX with a HDMI output on it and used it to test the connections, swapping back and forth from HDMI to the VGA cable using the same xbox there is a noticeable difference. It is almost like the TV is able to utilize the analog connection better than the digital. I played with the TV settings as much as I could to get the HDMI to look as detailed and I got it closer. But it just seems odd that the connections are making that big of a difference.

Slayn, it may be true.
When I hooked up my DV600AV (same upconverting chip as DV400V) through component cables, picture was visibly brighter & deeper like having better blacks than with HDMI.
I was puzzled at this but maybe this has to do with better analog image signal processing of TV set. Just a guess though.

Slayn, it may be true.
When I hooked up my DV600AV (same upconverting chip as DV400V) through component cables, picture was visibly brighter & deeper like having better blacks than with HDMI.
I was puzzled at this but maybe this has to do with better analog image signal processing of TV set. Just a guess though.

It could be differences in how the ports are implemented. Component has sometimes seemed more saturated to me also.

But all this depends on the settings, so always use a calibration disc for best results.

-Bill

The Xbox is scaling the DVD directly to the TV's native resolution. The Pioneer DVD player is scaling to 720p/1080, then the TV is scaling again to its native resolution. That may account for the difference.

Additionally, the TV's VGA input may be superior to its HDMI input. VGA most likely has no overscan, and may also have more accurate color, no edge enhancement, etc.