Best Upscaling Experience? (Indiana Jones)

just watched all 3 on my xa2. thought they looked great. but even more impressive was that the films are still good. they have passed the test of time. cant wait for the 4th.

I have a XA2 and I never had problems with menus,the only problems are when you try to view them in 1080p/24.

If the audio is bitstreamed, how can one player sound better than another?

I have the old boxset, i need to re-watch em on my HD-A20 which IMO is a tad better then my DMP-BD10A.

Cheers

Bobby

Digital Jitter can still occur regardless, depending on packet compression and all it could vary enough (with good equipment) that a difference is discernible.

Cheers

Bobby

My opinion is that the XA2 is much better. I do not like DVD playback on the A35. Many do like it, though.

Move to the UK and watch the BBC-HD Broadcasts

Yah fully enjoy Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom minus all the bits they cut out for that PG rating.

When were/are the movies being shown on BBC HD?? Don't tell me BBC HD finally show something worth watching and I miss it? Damn it!

something with a REON or QDEO chip via HDMI to your display....does your OPPO have one of those...I know the others don't.

Unless of course your display has one....uh...probably not...that is the Vizio plasma coming out this summer with the REON chip I'm thinking of

The last two Sundays and the Sunday coming up.

I think Freesat now shows high definition if you have the receiver for them.

If your OPPO has 480i over HDMI you might want to try that. I know that 480i HDMI fed to my 6010 was about the same as 1080p from the HD-XA2. The Pioneer plasmas have excellent de-interlacing and scaling -- probably better than any of the players you are evaluating.

Thanks. I've got HD cable so I've got no problems actually being able to watch BBC HD, it's just that they seemed to have kept these HD showings a bit quiet. Then again I hardly ever watch BBC these days so maybe there were more ads on BBC telling people the movies were also available to watch in HD. I saw a couple of the Indy ads but I don't remember them mentioning BBC HD. And I didn't bother watching the SD versions because at the very least Temple Of Doom would have been cut and I've got the movies on DVD.

DD and DTS on DVD generally sound better bitstream using the PS3. Sometimes it is a wash if you use PCM.

The best upscaling that I have ever seen is delivered by a PC running the proper DVD player software, a good scaling/sharpening package, and using a high end video card.

For me, currently that would be Vista running Theatertek, ffdshow using a 2X Lanczos resize followed by the dscaler4 sharpening filter, an NVidia 9800GTX using the evr renderer, and outputting at 1080 over HDMI to a high end video projector. Audio is handled by an Auzentech X-Meridian outputting 8 channel analog.

This same system also delivers amazing HD from both HD DVD and BD using PDVD8.

Vern

Saw these on a couple of Hi def channels the last two weeks. They look fantastic on hi-def. Too bad Paramount didn't release the BR disks for these as they would be great. I still have the older SD set and on the XA2 look very good.

How much?

~1,000.00 for all new parts. Somewhat less that a high quality standalone scaler. And it plays both BD and HD DVD.

Vern

It doesn't all the time. It seems to for certain DVD's. My guess would be those codecs are meant to be bitstreamed and decoded in your AVR, while PCM is meant to be decoded in the player.

Reason why you are having trouble with the menus is that menu is in 480i60 video. You are outputting 1080p24 and although this will allow upconversion and jitter free output of film based 480i DVD, you will suffer from extra jittery image when trying to view 480i video based source (small price to pay IMO).

Less than I paid for mine a few years back with crappy specs.

Perhaps the ps3 is mixing the menu sounds with the movie sounds when set to PCM. While in theory this should not really change anything, as anyone who has worked in the PC world knows, decoding and then mixing messes up sound. It is just safer to bitstream, which is why I do think hdmi 1.3 is helpful for the new codecs.

what component only oppo do you have?

Just finished Temple of Doom on my 980/pro 150HD setup, 480i as per above...

It's such a great mess, anybody bitching about the new flick clearly hasn't seen the second film in a while... Gimme a hat, whip, and the themesong, what else do we really need?

The Analogue transmission was pan & scan fullscreen tonight ( yuck ) ....Is the cable version widescreen and is it 2.35:1 or just 1.78:1 ( 16.9 )

I absolutely hate pan & scan. 16.9 screenings of 2.35:1 movies are almost as bad ( I hate the compromise )

Does the BBC show films in 2.35:1 on their HD channels the way Channel 4 has started to do ?

I think BBC digital and HD show movies in OAR but you'll have to ask someone else for the Indy movies... I'm seriously p*ssed off, I was too ill to watch TV earlier so I set my V+ box to record Indy 3 in HD (it's an HD recorder too and seems to have perfect quality) but literally just this minute I switched it on to watch it now and it said recording failed! I've never had this happen before on either SD or HD so I'm guessing it's a DRM issue and that Virgin have introduced stricter DRM as my Mum had something similar happen the other day. She wanted to watch some free On Demand music videos but when she tried the screen went black so she asked me if I could fix it. What actually happened was that their DVD/HDD recorder was blocking them. She wasn't even trying to record the videos it's just that they have the cable box running through the recorder because they've only got 1 RGB Scart socket on their TV. So now if my parents want to watch On Demand stuff they have to switch their recorder off which is a pain because it takes about a minute to switch on again. (It says "preparing" for about a minute with a logo screen rather than just turning on.) That's a perfect example of how DRM sucks, maybe I should have posted it in the other thread!

Now I think I'll go and see if there's anywhere I can download Indy in HD because since our TV licence fee is paid and our cable & V+ box subscriptions are paid I think I have every right to watch Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade in HD any way I can! In fact I'll probably download the previous 2 in HD as well since they were on BBC HD as well and I would have watched them (barring illness) if I knew they were on. Plus I bought the original DVD boxset, the other day I bought the new boxset (which is on its way from Australia since they're uncut like the US versions but 720X576 PAL like the UK versions) and if I eventually buy a Blu-Ray player of some sort I'll definitely buy a Blu-Ray boxset so nobody would be losing any money over it, lol!

Actually I don't think I'll bother, it's supposed to be worse overall than upscaling the DVD! I'm not even going to bother watching a video sample, here are 2 screenshots of Raiders Of The Lost Ark though, the top one is the BBC HD version and the bottom one is an upscaled DVD: