Signature Elite 141 Owners Thread - Page 116

Regular DVD will look as good as the transfer allows. If it's a well authored disc, using good source - it can "approach" BD quality. Obviously, it won't look as detailed as BD is capable of, however, it will be excellent.

As the poster above stated, displayed on a Kuro, you will be extremely pleased. However, be aware, as much as love my 141... the real heavy lifting is done in the Oppo. Any quality display will give fairly similar results, with the exception of perhaps black level & detail. But, you'll need to properly calibrate your panel to eek out that last little bit of performance.

BD played on the Oppo, displayed on the Kuro, on the other hand = as close to perfection as you can get

SD will be a notch or two down from there. Once you go BD... you probably will not buy SD's any longer, unless they are not available in BD format.


Sadly, unless you have hit a string of poorly audio mastered discs, this is most likely your environment and/or equipment (not the DVD player). Does your AVR allow setting trim levels, distance, crossover, etc? If there is an Audyssey-like auto-calibration function - have you ran it? It sounds (very broad guess) like your center channel is lower, relative to the others. This would be correctable, if your AVR has the adjustments, by calirating the trim levels on all channels.

If you use the analog outputs of the Oppo, you can trim it in the player. So, that will help, if your AVR doesn't have those adjustments.

Take a peek here for more info on the player. http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1124287

You hit the nail on the head. "source direct mode"

The BDP-83 does a very nice job of not processing the BD. And imo source direct and 2ch dowmix analog are the strengths of the BDP-83. The BDP-83 also does a nice job of up scaling SD films.

And even though the BDP-83 is a neutral player, you may find it necessary to tweak the Enhancer Mode, Sharpness and Contrast with your 141.
Keep all enhancement off. With these tweaks the BD-83 should work just fine with your 141 ISF settings, done by a pro.

ss

My 141 was delivered today and my wife found out how much it cost. That was a fun conversation. I think I turned her around and once she sees some HD content on it, she will be much happier about our purchase.

Any way, I think I will be very happy with the TV once it is up and running.

Assuming you got it for a decent price, show her what it cost last year, or what it lists for.

I did get a good price and from an authorized Pioneer reseller. I showed her the price that Best Buy would sell it for. Big difference. She saw what Panasonic and Samsung sell their 58" for so I think she was expecting a similiar price. I told her than the price difference between a Panasonic and Pioneer Elite is probably about a $100 a year over a ten year period assuming that my Elite will last 10 years.

By the way, the company that sold me the Elite offered me an extended warranty that add five years to the factory warranty for $399.00. If they can't fix it, they will replace it with a comparable product.

Anyone buy an extended warranty?

That could be a problem for the next couple of years, finding a comparable product.

Barry

Yes, there really isn't anything close to a Kuro now. I have heard that the next best HD TV is the Panasonic Z1.

I wish I could buy something that expensive without consulting my other half.

Hmm. I checked the bluray forum and a few of the members there (who had had compared both models) claim that the top-shelved Pioneer Elite and Denon players are a bit better than the Oppo in term of SD and BD dvd PQ's.

I would agree with that. I had the Denon 3800 previously and have had the Oppo 83. The 83 is to me the best player in it's price class for sure. i do think the upscalling of the Denon was better though. I can't speak for the top Pioneer. I don't know of anything though in the $500 and under category that can touch the 83 though.

Now, having said that. I also couldn't justify the extra money of the 3800 over the 83 either. While I do think the 3800 is better. I can't be certain that the extra dough the 3800 would cost you would be worth the price difference for me. It's better then the 83 sure. I just don't see it being better by the $900-1000 extra street price. If the difference were a couple of hundred bucks and I played a lot of dvds, well, then I'd go for the Denon I'd suppose. Then again the Oppo offers so much more value for the money even then it would be hard to pass up the 83.

I believe there are some folks that think the Pio & Denon are better. I also believe that they are in the clear minority.

No knock on either of those players, but they are not better than the -83 for BD. All (but the very poorest of) players will give virtually 99.9999% the same BD performance. In fact, the PS3 gives the -83 the best competition.

I have seen SD upsampling on the Pio, side by side with he -83 on the same 141 panel. The -83 was (arguably) better - to my eyes.

Claims that either of those players, or any other player for that matter, will perform significantly superior to the -83 - might just be coming from their owners, who have just dropped 4-8x the Price of the -83.

I'll still stand by my quote, "For $499 - it is better than anything priced at 5, 6, 7, 8X the cost." A lot of -83 owners, like myself, can afford the higher priced players. WE chose the BDP-83 because of that very statement.

Please check the comparisons again. The 3800 is not better than the -83.

I don't get royalties from Oppo, nor am I a "fanboy", however, that statement is not true. Reviews and side by side comparisons say different.

Your last comment is spot on Even if the -83 was priced at $999 rather than $499, it would still be a great value. The fact that there is even discussion, comparing it to the 3800 (at a $1000 premium), is both an insult to Pioneer and a compliment to Oppo.

Again, those of us that can afford the best (and we are in the 9G Kuro threads, right?), won't overpay for even arguably marginal differences. Unless, you can print money

Yeah, I am sort of lucky in that respect. My wife has always stayed out of our finances and lets me handle everything. It isn't until I buy something really expensive like a 60" Kuro that she even makes a comment. Oh well, other than a Blu-Ray, I won't be buying anything else for a while.

I'm not knocking the Oppo either. In fact, I'm leaning toward it as my BD player because I'm among those who won't pay considerable more just to get extra 'drops' of PQ.

It's not worth it to you and me, but it is for other people in the 'minority'. And to say that it (Oppo83) is the best...........well, I guess it's personal and subjective.

The PS3 is a good bluray player and probably neck-and-neck w/ the Oppo, as you said. But, from what I heard, it's SD dvd playback is only so-so.

Perhaps you can point out to professionally written reviews which concluded that the Oppo83 was better than the 3800. I would love to read those head-to-head comparisons.

The DVD upscaling of the Denon is better but the problem with Denon is it's ability to play every disc you throw at it. I have quite a sizable collection of DVD's that are from every region and only the Oppo can handle every single one I throw at it. If you only watch NTSC north american dvd's the Denon is fine but if your collection is vast and relentless on DVD's players region Oppo is the way to go. The Pioneer I have not seen in person, I hear though it can play a lot of discs but not as well as the Oppo when region free.

That's good news. It's another plus for Oppo, in term of functionality.

I wonder how well it perform with burned dvd's (DVD-/+R, DVD-RW and DVD-DL-/+R)???

"99.9999% the same BD performance" What are you talking about. Please tell me how you came to that conclusion.

If you are saying that the majority of BD players are neutral, then yes I would agree with that.

ss

Yes. Exactly - neutral.

...but you knew that

BTW, the 141 comes off the wall early next month, as we remodel the room. Hope to rehang by labor day. I have i1PRO queued up for Sep. & looking forward to bugging the sh*t out of you

Or, you can start here:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1136139

There is a lot of information to digest in that thread, especially the links to other sources/pages/etc. You'll find several folks who have done A/B comparisons. Some favor the Denon, some the Oppo. Official trade rage reviews are starting to come out in more frequency, now that the player is officially released. You should be able to find them.

I'd give more credence to the AVS folks (especially the folks who have been around here a long time) that have compared them, than I would to the rags, however. Remember, these magazines are the same people that will tell you a $1000 power cord will actually make a noticeable difference, if used with a special noise filtering, $100 fuse

Ah, I see. I had actually visited that thread a few times before...........thanks.

Good luck whichever player you decide!!!

On our 141's, BD is a marvelous experience.

Just got a 141 a few days ago and I am now about 60 hours into the agonizingly slow break-in process. I took five minutes to watch a DVD and then breakin-in. From what I saw looks amazing.

I have done a fair amount of searching - does D-Nice have post break-in settings for the 141? If so, I would appreciate if someone would point me to where they are located.

Second question, and excuse my ignorance here. When playing a Blu-Ray, short of using a scalar, how do you fill the screen with a 2.35:1 aspect ratio video. I never could get my PS3/6020 to fill the screen and I suspect my PS3 settings were correct, but maybe not.

Thanks in advance.

If you want to learn more about aspect ratio and display screen sizes then use the "black bars" link at the bottom of my post.

The OPPO BRP-83 has several ZOOM options which will get the effect that you want, but the edges of the image will be cropped. The PQ will also be adversely effected.

Most people who own Kuro displays probably prefer the original aspect ratio and black bars to an enlarged image with cropping.

Anyone here have a table top stand they aren't using (KRP-TS01) and are willing to sell it? Send me a PM if you do, by chance please.

I nervously went that way with my 6020, but always felt uneasy about IR/burn-in. For a while I used to go to Zoom mode on the Pio, which compromised the viewing experience, but eased my state of mind. Just ordered the OPPO BRP-83 - seemed like amazing reviews and well worth the money.

All of the D-Nice post-break-in settings are in the Settings thread at the beginning.

Maybe I missed something, but I saw his break-in setting for the 141, but not suggested settings post break-in.

OK - just went back to the thread and looked again. They are not listed, at least not on the first page or two. Perhaps they would be the same as the 500M, but D-Nice seems to be very explicit and he did not include either the 101 or the 141 with post break-in settings.

Pretty sure he never made them

I plan on having D-Nice calibrate the set when he comes to my area next month. It would be nice to have something in the meantime.