[Terminator840]

I saw it a few days ago on sale at Meijer's, for $79.99, but for the life of me I can't remember what brand it was. I did a search on there site and a few other places with no luck. I was thinking it was Memorex, or lower type brand like that, and I couldn't believe it had the Faroudja chip.

 

[Huey]

Sylvania DVL-1000F which indeed has DCDi FLI-2310 and HDMI upconversion (component is 480p only) up to 1080i, Panasonic MPEG decoder, passes only Dolby Digital and NOT DTS (even if your receiver can decode it)--some specs on internet may have it as passing DTS but it does NOT so as long as you don't care about DTS then this unit has good PQ (just beware of macroblocking with plasmas on dark scenes due to DCDi/Faroudja chipset). It was $99.99 but they dropped it to $79.99 recently. You can find it online for $60-70 shipped without tax.


Its older brother is DVL-1000G which does NOT have DCDi and uses Panny MPEG decoder and scaler (similar to Panny S52S) but still does NOT pass DTS (Panny S52S does). I opened both players up to confirm the chips inside and tested both using "flag waving" scene on Digital Video Essentials.


Their cases are made of metal and not plastic like some of the cheaper players. Their manuals are downloadable from Funai websites which also clearly states they don't pass DTS. I own the DVL-1000G thinking it does do DTS but it still does NOT. I bought the DVL-1000F over Xmas for $80 also (using $20 Santa Bucks discount from Meijer over Xmas promo) but took it back because it does NOT pass DTS. It did have good PQ equivalent to my Samsung HD941 (DCDI 720p/1080i HDMI) and slightly better than my Zenith DVB-318 (DCDi 1080i component). I love DTS and this unit is gone because of this defect. I gave my mom my DVL-1000G (due to no DTS) which I bought online from buy.com for $70 shipped--can't return easily. It did have nice PQ but the DVL-1000F was better.