Has anyone actually compared how a dvd looks through an htpc vs. a good progressive scan dvd player? If all I ever do is stay on the htpc, I am satisfied with it, UNTIL I do a side by side comparison with my panny-rp56 on the same dvd.
What I do is rip a dvd to the hard drive and play the dvd from the rp56, starting at the same time and occasionally freeze framing both images, and then switch inputs back and forth on the plv60 to compare.
Although the sharpness might be better on the htpc (vga input 1), the color is so inferior to the rp56 (component input 3) it's amazing and although I have been playing around with the color settings on the htpc and the plv60 for the last several weeks, I have not figured out a way to dial in the htpc.
The basic AVIA setup seems to do nothing for color from the VGA input, since there is no saturation and hue setting for the vga input anyway. And the color and tint patterns look spot on anyway through the blue filter (even better than the rp56), yet when compared to the rp56 on the dvd movie, the color is utterly washed-out and inferior.
Even the brightness and contrast patterns on AVIA show problems. From the rp56, there is a definate range where I can see 1 of the 2 white moving bars (contrast pattern) or 1 of the 2 black moving bars ( brightness pattern). However, from the htpc, these pairs of bars are so close in visibility, they pretty much both appear or become invisible at the same time making it very difficult to know what the correct brightness and contrast settings should be.
If anyone has any suggestions for this problem it would be greatly appreciated.
What I do is rip a dvd to the hard drive and play the dvd from the rp56, starting at the same time and occasionally freeze framing both images, and then switch inputs back and forth on the plv60 to compare.
Although the sharpness might be better on the htpc (vga input 1), the color is so inferior to the rp56 (component input 3) it's amazing and although I have been playing around with the color settings on the htpc and the plv60 for the last several weeks, I have not figured out a way to dial in the htpc.
The basic AVIA setup seems to do nothing for color from the VGA input, since there is no saturation and hue setting for the vga input anyway. And the color and tint patterns look spot on anyway through the blue filter (even better than the rp56), yet when compared to the rp56 on the dvd movie, the color is utterly washed-out and inferior.
Even the brightness and contrast patterns on AVIA show problems. From the rp56, there is a definate range where I can see 1 of the 2 white moving bars (contrast pattern) or 1 of the 2 black moving bars ( brightness pattern). However, from the htpc, these pairs of bars are so close in visibility, they pretty much both appear or become invisible at the same time making it very difficult to know what the correct brightness and contrast settings should be.
If anyone has any suggestions for this problem it would be greatly appreciated.