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From reading all the positive comments on this forum about the Panasonic RP91, I decided to buy one and pass my trusty Toshiba 6200 on to my daughter, who will use it with her LT-150.
To be honest, I was a little concerned when I first took the unit out of the box; it is a little light, and at first glance it doesn’t appear as au fait as the Toshiba. I hooked the unit up to the HT200DM with Monster cables, and then reached for the owner’s manual.
The first unique thing I noticed about the RP91’s manual is that it was printed with soy ink. Wow! This will give you something to ponder while using it to wrap fish, or line the bottom of your bird’s cage! Rest assured that if you’re not technically inclined or extremely patient, you are not going to discover every feature the RP91 has to offer.
The first critical thing one must learn after feeding the player a DVD is to make sure you turn on progressive scan, via a small button located on the RP91’s front panel (a little blue light will come on to verify this). I believe the light on earlier versions of this player turned off after a while; this is not the case with my unit. The next step is to kill the room lights and then set the correct input frequency on the Seleco HT200DM.
In my case the first movie was Starship Troopers, because I use this title quite often for calibration and have many scenes memorized to the point where I notice the slightest nuances.
I immediately noticed that the images were crisper, and the blacks deeper. After shuffling through a few scenes (the space battle scene at Chapter 25 is absolutely breathtaking), I put in Escape From New York. I’m not rainbow sensitive, but when using the Toshiba 6200 there is a particular scene in this movie that produces a red artifact that resembles a rainbow (it is probably the dreaded chroma bug). This artifact was nonexistent with the RP91.
One problem is film grain. The RP91’s image is so sharp that an older title such as Goldfinger really suffers. I enjoy viewing this movie every now and then and find this fact quite annoying. But I came up with a remedy that works quite well: Shut progressive scan off and set the 200DM to a lower input frequency. The result is a silky smooth image that is quite enjoyable. I will use this technique for the “noisier†DVDs in my collection.
I also want to mention that when I purchased Planet of The Apes, I was taken aback once I discovered it was not anamorphic, but I must say that this disc looks simply incredible with the RP91’s progressive scan turned on. WOW! Half the anamorphic titles should look this good!
I want to thank all the members of this forum who were responsible for bringing my attention to this player--another step closer to nirvana!
Ciao,
Peter Milo
To be honest, I was a little concerned when I first took the unit out of the box; it is a little light, and at first glance it doesn’t appear as au fait as the Toshiba. I hooked the unit up to the HT200DM with Monster cables, and then reached for the owner’s manual.
The first unique thing I noticed about the RP91’s manual is that it was printed with soy ink. Wow! This will give you something to ponder while using it to wrap fish, or line the bottom of your bird’s cage! Rest assured that if you’re not technically inclined or extremely patient, you are not going to discover every feature the RP91 has to offer.
The first critical thing one must learn after feeding the player a DVD is to make sure you turn on progressive scan, via a small button located on the RP91’s front panel (a little blue light will come on to verify this). I believe the light on earlier versions of this player turned off after a while; this is not the case with my unit. The next step is to kill the room lights and then set the correct input frequency on the Seleco HT200DM.
In my case the first movie was Starship Troopers, because I use this title quite often for calibration and have many scenes memorized to the point where I notice the slightest nuances.
I immediately noticed that the images were crisper, and the blacks deeper. After shuffling through a few scenes (the space battle scene at Chapter 25 is absolutely breathtaking), I put in Escape From New York. I’m not rainbow sensitive, but when using the Toshiba 6200 there is a particular scene in this movie that produces a red artifact that resembles a rainbow (it is probably the dreaded chroma bug). This artifact was nonexistent with the RP91.
One problem is film grain. The RP91’s image is so sharp that an older title such as Goldfinger really suffers. I enjoy viewing this movie every now and then and find this fact quite annoying. But I came up with a remedy that works quite well: Shut progressive scan off and set the 200DM to a lower input frequency. The result is a silky smooth image that is quite enjoyable. I will use this technique for the “noisier†DVDs in my collection.
I also want to mention that when I purchased Planet of The Apes, I was taken aback once I discovered it was not anamorphic, but I must say that this disc looks simply incredible with the RP91’s progressive scan turned on. WOW! Half the anamorphic titles should look this good!
I want to thank all the members of this forum who were responsible for bringing my attention to this player--another step closer to nirvana!
Ciao,
Peter Milo
