Sony DVP-NS70H HDMI Single Disc DVD Player
Can you tell a difference?
I bought this DVD player at the same time I purchased the Samsung 46\\" DLP HDTV (HL-R4667W) - it has made for an outstanding cinematic experience.  Now I had noticed that several of the reviews of this DVD player mentioned a problem with black bars appearing at the top and bottom of the screen.  I have myself noticed this happening, but it does not happen with every DVD - and the bars are different sizes on some DVD's versus others.  For example, they appear on Star Wars III, but not on War of the Worlds (I buy all disks in Widescreen format, BTW).  My wife put in her DVD of Sarah McLachlan's Afterglow concert, and it was full screen, while my Sting concert DVD did show the bars. <br /> <br />I would say that the lower quality the disk is, the more compression is needed to upconvert to 720p/1080i, but if a George Lucas DVD is giving me the bars, then that makes me think there is something else going on that I have not figured out yet. <br /> <br />However, none of these issues has detracted from the picture quality itself, which is definitely improved upon with this player.  My father owns the 61\\" version of the Samsung I have, and uses a Sony progressive-scan DVD player plugged in through component video, and it is night and day the difference in quality between the two players.  It is going to be very interesting to see how Blu-Ray and HD DVD's are going to improve over this upconversion technology, because I've seen details I've never seen before. <br /> <br />The only reason I did not give this 5 stars is because the remote control is a little too \\"loose\\" - thumbing around the menus can be tricky because the remote moves so fast it's easy to skip the selection you are attempting to navigate to. <br /> <br />All in all, though, if you can't tell, I highly recommend this player.