Home Cinema 5.1 advice wanted.

rizla01

A couple of Q's for those of you 'up' on these kinds of things.

1) would a Blu-ray player with upscaling play a DVD better than an ordinary DVD player with upscaling?

(I am considering ordering either a Home theatre with 800 watts (Non Blu-Ray) or a bluray home theatre with 400 watts - I rarely play DVD's leta lone blurays).)

2) Are plain DVD's expected to disappear within the next 5 - 10 years and be replaced by Blu-Ray or do we expect another format to have evolved by then?

The two budget systems that I am considering are :-

This one

Or

This one

Not interested in the internet connectivity as long as I have HDMI & Optical (Which they both have) and I don't have a Xbox or Playstation Etc.

JonnyBravo

rizla01 wrote: »

1) would a Blu-ray player with upscaling play a DVD better than an ordinary DVD player with upscaling?

Some would. Some wouldn't. Would depend on the items concerned. Even if you listed the items it would be easy to find differing opinions.
There is no substitute for a personal trial. You decide and then it doesn't matter what anyone tells you.

rizla01 wrote: »

2) Are plain DVD's expected to disappear within the next 5 - 10 years and be replaced by Blu-Ray or do we expect another format to have evolved by then?

It is entirely possible that no physical format will replace DVD/Blu-Ray.
Download/online will probably/may well come to dominate.

rizla01

Ok. Is there anything in the BluRay technology that is likely to be linked to the upscaling process or is that an independant bit of technology?

i rarely play DVD's but wondered if I would suffer if I didn't have the 'latest' bluray or would plain DVD playability (With upscaling) give me as good as I can get from a non bluray dvd.

rizla01

Anyone?

NEED to know before I commit.

Toxteth_OGrady

The other way to look at it is with the BD system you can play either BD or DVD. If you go for the DVD system you're stuck with that format.

If you are outputting BD to a 1080p TV with 1:1 pixel mapping all scaling circuitry will be by-passed.

Upscaling of a DVD can be done by any one of the DVD player, a home theatre amp or the TV, depending on your set up.

trets77

rizla01 wrote: »

Ok. Is there anything in the BluRay technology that is likely to be linked to the upscaling process or is that an independant bit of technology?

i rarely play DVD's but wondered if I would suffer if I didn't have the 'latest' bluray or would plain DVD playability (With upscaling) give me as good as I can get from a non bluray dvd.

no . a proper high end DVD player will play a DVD better in my experiance .

here is the thing you can pick up DVD players that were once really expensive on the cheap on Ebay

some examples

cost about £800 new
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Denon-2900-DVD-SACD-player-superb-/320672374481?pt=UK_AudioTVElectronics_Video_DVDPlayers_Recorders&hash

Cost £1000 new

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Arcam-DV79-DVD-Player-/110661531826?pt=UK_AudioTVElectronics_Video_DVDPlayers_Recorders&hash=item19c3f0f8b2#ht_2023wt_962

But since you hardly ever play DVD's i don't know why you are worrying about getting a high end DVD picture. a blu ray will do you just fine IMO . if you want as good a picture as you can get from a DVD player via upscaling then it would be one of these ( assuming price was not a issue :rotfl:) . it's a case of how far you want to go and how much you want to spend at the end of the day .

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Arcam-FMJ-DV139-DVD-CD-DVD-A-SACD-/260753969507?pt=UK_AudioTVElectronics_Video_DVDPlayers_Recorders&hash=item3cb625d163#ht_1538wt_962

marvic31

I bought the LG HB405SU last week and quite happy with the setup. For the price, the quality of picture from blu rays and dvds is pretty good (but picture quality is slightly poorer than my old Phillips Blu ray player).

Sound is loud enough at 400w. I will never have it up full as would never be needed. Although I do find the sound not as clear as I would like. It does have 2 optical inputs so you can connect a sky box and a games consoles. It also has a radio and can plug in your mp3 player.

From you post you say you rarely play DVD's and Blurays. I am not sure why you want a home cinema system if this is the case.

aliEnRIK

The bluray built into the system above would probably have awful upscaling

Its impossible to answer such a vague question about upscaling as its down to each unit. I can vouch for the Sony S370 having a very good scaler in it - but only so long as you have a nice clean power supply as its built in power supply unit is a tad poor

The fact your 5.1 systems are so cheap, I suspect your bluray player will be cheap as chips, in which case you can expect poor scaling (Still depends on the unit mind)

Id personally advise against a built in bluray as its more likely to break down, and when it does it means the whole unit is useless and needs replacing

Beware of the wattage too. True hifi is measured in RMS. My Acram power amp is 135 Watts RMS per channel. Theres no way on earth the LG is delivering 136W RMS. The 66Watts 'may' be RMS, but I suspect isnt (probably more like 20-30)
OVERALL wattage is meaningless

rizla01

Usual story I guess. Get what you pay for etc...

When you look at the S/H market that Trets suggested and which looks to be a favourite route if not needing to keep up with the latest, (which I don't these days - I only just got rid of my 32" CRT Sony 6Mths ago), you are still faced with the added expenses (Player/Amp/Speakers Etc).

What bloke wouldn't groan in delight at the pleasure of owning one of these, the accompanying Amp for the first DVD player shown.




But then factor in the speakers, which would need to be another £ 200 - £300 (Again S/H) and then have to put up with the missus moaning about all the boxes/wires/remotes Etc and coupled with the fact that DVD's are not that important to me and TV selection is poor, then I guess it'll have to be a cheapo 'one box suits all' system.

In which case the Bluray would seem the most sensible route.


It would be a lot different if I had a room that I could dedicate to being a Cinema room but space is a little limited here.

aliEnRIK

Its your call

Id recommend a separate bluray player though

almillar

I agree with Rik as usual. This is an investment, how precious are your eyes and ears (and other emotive things, try these on the wife...)
Seriously, get down to Richer Sounds. They have a Yamaha amp for £150 (or £180) and a Blu-Ray player for £80, maybe less. Speakers - have you not got any? Re-use them! If they're good, they're front left and right, if they're rubbish, they're rears. That leaves you to buy a centre and a sub, you don't have to do this right now. That's 2 remote controls. The Yamaha might have a multi function one too.