Surround Sound Query - Samsung/Sony any use?

Keith186

Looking to get reasonably priced surround sound for the sitting room.

Will be used with 47" Philips, Xbox 360 and PS3 occasionally for blu-rays and for plenty of music.

Seen this Samsung one on pixmania.ie

http://www.pixmania.ie/ie/uk/2788657/art/samsung/ht-tz325-home-cinema-syst.html

and this Sony
http://www.pixmania.ie/ie/uk/2468855/art/sony/5-1-dvd-hdmi-usb-dav-dz28.html
This interests me most out of these as the PS3 won't be there most of the time so the built in upscaler for DVD's is handy especially on such a large TV.

Seen this on richer sounds which is the only one I might be able to afford from there I think (going halves with housemate so depends), is it worth the extra cash? It's Home Cinema System 1.
http://www.richersounds.com/information/hcinemasystems

Thanks for any advice!

cdb

Did you see the Richer Sounds clearance offers?

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=60915453&postcount=17

some nice Pioneer systems worth considering too.

Keith186

Thanks, haven't checked there in a while...

I like the Pioneer DCS580- DVD 5.1 Tall Speaker System or might go for the 575 if speakers are too big.

Thanks

Idleater

i've said this numerous times before, but it is worth iterating:
Why do you need an upscaling player when your tv will do this conversion automatically, and probably as well as the player regardless.
You cannot get more pixels than 576p will give you from a dvd. It is not suddenly 1080p

andy1249

i've said this numerous times before, but it is worth iterating:
Why do you need an upscaling player when your tv will do this conversion automatically, and probably as well as the player regardless.
You cannot get more pixels than 576p will give you from a dvd. It is not suddenly 1080p

Likewise It will be worth iterating again why the above is wrong.

Most TV's have a very basic scaler , a simple stretch to fit type scaler , which means SD content will not look great on the TV.

Most half decent upscaling players have a better scaler , with advanced interpolation algorithms , and produce at the output a 1080p signal.

Upon recieving a 1080p signal a 1080p TV will do no more scaling , as the scaler wont kick in on a 1080p signal .

A simple test for anyone , leave the player on SD , say 576p or whatever and play a DVD ,

Now set the player to upscale to match the best input your TV can do and play the DVD , does it look Better ?

In the vast majority of cases it will. It is an immediate and noticeable improvement , and this is down to what the scaler is actually doing , which is far more than the scalers in most TV's.
There are many many different types of scaler chipsets and most manufacturers save the best ones for the players , not the screens.

Its true that it cannot match the quality of actual HD content , but it can greatly improve the appearance of SD content on a HDTV.

Idleater

andy1249 wrote: »

Likewise It will be worth iterating again why the above is wrong.

I'm going to attack the post not the poster:

1) read the spec for the "home cinema" system linked to by the op.

2) look at the price - €231

Result: VRS by Anchor bay it is not.

End of story, my point stands.

The Ritz

With my Mod hat on, let's keep this civil.

Mod hat off, I think this largely depends on the kit in use - My own experience is using a Panasonic 42PZ81B. I started out connecting a regular Philips dvd player, non-upscaling, and very quickly migrated to a Toshiba HD-DVD player which upscales dvd to 1080i over HDMI. The difference between the two is night-and-day. It can also be useful to have an upscaling dvd player just for the convenience of using HDMI either through an AV Receiver or direct to a TV.

Ritz.

viperirl

The Ritz wrote: »

I think this largely depends on the kit in use

Agreed. There are no hard and fast rules here I believe. My current player when connected to my tv yields marginally better results when the player upscales. However, with my projector, it's better to feed it with an SD signal and let it upscale when watching non-HD material. It might very well be different with other kit.

Best thing is to move the upscaling from one piece of kit to another and judge the results for yourself.

Keith186

I got the Pioneer DCS580- DVD 5.1 Tall Speaker System with built in upscaler and gave it a quick test yesterday and I did notice the difference in the picture when it was upscaled, nothing spectacular though.

Default was 576i but I changed to 1080p and it was better.
Info button on tv also showed the resolution had increased.

I'm starting a new post on the system I got to see how I can get more use out of it.