EggXpert

I've recently purchased a 1080p HDTV and I'm looking for an upconverting DVD player with great picture. I realize that the picture will never be as good as Blu-ray, but I'd like to get as close as possible. I don't need any extras like DivX support, but I won't turn them down.

I was looking at a player from Oppo, specifically their DV-981HD ( http://www.oppodigital.com/dv981hd/dv981hd_index.html ), but I also have a friend that swears by Toshiba. 

Any advice or help would be greatly appreciated.

HI,

Whoa... for that price ($229), you can get a blueray player for a little more. I think its to much for an upconverting DVD player, in my opinion atleast.

I just receantly purchased a 55" 1080p LCD HDTV and my old DVD player didnt work, so I decided to buy a new one. I looked on the egg and seen these upconverters for only a little more money then a regular DVD player.

 Now, I'll admit I didnt know squat about upconverters, so I did some research and found out the basics.. I read how a regular DVD player takes the digital information from a disc and converts it to 480p analog so older TVs can reconize the signal.. and if you have a HDTV,  then your TV has to convert it back to digital, but it stay at 480p... this degrades the picture somewhat becuase it has all that conversion going on. Now, from what I understand, an upconverting DVD player takes the digital info froim the DVD and keeps it digital, and at the same time converts it from 480p to 1080p, then sends it to your tv as a clean signal. This produces a nice crisp image becuase the TV does not have to do anything to the signal it recieves and at the same time its in 1080p format, utilizeing the HDTV's native resolution.

I ended up purchasing a Phillips 1080p upconverting dvd player from the egg and my old dvd collection looks awesome now. It does have divX support and wont break the bank either. It even has a usb port to play slide-shows, music, and even moveis if your flash drive is big enough. For $59.99 it was a great purchase.

PHILIPS DVP5990/37 DVD Player w/1080p HDMI upconversion & DivX playback  $59.99

Like I said, I'm not a pro when it comes to this sort of thing, Im new to it... but this worked out well and my old movies look great on my TV... which was the whole point of the thing. (First movie I watched was Willow.. lol, love that movie... and it looked awesome). I just cant bring myself to purchase a very expensive product, when I can buy one simular for a fraction of the cost.. I mean, for the price of the one you listed, I could purchase four of the Phillips. Granted, the one you linked to is probally very good.. but for what I needed, $60 was enough.

Hope this helps,

Wasper

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I just thought of something to add...

I dont know what kind of budget you have set aside for this, but if you wanted to, you can spend about $400 and get a Playstation 3. The Playstation 3 is not only a game consol, but it also has a blueray player on it, and it also will upconvert regular DVD's to 1080p (you must use the HDMI port for this feature.. but then again, you should be useing it anyways).

So, basically.. for $400 you can have a total "entertainment package" in one box...a next-gen gameing consol, a blue-ray player, and a DVD upconverter. I didnt know if you were into that sort of thing, like playing games, but I figured I would throw that suggestion out there for you. Alot of people bought the PS3 becuase of the combined ability of playing games and having a blueray player.

Me... I didnt go this route cause Im a PC gamer and I have large DVD collection (no blueray's) ... so I just went on the cheap and bought the above unit in my previuos post.

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I agree with everyone that you should either get a blue-ray player or Playstation 3. Blue-ray is always backwards compatible so you can play your DVDs

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