Get one while you can
Written: May 02 '03 (Updated Jul 04 '03)
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Pros: absolutely beautiful picture
Cons: poor info display; relatively long layer switch time
The Bottom Line: If a great picture matters to you and you can't find a Panasonic RP-82 and a Denon 1600 is too expensive, get this one
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| teamtempest's Full Review: Panasonic DVD-XP30 DVD Player |
I'm not certain I've had my Panasonic XP-30 long enough to provide as detailed a review as I'd like, but I'm concerned that it's no longer in production. If I wait too long, reviews may be pointless.
The Panasonic XP-30 is one of three DVD players to receive a "Recommended" rating from the latest Progressive Scan Shootout (#3) at www.hometheaterhifi.com. The other two are the Panasonic RP-82 (discontinued and extremely hard to find) and the Denon 1600 ($400-500). Internally, as far as DVD decoding and de-interlacing go, all three are essentially identical (same chips, etc). Performance-wise, they are also essentially identical (in particular, no chroma upsampling bug - the Panasonics have never had it in any of their players, and Denon apparently uses Panasonic boards).
There are a few meaningful differences. The Panasonic RP-82 has a built-in Dolby 5.1 decoder (ie., DVD-A capability) that the XP-30 does not and also a MSRP of about $75 less. I don't know what the extra $75 is supposed to buy on the XP-30. The only difference the manufacturer points out is a slimmer case (about 2" high). I'm not the kind of person who gets excited about most style issues, so that's definitely not worth $75 to me.
I'd not been happy with my Samsung P421 DVD player for some time. While it played most DVDs just fine and with a reasonable picture, it refused to play the four-disk version of "Lord of the Rings:Fellowship of the Ring" without skipping. This despite returning the DVD set for another and two trips to the shop for repairs under warranty (once replacing the boards, once replacing the pickup). Why did it not like this particular DVD? I don't know, but it made me unhappy.
Now I'd seen ads for the RP-82 from a local retailer for months. Naturally, when the Progressive Scan Shootout results convinced me I wanted one, it was about two weeks after that retailer had lowered the price a bit and closed them out. All gone. On the web, either the sellers were out or they'd raised their prices well beyond MSRP.
The XP-30 was never available at retail in my area. On the web, the price was still higher than I cared to pay. That is until one day when I looked for it at www.pricegrabber.com almost as an afterthought to something else. MyDigitalUniverse was offering it for $175 that day. Their price went higher almost immediately (and I've never seen that low a price since), but it held long enough; out came my credit card.
When the player arrived it was damaged, so I immediately sent it back. That was not much trouble even though I had to pay for the call to customer service. I spent no time on hold and the shipping charge I paid ($20) covered insurance. The second player arrived undamaged a few days after I shipped the first one back.
Connecting the XP-30 via component video cables (red/green/blue connectors)to an HDTV is fairly straightforward (the Samsung HDTV I have now is reviewed here, if you're interested). Although the player has progressive scan capability, it outputs interlaced video out of the box; progressive scan must be turned on via the remote and a menu system. This seems a bit clumsy after using the Samsung P421's switch on the back to accomplish the same thing (you don't need to connect the player to flip the switch, for one thing. And a switch gives you nice feedback - it's HERE or it's THERE, and it's easy to see which).
The remote has small buttons and is not backlit but the most often used functions are fairly well placed and easy to remember. In particular, the four cursor movement buttons placed around the menu select button function much better than the cursor movement "joystick" of the P421's remote.
The XP-30 takes a relatively long time to open its DVD tray after it has been turned on. Once the tray closes again, the player recognizes the DVD and loads the menu (if any) fairly quickly. When playing a DVD with a layer switch, the XP-30 often noticeably pauses when the switch occurs (around a half-second to a second. Perhaps especially noticeable to me because the P421 never hesitated that long).
The 2" high XP-30 has relatively little room on its front panel for control buttons, which are all on the top of the player. The front is mostly a featureless silver faceplate, interrupted by the DVD tray and the information display.
The display is supposed to show things like elapsed time, etc. And it does - if you get close enough. Me, I can't read it from beyond about two feet. It's a brightly backlit display with thin black characters. The backlight drowns out the characters from any distance. There's no method mentioned in the manual for dimming the display, either. As it's useless anyway, I may eventually just cover it up (here, the P421 - or just about any other player with an auto-dimming light-character on dark-background display - is clearly superior).
But in the end I bought the XP-30 for its picture. And the picture is lush and gorgeous. Like the RP-82 and Denon 1600, the XP-30 has the Sage/Farajouda DCDi de-interlacing chip (although it does not have the DCDi logo). I'd heard this was a pretty good chip, but WOW. DVDs such as "I, Claudius" and "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" that looked like video tape on the P421 look like film on the XP-30.
Among the things I re-viewed, where the P421 showed motion artifacts during a pan near the beginning of chapter 7 of "I, Claudius" the XP-30 showed nothing. The words "Don't Panic" that appear superimposed on an image of the sun in the first chapter of "Hitchhiker's Guide" are actually multi-colored and not simply red.
Not all DVDs I've tried on both players are obviously improved to this extent. But the XP-30 clearly improves some pictures, and the rest have probably been improved more subtly. They all look great. I'm very pleased.
None of this year's Panasonic DVD players (yes, they apparently come in model years now) have the Sage/Farajouda DCDi chips (they still have Panasonic's MPEG software, so they don't have the chroma upsampling bug). I'm not sure why this decision was made; the RP-82 was a very popular player and all of Panasonic's DCDi players were priced much lower than other manufacturer's DCDi players. But the lowest-priced was still over $200 MSRP. Perhaps Panasonic decided that not enough consumers were willing to spend that much (this year's models are all cheaper than last year's equivalent models). Or perhaps Panasonic ran out of DCDi chips and couldn't renew a favorable deal with Sage/Farajouda.
Whatever the reason, it means that the RP-82 is no longer available, the XP-30 (and big brother XP-50, not tested by www.hometheaterhifi.com) may also be endangered, and no new model from Panasonic is going to be able to equal them.
But my XP-30 plays "LotR:Fellowship of the Ring" just fine, the movie looks great, and I'm happy.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 175
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Epinions.com ID:
teamtempest
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Member: Anton Treuenfels
Location: Minneapolis, MN, USA
Reviews written: 25
Trusted by: 1 member
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