So happy I picked this one up!
Written: Nov 22 '02 (Updated Nov 23 '02)
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Pros: Compact, easy-to-use, excellent interlaced video quality, no "chroma upsampling" bug, media support, reasonable price
Cons: Not available in black finish, remote does not have joystick
The Bottom Line: I'd recommend this player to anyone (HDTV or not) because of it's excellent picture, ease-of-use and wide range of media compatibility.
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| cbono's Full Review: Panasonic DVD-RP82 DVD Player |
Let me first start by saying that I do not have an HDTV, so I have not been able to examine its progressive image quality.
But while shopping for a replacement to my aging JVC DVD player (purchased Summer 2000), I decided I wanted to get progressive scan functionality. An eventual upgrade to a widescreen HDTV is a foregone conclusion for me, so I didn't want to have to upgrade the DVD player *again*.
Thus began a long process of research. I relied heavily on reviews from CNET.com and Amazon.com, looked at Consumer Reports, and even Epinions. What I found was that for a lot of progressive scan decks with excellent progressive output quality, the reviewers would mention that the decks' interlaced output quality was lacking. Often, they would mention the appearance of "artifacts" (image rendering errors during the decoding of the MPEG data) while viewing a deck's interlaced (i.e. non-progressive) output.
This was just unacceptable to me. I had no idea how long it would be before I took the HDTV plunge, so I wanted to make sure that the player I bought had excellent video quality all around.
The Sony players seemed to be an exception. They received high marks for both progressive and interlaced output. The only problem was, they were a little more expensive than I would like. And buying a Sony deck would preclude any DVD-Audio options (Sony supports their own SACD standard, in direct competition with DVD-Audio standard). But in looking at the Sony decks, I stumbled across a helpful bit of advice: excellent interlaced quality came from excellent decoder components. And one of the best decoder components was the Sage/Faroudja chipset with 54MHz/10-bit video D/A (digital/analog) converter.
Ah ha. So I started sniffing around for players that used this chipset, and discovered that, while undocumented by Panasonic, several of their players contained the Sage/Faroudja chipset. I confirmed this from several sources. This discovery, combined with the fact that a couple of the Panasonic players get consistently high marks from reviewers, led me to further explore the brand.
More background information was upturned while researching Sage/Faroudja. It appears that many decks are stricken with a "bug" in their decoder software. This anomaly, known as the "chroma upsampling" bug, is caused by a lack of attention to detail when the decoder was written (you know, doing something the easy way vs. the right way). You may be inadvertently familiar with this bug, as it is most often manifested in "jaggies" appearing around the edges of areas of solid red on the screen.
Happily to say, I found out that Panasonic writes their own decoder software, and nearly all of their players were free from this defect (other manufacturers sometimes lease the software from other sources. JVC is one of them). So now I was getting very comfortable with the idea of owning a Panasonic deck. But which one?
A quick journey to Panasonic's website revealed their current lineup. Their top-of-the-line was too expensive, their bottom-of-the-line too anemic on features. But what caught my eye was a newly released RP82 model, featuring everything I had wanted and then some: progressive scan, DVD-Audio support, MP3/WMA support, CD-R/RW, DVD-R and DVD-RAM support.
I ended up picking the deck up locally (Ultimate Electronics, known other places as Tweeter or SoundTrack) because they surprisingly had the best price I could find. I was a bit disappointed that I had to get this silver model because, unlike some of the other models, there was not an optional black cabinet available for it. And I'm not just talking about silver, I mean silver with a polished mirror front. It looks nice and all, but the rest of my stuff is classic black, so it's a departure. All in all, it doesn't look that bad, and it's a really nitpicky issue. But I digress...
I took it home and opened the box. It was amazing how small and lightweight this model was compared to my old player. It was easily 1/3 the size, and probably only half as heavy. Hookups were a snap (I have component video cables optical digital audio cable). FYI, the deck has plenty of connections: component video (required if using progressive scan), S-video, composite video, optical digital (fiber), and 5.1 channel analog audio (RCA-type, required for DVD-Audio).
The Panasonic supports both Dolby Digital and DTS Audio.
Setup was a breeze. The deck has a quick-setup menu feature that helps you get up-and-running quickly. You can also bypass it (and disable it, for power-users like myself) and set everything manually. The onscreen display is easy to read and navigate, but you still have to refer to the manual for descriptions of some of the available options.
I tested out the video quality immediately, and was pleasantly surprised. There were no visible artifacts on anything as far as I could tell, and I tested it with a variety of scenes from a variety of discs. In fact, the picture quality is better, and there were no "jaggies" around intense areas of red. Woo-hoo! Also, some DVD titles that had "problematic" menus (The Matrix comes to mind) functioned flawlessly on the Panasonic. Another huge plus!
Then it was time to test the other formats. I was sorely disappointed when I found out my old JVC could not play burned audio CDs. The Panasonic works perfectly with them, and has a very nice screen interface for navigating/playing them. It also has CD-Text functionality, so it reads disc and track titles for you (I always use CD-Text on my burned discs).
Next up, a burned CD-R full of MP3s. Again, it performed very well. After taking a moment to scan the contents of the disc, it showed me all of the titles in a list. You can then randomize, play sequentially, etc. There's a search feature where you type in the name of an MP3 you want to play, but it's really cumbersome with a remote control. For the record, it plays the Microsoft WMA format (Microsoft's own proprietary version of MP3), but I don't have any WMA files and I likely never will.
The deck also handles DVD-R, another big plus for me because I recently purchased a new PC equipped with a DVD burner. I have yet to burn a DVD, so haven't tested this aspect of the deck. It also supports DVD-RAM, which I believe is the format that the component (i.e. non-PC) based DVD recorders record to.
My only other gripe (other than the color of the deck itself) is with the remote. It's a DVD-only remote, so you can't perform any other home theater functions with it. This is in contrast with my last player, which I had set to control the volume of my receiver, very convenient in my opinion.
The remote has a directional pad (north, south, east, west buttons, plus one in the center for "select") rather than a joystick (again, like my last remote). This isn't horrible, but the joystick is nice because your thumb can sit in one place on the remote to peform all navigation. I also think the joystick is much easier to operate in a darkened room than the directional pads, but in all fairness the pads are well spaced, so it's not *too* difficult to feel your way around the remote.
The play/stop/pause buttons are all small and all the same shape and size, another bad design decision in my opinion. They should be larger and unique, again for ease-of-use in the dark. Still, this is a very minor gripe when the deck has so much other great stuff going for it.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 212
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Epinions.com ID:
cbono
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Reviews written: 2
Trusted by: 1 member
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