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Deinterlacing

We were amazed to find that this player is a step backward in deinterlacing performance from the DV-37 and DV-38A (which didn't have the best deinterlacing to begin with). The 45A appears to be a pure flag reader, with none of the cadence analysis the 47Ai has. What is even more surprising is that this player does not even have motion-adaptive video deinterlacing, which all of the Pioneer progressive players have had (with the exception of the 434, which doesn't deserve to be called progressive).

The Basics

Like all Pioneer players thus far, the 45A suffers from the Chroma Upsampling Error, and it's very visible. Enough said.

The white level is low on this player at 96.88 IRE. There really is no valid reason for the levels being this low. The video encoders used by Pioneer all come from Analog Devices and can be set pretty close to perfect, at least within the +/- 2 IRE window we use for ranking. You may need to bring contrast up when using this player.

The frequency response in this player is hotter than any other player. It looks like they have really emphasized the mid band frequencies. At first glance, this will make the 45A appear sharper than other players. Once you have properly adjusted the sharpness control on your display, this difference will go away.

The component timing is outside of spec. The 45A does reproduce blacker than black picture information, which is at least one nice thing we can say about the player.

There was 1 sample cropped from the left and 3 from the right, which we consider acceptable.

We get accused of being biased against Pioneer constantly, which we're not. Many of us at Secrets of Home Theater & Hi Fi are fans of many Pioneer products, including their audio gear, TVs, and laserdisc players. But it's hard to be fans of their DVD players when they produce players like this. It's not a terrible player, but given that several cheaper players are better overall, we just can't recommend this one, at least based on progressive video quality.

Source: http://www.hometheaterhifi.com/cgi-bin/s...&deInt=0&mpeg=0

Now, these comments are based off of the list price of $700, which has dropped sharply. Maybe it's a better bargain now, but it doesn't sound like it. Any player that introduces poor performance into your system is no bargain, in my opinion.

Compare that to the Panasonic DVD-RP82 which I own, that had a list price of $229.95:

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Deinterlacing

This player uses the Genesis FLI2200 chip, and as expected did well on deinterlacing. There are three deinterlacing modes on this player, but only two are worth using: Auto 1 and Auto 2. Auto 1 uses the FLI2200 to analyze the picture cadence and make decisions about film or video mode on the fly. However, the FLI2200 doesn't have a good NTSC 2-2 pulldown mode (used for 30 fps progressive material), so to improve the performance of 2-2 material, Panasonic added Auto 2, which forces the FLI2200 into film mode when it sees a 2-2 progressive flag pattern in the MPEG stream. There is also a video mode but strangely enough if you force it into video mode, DCDi™ is disabled.

Given the relative dearth of 2-2 titles in the US, Auto 2 is unlikely to add much value here. If you know that a particular title is 30 fps progressive, then it might be worth trying Auto 2, but in general we'd leave it on Auto 1. In Europe, however, 2-2 pulldown is very common, so Auto 2 might be a good default. The FLI2200 chip will auto-detect 2-2 pulldown if the source is PAL, so it might not be necessary to use Auto 2 even then. With Auto 2 the user should be watchful for combing artifacts, and switch to Auto 1 if they rear their head.

The Basics

The RP82 is just as good in the core video department as it is in the deinterlacing department. How is it that they can get it right in a $229 player while some of their competition can’t for 2 and 3 times the price? We recommend that all of their competitors pick up an RP82 and see what a DVD image should look like!

Black and white video levels are within spec, with white at 99.7 IRE. The player is capable of reproducing below black picture information. The YC delay in the player is less than 5ns, which is within spec. The frequency response is virtually flat.

No part of the image is cropped. It has all lines on the top and bottom as well as all samples on the left and right sides of the image.

The layer change takes around 1.75 seconds. Not the best we have seen but not terrible. The overall response is on average and we rated that a 3. If we could choose one area for Panasonic to improve on, it would be here. We have become spoiled by the awesome response of Meridian and Denon.

While the RP82 delivers one of the most accurate images we have seen, combined with top-notch deinterlacing, it can be improved on. To start with, we hope that Panasonic can speed up the layer change and response on future players. That said, we certainly recommend this player highly. It is clearly the best value in DVD players as of this writing.

This player receives the Secrets Recommended 480p award


Source: http://www.hometheaterhifi.com/cgi-bin/s...&deInt=0&mpeg=0

Jeff