Denon 3910 DVD player advice on set-up and calibration

[Weevy]

I recently purchased a Denon 3910 DVD player which I'm generally pretty happy with as I listen to music and watch films equally. For films I'm partnering this player with a Panasonic Plasma TV the 37PV500. On good quality transfers the picture qulaity is excellent but on poorer transfers macro blocking (particularly on blacks) etc rears it's head!

BTW, I have a copy of the Video Essentials DVD for calibrating the picture and my question is:

1 - Should the majority of adjustments to the picture actually be made through the TV itself or should I tweak and tinker with the considerable adjustments possible via the DVD player itself? Not sure if I'm doing something wrong but I do not seem to noticed any appreciable picture changes when adjusting the DVD player settings.

2 - Is there a way to reduce or eliminate macro blocking, or is this just symptomatic of the quality of the transfer and my kit is highlighting the deficiencies?

Any feedback greatly appreciated.

[billy p]

I would not tinker with the dvd players colour controls. I've used a avia calibration dvd as well and simply put I think your issues are the same as most peoples blacks and whites are the most difficult to control.:) On my set I have a feature called expert mode it overrides all factory setting, the colour is excellent but black levels are hard to adjust(IMHO).:)

[agarwalro]

The professional reviewers claim that the 3910 has negligable\ no macroblocking issues and is second only to the 5910 in terms of PQ. On the flip side, the Pannys are known to have bad scalers and sensitivity to video noise. Use the 3910 on Auto 2 setting and route signal using DVI or HDMI. Make sure you are outputing the TV's native resolution so that its internal scaler is not engaged. For calibration tweak only the TV, if feasable, get it ISF calibrated.

[Weevy]

Many thanks for your advice. I'm currently using an HDMI cable and have the player ouputting at 720p.

When you say use the TV's native resolution what exactly do you mean? Don't think I've ever adjusted or been able to adjust this....

[billy p]

Tell the dvd player to sent the signal which is native to your set. Therefore scaling up or down dosen't occur and your set just reads the incoming signal. Some dvd players send 1080i & 720p see what your panny's native resolution is it might be 1080i and set it at that?

[Clint DeBoer]

My position on this is to calibrate the display first, with the DVD player in teh default mode... With the exception of bad DVD players, this typically results in the ability to achieve excellent results. In some cases, the display will not have the necessary adjustments needed to achieve the desired picture quality, in which case the DVD player can be tweaked to make up the difference.

With this method it is recommended to have the DVD player on a dedicated input, so the picture quality can be adjusted differently (if needed) for other video sources.

[Weevy]

Many thanks all for your input really helpful and appreciated. :)

I checked on a home cinmea site which has reviewed my screen, here's what it said re screen resolution:

"There is oneslight oddity about the TH-37PV500, though: its basic pixel resolution is 1,024 x 720,which actually works out to a 4:3 aspect ratio.So how come the screen is 16:9? Because Panasonic has built it using a unique asymmetrical cell structure that makes it possible to lengthen the cells in the horizontal plane."

From this can I assume 720p on my DVD player would be the best match inorder to stop in the internal scaler from kicking in or does this weird geomatry mean that the scaler will cut in regardless?

[MDS]

Regardless of the fact that they have 'lengthened the cells in the horizontal plane', the number of pixels is stil 1024 x 720 which doesn't match any standard HD resolution and the scaler will have to scale the signal to 1024 x 720.

That is an interesting marketing gimmick IMO. The true aspect ratio is 4:3 which is NOT widescreen but it appears to be widescreen because the horizonal cells are wider than the vertical cells.