Well, my Panasonic A110 finally gave up the ghost the other day, after seven long years of faithful service. So, after getting and returning a less-than-stellar JVC, I picked up a Sony DVP-NS575P, after reading some positive reviews (and the service plan to cover the not-so-positive reviews.. hehe).
Anyway, I've browsed through a few movies on it, and I sat down and watched The Incredibles last night, and I'm getting what I believe is referred to as the "screen door effect", a sort of stair-stepping on angled and/or rounded objects on-screen.
It's odd that I would note this on a brand new unit, and not on my now-ancient Panasonic. But I think there are several things contributing to this, and I'd like to get some feedback (or at least confirmation) from folks here that might have experienced a similar problem.
The base cause is, I believe, that I'm running in 4:3 Letterbox mode. So nearly all of my DVDs are "squished" down from anamorphic to display properly on my 4:3 TV (which in and of itself is perfectly normal). Combined with the fact that the Sony is no doubt spitting out a significantly sharper image than my old Panasonic, and it's quite likely this is the root cause and why I never noticed it on the old one.
Another thing is that the television itself is old.. it's an old Sanyo of some sort.. 27", blah blah. And only has the standard yellow component Video In connector.. it's older even than S-Video. Which is probably why I'm not entirely certain that the Sony has a sharper image than my old unit.. my TV just ain't that good.
Could all these things be causing this stair-stepping effect? Sharper image from new DVD player + component cables + old TV? Or is there some sort of quick-fix workaround that I don't know about that might alleviate it?
Hopefully later this year I'll be able to upgrade (finally) to HDTV, and I'm sure all these little problems will blissfully disappear at that point. But, those things are expensive.. hehe. I'll no doubt come back here again to figure out what TV to buy.. hehe.
Anyway, thanks for the input!
