Suprise!, high end dvd players $thousands are now rip-offs in terms of quality/price

[HTHOLIC]

Hey, everyone,

I think its time for Clint and everyone else to UPDATE audioholics and their recommended systems.

When clint built his HTPC in 2005, the video solutions along with the sound solutions were in its infancy.

I note that people, I feel sorry for all you guys, are spending
up to $5,000 on dvd players.

Its true that the latest denon's are only about $1,000 or less that give great quality and dvd-a and sacd along with nifty features. But there's the thing

A cheap $1,000 htpc will smoke the equipment:

ATI and NVIDIA Crush High End Dvd Players http://www.hardware.info/en-UK/articles/am9nY2pqZA/ATI_and_nVidia_crush__2000_DVD_players/17

The latest NVIDIA AND ATI cards have high hqv scores as of september 2006. As they fight eachother their quality is getting better. So why spend $1,000 for a dvd player when a $200 video card with HDMI or DVD-HDCP output will not only be cheaper but just as good. Not only that but with media center edition and remote controls, Im pretty sure the denon's and marantz have all be rendered oboslete in terms of home theater advantage for video equipment.

Well, what about AUDIO?, its true you need a receiver and acoustics and room control, so I guess as a SACD player and DVD-A player, maybe the denons will be great heh?

But not so, with HDMI pass-through if the receiver has better DACS , then you use that but the denon dvd players have better dacs then the receiver and denon-link can pass more advanced fomats

But okay, theres the thing- an X-FI elite pro costing $300 can be used with a receiver's multi-channel inputs. The newer x-fi supporting dts-hd and dolby hd hasn't come out yet but the card does support dvd-a , as for sacd your probably out of look, but the format isnt that popular and the ps3 even supports sacd.

The X-fi had high quality CS4398 DACS, 4 of them. Its just as good as denon's and marantz and whoever else. It even has bass management, and thx calibration tool (although basic). But you can use ANY software to control eq and what is outputted on those channels.

So in short, only an amplifer may be needed and a great receiver with room acoustics control these days. When PC's have blu-ray and hdvd burners it will be the same thing.

A $200, video card having a score of 125 out of 130 on a HQV test and the results keep getting better.

on avsforum.com they are talking about using the x-fi as a pre-amp replacement.

Does that mean I will never buy a denon player, I don't know- I will certainily get a new reeiver with audessey eq, but things are chaning in Home Theater World.

I guess the 2 biggest things will just be projectors, screens, televisions, and speakers and a good HTPC and Amp maybe a couple years from now. An HTPC can be made into a small cube box too.

 

[Seth=L]

Hmm, indeed. I like the sound of this. I need to get a better TV before getting a real HTPC.

 

[mr-ben]

I'm not convinced. The HTPC you describe will cost more than the stand-alone players, and still can't do everything they can do (e.g. SACD). I'm also not convinced that the HTPC will do as good of a job. They had the players outputting 480P and the cards at the native resolution of the monitor (1920x1200).

 

[HTHOLIC]

Actually, most people have PCs already and capabilties are better

Most people have a PC, thats why you can post to audioholics.

Families have multiple computers, you just need a longer HDMI cable and $200 video card and it will beat the DVD player.

"They cant do everything they do"- only SACD which no PC can play in 5.1 due to SONY'S DRM is the only thing missing.

They can do FAR more than a dvd player. To say a PC can't do more than a DVD player , maybe he was thinking of soemthing else.

You can acutally store DVD's on your computer these days0 you have 2tb of space that's 500 dvds per comp. Heck pc's even have OVer the Air HDTV cards that are far superior to the compressed cable/satellite streams (see the audioholic
quiz, are you an audioholics), ie although for local channels mostly, the superbowl and the news for ex, can come in handy.

Depnding on what you put in it an HTPC can cost $500-700.

So ya, I believe the point is clear High END dvd Players have been rendered obsolete for the prices, its kinda like a Pentium 2 computer being obsolete after 5 years after being purchased for $2,000 only the time has now come for dvd players.

[/COLOR] (Note: the VIDEO CARD'S sub-series doesn't matter so acutally instead of a $200 video card try an

$80 nvidia 6 or 7 series or and x1300 ati - Compare that to $2,000 denon )​

 

[highfihoney]

Nice post but your forgetting a few things,alot of people including myself have no interest in combigning their pc & home theater system,even for some that would want to do such a thing the location of the Ht & PC prohibit the connection of the two,also as allready mentioned is SACD capabilities,your solution would leave all SACD users needing to buy a seperate player.

If it works for you thats great but your post comes off very smug,the way you wrote your post means that anybody who buys a stand alone dvd player is either stupid/uninformed or being ripped off & that is not the case.

 

[HTHOLIC]

Sorry to say this but its reality

I am not saying people are stupid, I myself bought an oppo player or $200 a while back and was considering a denon before that article, its just that yeah its now a ripoff, why?

because the money spent isn't for the dvd player- its for the video quality.

Now they have WIRELESS HDMI, so the argument that the Pc cant be used isn't going to hold true anymore. For a $200 hd-dvd drive for the PC, HD content will go the same way and so will blu-ray. As For SACD, Hdmi 1.2a and HDMI 1.3 can digitally stream the content, so the SACD player won't be using its DAC. you can get the cheapest SACD player on the planet and have the receiver decode it.

http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=38520

All wirelessly of course. BTW SACD is very rare in temrs of the mainstream using it. Its probably gonna go obsolete as well, if itsnt already that popular along with DVD-A in favor of Blu and HD-DVD's DTS-HD and DOLBY TRUEHD's 24 bit uncompressed sound.

Movie studios and artists already support blu and HD-DVD as its mainstream, so the 24 bit uncompressed sound will render unpopular SACD obsolete because it will be unnecessary.

Of course when that happens, it will be great for the consumer, after all the cumbersome DRM, limited selection compared to CD and lack of most consumers having equipment will all contribute to its failure.

Even the audioholics staff admits that dvd-a and SACD hav not really succeeded due to the reasons above. Btw computers support DVD-A. The mainstream PS3 also suppports SACD, so if it does get popular with every school-kid getting it, the point of SACD being worth its weight in gold will be even more moot point. When was the last time I saw an AD for SACD demonstrations or a demo at the store or whatever. Not many artists even support SACD or dvd-a although there are popular artists, it isnt mainstream. Most of its selections are classical , jazz has fewer releases.

Does good content exist, yes but its support is very small relatively speaking.


Again, Im just trying to speak reality, I've felt burned when I bought something and it became obsolete within a few months. Its kinda like buying a pentium 2 or 3 and then 2 years it obsolete.

 

[Seth=L]

I will say this, a PC makes noise, not ideal for certain applications. Also, PCs are prone to have little foul ups. Because HTPC is a CISC type computer it takes more electricity and has much more room for error. A DVD player or HD-type player has RISC and doesn't need large amounts of electricity for its limited functions.

I don't know about SACD, but DVD-Audio most certainly can be played back on a HTPC. Using the HDMI interface I would think SACD would also work.

None the less, I would like to build a HTPC and use it as my source for almost everything.

 

[Jack Hammer]

...because the money spent isn't for the dvd player- its for the video quality...

I didn't buy my dvd player for sound quality alone. I bought it for sound and picture quality and the abilities it has in other areas.

When you are talking about most people don't have SACD, which is probably true, you forget that that is not the case here. Many 'audioholics' and audio enthusiasts have a collection on music on SACD.

Perhaps you should have made the tone of your position, there is a new contender for dvd player superiority, instead of having the tone of htpc's with these cards are the best there are and everything else is both crap and a ripoff.

Why should I go out and buy a new computer to replace my pIII, which does much more than I really need it to, and add a $200 sound card to it when I already have a nice dvd player that does everything I need very well?

Don't forget, just because something scores well (or higher) in one or even two areas does not make it a better overall item.

Jack

 

[MDS]

So ya, I believe the point is clear High END dvd Players have been rendered obsolete for the prices, its kinda like a Pentium 2 computer being obsolete after 5 years after being purchased for $2,000 only the time has now come for dvd players.

Higher end players have better video quality and can handle all of the different ways that dvd mastering can violate the spec. So I don't think the analogy with computers is accurate.

From my own perspective however, I do think it is a waste of money to pay big bucks for a dvd player - only because video doesn't matter that much to me. For a few hundred bucks you can get a good player that handles 85% of the problems with dvd mastering and for 5 times that much you can get a player that handles the other 15% too. The extra cost is worth it for some people that demand the absolute best from their dvd player.

I will say this, a PC makes noise, not ideal for certain applications. Also, PCs are prone to have little foul ups. Because HTPC is a CISC type computer it takes more electricity and has much more room for error. A DVD player or HD-type player has RISC and doesn't need large amounts of electricity for its limited functions.

I agree with the notion that a computer is noisy and less convenient for HT applications but it is not because of CISC vs RISC. RISC is Reduced (vs Complex) Instruction Set Computer and therefore it takes more instructions to accomplish the same task; rather than one complex instruction that takes say 10 clock cycles to complete, you'd have 10 instructions that take 1 clock cycle each.

 

[Seth=L]

I agree with the notion that a computer is noisy and less convenient for HT applications but it is not because of CISC vs RISC. RISC is Reduced (vs Complex) Instruction Set Computer and therefore it takes more instructions to accomplish the same task; rather than one complex instruction that takes say 10 clock cycles to complete, you'd have 10 instructions that take 1 clock cycle each.

Sorry, that wasn't exactly clear.

Wouldn't a CISC system be more prone to error that RISC. How does a RISC require more to achieve the same result, or is it even the same result. Sorry, I just am having trouble understanding what you said.

 

[Leprkon]

You want me to count on Bill Gates for my video ????

 

[MDS]

Wouldn't a CISC system be more prone to error that RISC. How does a RISC require more to achieve the same result, or is it even the same result. Sorry, I just am having trouble understanding what you said.

At the risk of turning this thread into a discusion of computer architecture and assembly language programming, I'll give you a short simplified example.

A CISC processor (Pentium) has single instructions that perform multiple steps. A RISC processor (PowerPC) uses short simple instructions that do one thing only (with some exceptions).

Say you had the string 'Seth' at memory location 100 and wanted to move it to memory location 200. [Note to the programmer types: this is 'pseudo' assembler so I don't have to look up the exact syntax]

CISC:

mov eax, src address 
mov edx, dest address
mov ecx, length of string
// stosb (store string of bytes) is the complex instruction
stosb

RISC:

mov r1, src address
mov r2, dest address
mov r3, length of string
:loop
// store the contents of the address in register 1 to address in register 2
sto [r1], r2
// are we done yet?
cmp r3, 0
// jump past the loop when r3 is 0 (no more bytes to copy)
jz end
// increment source and dest address (point to the next byte)
inc r1
inc r2
// decrement the count of bytes to copy
dec r3
jmp loop
:end

4 instructions for CISC vs 10 instructions for RISC. The single complex instruction 'stosb' performs all of the steps in the loop of the RISC code.

 

[Shortsord]

I am absolutely thrilled to read that these newest batch of cards have such high HQV scores. I've been following their performance ratings as the newest mid line 8 series cards came out and have been very impressed by their game performance and HDCP compliance at such a low price. This truly is a huge boon for the HTPC.

But this definitely not as simple as you claim, not by far. Here's the problems I can see.

-You keep dismissing the SACD issue, but for enthusiasts, it is a very real concern. Anybody who actually has got on board or plans to go for SACD needs a player, and a HTPC doesn't seem to accomplish that. It is a definite issue.

-An HTPC is still an actual computer, and thus is prone to all the many complications and errors that riddle many people's home pc's already. Many people would not want their simple movie watching made more difficult.

-Along with the above, an HTPC still makes more noise and uses more electricity, especially so when talking about the newer video cards. Unless you liquid cool, which ups the price a bit and the complications as well.

-If you're thinking of people using their current pc's as HTPC's, you have the problem of them being in separate rooms, and the problems involved if someone wants to use the computer while a movie is going.

-With the price, you say someone can make an HTPC for 500-700, which is true, but that would be a very bare system, and not have anywhere near the video cards your talking about or the storage capabilities or sound card. All that brings the cost to around at least a 1000. And that's only if you want to build it yourself, plenty will not be comfortable with that and having it built for you adds cost.

-And finally, what about mac users? They couldn't make use of any of the newest graphics cards, and they'd be without options for an HTPC unless they wanted to move to windows or buy a separate dedicated machine.

I think you're right that HTPC's have a huge advantage in many aspects, but you're very wrong in thinking this is a clear cut thing. It very much still depends on your needs, and you can be every much in the right to buy a Denon 3910 or some such. It all depends on your needs. Still.

On a side note, I declined to comment on it because I really am not experienced with them, but do you have links to educate about the newer sound cards? Especially about how their quality compares to outside audio equipment. Thanks a lot.

 

[HTHOLIC]

A bit of further clarification

The Denon and Marantaz dvd players in question cost $1,400 to $2,000 so I think its a fair comparison. As for noise, their exists silent cooling cases and yes there are stability issues with computers, but reliability has improved since windows xp provinding drivers and software aren't causing problems.

Pretty soon, someone will make a linux box with the cheap $100 video card that beats the $1,400 player

The point I am trying to make is that the $1,400-$2,000 players "DONT HAVE BETTER VIDEO QUALITY THEN A $100 VIDEO CARD FROM NVIDIA

Keep in mine that a plextor DVD burner such as px-760 series has all the error correction and mastering and burning you'll need.

I don't see where the value is for a 1,400-$2,000 dvd player then. Not all dvd players support SACD anyways, and keep in mind that in a couple years migration to dts-hd and dolby hd is likely to deal with the failure of these formats to attract mass interest.

Of course a dvd player can break also, whereas in a reliable Pc if one part breaks you can quickly isolate, deal
with that part.

I guess many people may not be familiar and have the technoligcal know-how, but its not hard and people should really pay attention to market-trends.

In terms of electricity usage a 200-300 watt PC isn't going to really run up your bill compared to an amplifier, television set, or perhaps the air conditioner and refrigerator. It depends on the load also,

I really don't see where the $1,400-2000 cost is coming of value. Keep in mind what I said about SACD also migrating.

 

[Jack Hammer]

HTHOLIC,

So you're saying that now that a "$100 card" is out that may have slightly better PQ and that for the roughly the same total price $1400-$2000 as a DVD player with a warranty I can build and put it in a in a HTPC myself instead of buying that dvd player, makes dvd players obsolete??

You really should re-think (or perhaps re-word) your position. Like I said before, maybe it is an option for some, not for me currently. Or the general population. BTW, for $200-$400 you can buy a dvd player, with warranty, with very high pq that will satisfy many enthusiasts.

Jack

 

[HTHOLIC]

If Denon's 3910c dvd player were under $500

Most , if not almost all dvd players under $500 don't have the video quality that will get the high hqv scores above 110 (let me know if you can find one) which is why I brought the article up.

I know the hassles of HTPC and the fact that you probably need wireless HDMI to use it in some cases. However, not every person has all that money to say, well you know what I'd rather buy a denon 3910c for $1,400 as reviewed on audioholics than just run a wireless HDMI.

BTW, with wirless HDMI, the comp could even be in the neighbor's house or garage and have a tv displaying, technology already exists for consumers

Perhaps Denon will lower its prices on dvd players and marantz, but then when Blu-ray comes will have the same issue, a $5,000 denon blu-ray player compared to a HTPC with a blu-ray that can burn having better quality[/COLOR].

Did you know that DENON had a $5,000 dvd player on the Market that had the same score as an $100 video card from NVIDIA. Actually, since you can even use the 7300 nvidia try a $50-60 video card.

 

[Rob Babcock]

While there's an "apples-to-oranges" element of this analysis, I somewhat agree that extremely expensive DVD players don't make much sense anymore. But I think cheap players like those from Oppo are as responsible as HTPC for this. Face it, not everyone can live with an HTPC. The OS can be flakey, they are usually (but not universally) noisey, you need more hardware to use a remote, they're not as user friendly and you can't just turn it on and be watching a DVD five seconds later. DVD players don't get viruses, they don't crash, and generally don't require onerous end user agreements.

That said, eventually I may take the HTPC plunge. For now I'm quite happy with my Denon DVD-2200. It's a bit old, but it plays SACDs & DVD-As wonderfully. How many HTPCs can play back an SACD?

 

[aarond]

Most , if not almost all dvd players under $500 don't have the video quality that will get the high hqv scores above 110 (let me know if you can find one) which is why I brought the article up.

I know the hassles of HTPC and the fact that you probably need wireless HDMI to use it in some cases. However, not every person has all that money to say, well you know what I'd rather buy a denon 3910c for $1,400 as reviewed on audioholics than just run a wireless HDMI.

The Denon DVD3910 is about $600.00 new, since being replaced bt the 3930

 

[mr-ben]

SACD is a real issue for me. My DVD player is primarily for audio, not video. But that aside....

I'd really be interested to see some pictures for comparing the image quality. Are there any out there? Some pictures of a good DVD player, such as the Denon 2930 or better, outputting 1080p, on a 1080p display, compared to a PC playing the same DVD, set to 1920x1080. Both using HDMI.

 

[Shortsord]

HTHOLIC:

Yes, silent cooling options exist, and work quite well I know from experience. But as I said, this matters because good silent cooling costs more money, and requires a lot more know-how if you are planning on building it yourself. Even with windows getting more stable, it's still not all the time. It's undeniable that a pc is a tad more prone to errors and problems than a dedicated dvd player.

Which $100 Nvidia card, by the way? A $200 card I could see, but I haven't seen any benchmarks for those that match a 3930. A link to some scores would be really helpful. Oh, and I'm focusing on the Denon, by the way, because I am unfamiliar with the Marantz you talk about. Sorry.

You really should listen to the many posters here who all voice concern about SACD as well. You can dismiss it because it is dying, which it is slowly doing, but that doesn't change the fact that many of the types who would drop $1000 on a universal player are the same type who would have a collection of SACD's already. I'm not even willing to put that amount of money out, but I'm still looking to start collecting some SACD's from scratch. This isn't an issue you can toss aside for all people. Even when the format is no longer made, it will still be used. And that matters.

You're right there, a person familiar with the insides of a pc could certainly trouble shoot, identify, and correct a hardware problem in a pc faster than you would get a dvd player returned to you after being sent for servicing. But that, again, is for people with the preexisting knowledge, willingness to learn, and understanding of the more technical aspects of a computer. The majority of people don't even feel comfortable adding a pci card or harddrive to a pc, which is why GeekSquad style services have become so popular. It is slightly unreasonable to expect all consumers to have a quite detailed understanding of the way a computer works, its parts, and how to build one, in my opinion.

I certainly concede the point about electricity. That's pretty trite, and load does matter a lot, and most of the newer processors and even those new 8 series geforce are starting to use much less electricity. Not to mention how moot this is when we're discussing partially in the context of audio-enthusiasts who would be interested in external amps. How silly of me.

I'm really not claiming that a Denon 3930 is for all or even most. But in the same vein, I don't think you're correct in saying that a HTPC is correct for most if not all situations. They each have their place.

A 3930 is a simpler single purpose unit, has fantastic video and audio, has fantastic DAC's, has fantastic upconverting features, and is very flexible in playback of many formats. It is not a challenging piece for most to work with, plays SACD as well as DVD-A, requires only as much tweaking or involvement as you want, and almost no real technical knowledge. Not to mention can be found for a street price that matches the price of a HTPC which is liquid cooled well and contains an 8600 GTS or higher.

Most , if not almost all dvd players under $500 don't have the video quality that will get the high hqv scores above 110 (let me know if you can find one) which is why I brought the article up.
...
Did you know that DENON had a $5,000 dvd player on the Market that had the same score as an $100 video card from NVIDIA. Actually, since you can even use the 7300 nvidia try a $50-60 video card.

I would really appreciate any links you have to these benchmarks you're referring to.

I was going to go against your first point about $500 players, but found myself more confused, actually. I found at first this link here which lists an HQV score of 120, while our deal Audioholics.com gives the same Oppo 970 a much lower score of 53. Nonetheless, I'll use the more conservative scoring here on this site, and concede I can't find any benchmarks here that disagree with you. Perhaps when the Oppo 981 is reviewed, though, this will be an issue.

Which $5000 Denon? I'm not familiar with any model over the $3800 5910.
This is the only HQV benchmark I could find for the 7300 GS, which is not much of a contender for anything at all, let alone the 3930. I mentioned the 8600 GTS earlier because if these scores are to be believed then a $200 graphics card gets you nearly top performance (which is quite surprising as one of the things that Nvidia raved about was the ability of the 8800 GTS to get a 128 on HQV, which my link claims the 8600 GTS can do for less). I leave out any mention of Ati because I am not familliar enough with them lately. But for comparison, this site itself, which as I mentioned earlier scores much harsher than other sites I've come across, awarded the 3930 a perfect score.

It is quite clear that some HTPC's are capable of going head to head well with some top of the line DVD players. These would be primarily at the same price point, except with a lot more features for some and a lot more drawbacks for others. I don't think what you're saying about $100 graphics cards getting awesome HQV scores is correct from what I've seen, though, and would appreciate any links to scores you could give.

A good comparison would be this. In the ever-raging game console wars, there are always though who say that consoles all suck in comparison to pc's because they have more features and are upgradable and so on and so forth. But it's not that simple. Because those same features which make a pc so appealing to some as a gaming machine make it unappealing to others.
Different people have different needs, and as such what might be so much better for someone could be an HTPC, but another person would have their needs much better filled by a good universal player.
Is this really unacceptable? Why?

And we've also stopped talking about audio quality.

ETA: I finally was able to get your link to work for me, sorry about that.
I'm terribly confused at this point, and possibly should step out of the HQV issue due to their rating of the Denon 3930 being so much lower than Audioholics, and Audioholics in turn being so much lower for other players than many other sites. I thought HQV was a rather objective test, but it seems I could be wrong about that.
Could anyone explain why HQV scores could be so off between so many reviewers?

Your link, though, does still not answer some of my questions regarding linking to scores. For one thing PureVideo does not guarantee that kind of performance across all cars, as this set of benchmarks done with 7600 GT's in a dedicated HTPC shows.

So, until someone clears up or explains the discrepancy in HQV scores, I will stay away from that benchmarking issue myself. I do, however, still feel that the other issues I have mentioned have some merit in this discussion.