Sony DVP-NC800H/S HDMI/CD Progressive Scan 5-Disc DVD Changer, Silver Review

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(More customer reviews)Hopefully this review will help clear up some confusing things which first-time HDTV owners may face.

I am a first-time HDTV buyer who recently purchased my first medium-level, 32" HDTV (720p, but can receive 1080i). When I first got the T.V. I planned on seeing exceptional visuals for my cable and for my DVD movies. I knew that an HD signal would be needed to truly see an HD quality picture, however, I quickly got frustrated to see that both standard DVDs and regular reception from my basic cable looked pretty pathetic even compared to a standard T.V. This HDTV I purchased looked great in the store, so I knew there was something going on I didn't understand, so here's a quick sample of what I learned and how it relates to this DVD upconverter.

All of my DVDs are standard (not Blu-Ray or HD DVD). Using a standard Sony DVD player on my HDTV the picture from DVDs was not good. Color was excellent, but the clarity was not good and the resolution looked poor and had a very 'blocky' look (jaggies). At this point the DVDs actually looked better on a standard TV. Cable reception looked equally bad on the HDTV.

Another issue is that when watching a widescreen movie on a 16x9 TV the image will be bigger since the aspect ratio on the 16x9 TV can handle more of the widescreen image. So, on top of the standard DVD having less resolution than a HDTV reproduces, that low-res picture is also being enlarged to fill a 16x9 screen, and as like what happens with the cable, because the HDTV reproduces an excellent image, all the imperfections of a non-HD signal (for both cable and standard DVDs) are in a way being magnified and look worse than on a standard unit.

I learned that as far as cable goes, the picture will not look very good unless you have HD through your cable provider (and you are watching an HD broadcast of course). Digital cable channels look decent...somewhere between standard cable and HD. As for playing movies, obviously if you have an HD DVD or a Blu-Ray player you are not going to have an issue with those formats.

Even though I planned on signing up for HD stations through my cable I almost took back the HDTV because I have a lot of regular DVDs and wasn't planning to upgrade to Blu-Ray anytime soon. Watching my DVDs the way they were looking from my standard DVD player was not good enough. That's when I looked into an upconverting DVD player (specifically this one).

Now, I have read a lot of articles and reviews with people saying that upconverters don't work and others saying it will look just as good as HD or Blu-Ray and both are wrong. After hooking up the upconverter to the HDTV (which was very simple with a HDMI cable and running the 'quick setup') I was watching my DVDs again and was more than pleased and was more than thrilled with the results. For the $120 for a Sony upconverter, it exceeded my expectations (which are pretty high).

With the upconverter, my DVDs looked great on the new HDTV. I personally felt that they looked better at 1080i (which my TV will accept) than 720p which is my TV's native resolution. But this may be a matter of taste/preference. I would say with the upconverter the standard DVDs looked much better than they looked on standard TV, and of course the size of the 16x9 screen makes them come alive even more.

Is the picture with the upconverter as good as a HD DVD or Blu-Ray disc? No. Is it much better than watching a standard DVD on a standard TV? Absolutely. It really is a perfect in-between if you have quite a library of DVDs and don't plan on doing the Blu-Ray thing for a while, and you will still get a better picture from the DVDs than watching them on a standard TV.

In conclusion, while I can only vouch for the specific unit I am writing this review on, I would highly recommend an upconverter without reservation if you find yourself in a similar situation where you have quite a few standard DVDs and are thinking about getting or have already bought a HDTV and are upset by standard DVDs not looking good when being played on a regular DVD player.

I would like to point out however that most Blu-Ray players (at least most Sony ones) also will upconvert your standard DVDs, so if you are considering a Blu-Ray player but worried about not being able to play your standard DVDs, not only isn't that an issue, but Sony players I have read up on will also upconvert DVDs for the HDTV (but please check to make sure that the model you are looking at does have upconversion and check to what level is upconverts to (1080i or 1080p)).

Hope this helps anyone who is a little confused as I was on their first HDTV experience.

As a side note: Some have complained about upconverters not being CD-friendly and I would agree with this in general; the loading tray is somewhat slow, and on some models you can not open the changer tray without stopping play on the current disc. If you are into changing music discs frequently I would recommend getting a separate CD changer just for music discs and then using the upconverter only for movies. This is what I do and it has been perfect and is why I still give this unit 5 stars as an upconverter.

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Product Description:
The DVP-NC800H is the 5-Disc DVD/CD player solution your Home Theater has been waiting for. Enjoy your DVD collection being able to be upscaled to 1080p via the HDMI connection. Plus with BRAVIA sync, you can easily power on and synch the inputs of compatible Sony AV devices and BRAVIA TV's connected to this DVD player via HDMI for hassle-free enjoyment.

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