Panasonic DVD-RP91N DVD Player -- a Bargain at Twice the Price?
Written: May 13 '02
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Pros: Prog-scan, DVD-Audio, manual scaling.
Cons: The manual scaling will only help those showing unusually-formatted discs on HDTVs.
The Bottom Line: "It's one thing to offer a lightweight warranty on a $150 item, but people justifiably expect a little more confidence from the manufacturer on a $500 DVD player."
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| radioguy's Full Review: Panasonic DVD-RP91 DVD Player |
Why should you spend $500 for the Panasonic DVD-RP91N?
Not for picture quality. You can get better picture quality with Panasonic's DVD-RP56, which sells for less than half as much.
Not for the DVD-Audio feature. Again, you can get that on a player that sells for half as much (the Toshiba SD-4700).
The reason videophiles and home-theater enthusiasts are willing to fork over the extra c-notes for the RP91 is because of its built-in scaling capability.
Is this scaling capability a feature that will do you any good? In most cases, no. If you have a regular, NTSC-standard interlaced-scan TV, with a standard aspect ratio (ratio of width to height) 4:3 picture tube, then the RP91's progressive-scan output capability won't do you any good anyway.
Basically, this DVD player will only help people who own HD-ready and HDTV rear-projection TV's (RPTV's), also known as "big screen" HD-ready TV's. And even then, with most widescreen, anamorphic DVD's, an owner of an HD-ready RPTV won't need the RP91 and will actually get better performance with its half-as-expensive younger brother, the RP56.
There are only a few types of DVD's for which the RP91 earns its keep. As I said above, with the most popular type of widescreen DVD, anamorphic DVD's, the RP56 will do the job just as well as the RP91.
The Anamorphic DVD Defined
To explain this, I'm going to first have to define what an anamorphic DVD is. To wit, an anamorphic DVD, sometimes also labeled on the box as a DVD "optimized for widescreen TV," is made to automatically output a widescreen video signal, as long as you have the DVD player set for that (i.e., set for 16:9 vs. 4:3). If you have the DVD player set for 4:3, the player will put the anamorphic disc signal through a process where one of every four video lines is removed and the player puts out a 4:3 signal with the movie image itself in a letterboxed 16:9 area in the vertical center of the screen.
Bizarre Kinds of DVD's You'll Probably Never Find
There are also pan & scan DVD's, identical to pan & scan VHS tapes, where the widescreen movie has parts of the edges of the image cut, leaving as the remainder an image that fully fills a 4:3 screen. Then there are DVD's which are widescreen, but non-anamorphic. With DVD's of this type, the player puts out a 16:9 movie image within the space of a 4:3 frame. So, the actual output is 4:3, and both the 16:9 movie image and the black letterbox bands are part of that 4:3 image. It's with DVD's of this type, which are not all that common, but you will run into from time to time, that the RP91's "4:3 shrink function with letterbox zoom and shift" will help out.
How common are non-anamorphic widescreen DVD's? Well, after having rented perhaps 100 DVD's, I have yet to encounter one. However, they do exist and, if you want display them on a widescreen display, then the RP91 would come in handy.
There are a few other circumstances where the manual scaling capabilities of the RP91 may come in handy for owners of HD-ready RPTV's (and HDTV RPTV's, of course). Some of these TV's are set at a fixed aspect ratio, usually 16:9, for all 480p (progressive-scan) input. If, for some reason, you must play a DVD in another aspect ratio, such as 4:3, then the RP91 will come in handy.
Basically, for the higher price of the RP91 you get an extra flexibility in the types of discs you can get to play properly on your widescreen display. Since most DVD's are in the anamorphic format, which will work fine on a regular player such as the RP56, the RP91 makes sense for those people who want to make sure they can handle the few DVD movie discs in unusual formats such as pan & scan and non-anamorphic widescreen.
Alternatives to the RP91
If you own a standard TV, I'd suggest Panasonic's DVD-RV31 (since replaced by the essentially-similar RV32):
http://www.epinions.com/content_54680325764
If you own an EDTV or HDTV (or HD-ready TV), meaning any TV which can display images at the 480p resolution, I would suggest the $220 Panasonic DVD-RP56 (Crutchfield is selling it for $199.95):
http://www.epinions.com/content_57267424900
Keep in mind, the RP56 uses the Sage 2200 chip, the same chip used in the $800 Faroudja line-doubler, and actually a better chip than the Genesis chip used in the RP91. That's right, the $220 RP56, based on the quality of its deinterlacing chip, will give you better progressive-scan (480p) quality than the RP91. It's not like the RP91 will look terrible, but the RP56 does have a small edge, at least as far as the deinterlacing chip goes.
Even if you have an HD-ready TV, EDTV, or HDTV, you don't necessarily have to buy a progressive-scan DVD player to enjoy DVD image quality that's similar to the 480p video a progressive-scan player is capable of putting out. This is because most HD-ready, EDTV, and HDTV's will take the standard 480-interlaced (480i) output of a player like the RV31 and line-double it, effectively bumping its resolution up to 480p quality.
In fact, some TV's not only increase the number of lines, but the number of pixels in each line. While the results of these various resolution-enhancement technologies are mixed, you'll definitely see an improvement watching a TV broadcast (or VHS tape, DVD, or any other NTSC-standard 480i signal) on an HD-ready TV versus seeing the same broadcast on an NTSC-standard TV (assuming the two TV's are of the same type and screen size).
However, for a variety of reasons, you will usually get better image quality by feeding the output of a progressive-scan (480p) DVD player into your HD-ready TV and then directly displaying this signal at the TV's native 480p resolution than you will get by feeding a 480i DVD signal to the same TV and then having the signal line-doubled inside the set. If you're interested in the reason for this, it's explained in this review:
http://www.epinions.com/content_8202784388
Breaking the Color Barrier
By the way, the RP91N is the "champagne" version of the RP91. The RP91K is the same machine in black. The RP91's menus, which appear on your TV screen, also let you optimize the player's output to work best with either a direct-view TV (standard tube), a CRT projector, an LCD projector, or an RPTV. You can set the progressive-scan conversion to work best with either film-based or video-based DVD's.
Additional Features
Other video settings include still mode, black level control, picture control (with brightness, color, contrast, and sharpness settings), digital noise reduction ("mosquito," "block," "3D"), gamma correction, still picture display mode (I/P/B), automatic switching of still mode (field or frame), and "cinema" mode (slightly darkens image, similar to the same mode on other Panasonic DVD players). The output mode from the component-video output (a set of three RCA jacks labeled Y-Pb-Pr) can be set by switch for 480i or 480p.
Other video outputs include composite video (x2) and S-Video.
Audio Features
The RP91 plays back DVD-Audio discs. As with all DVD-Audio players now on the market, output is from the player's analog outputs only (either all six, for six-channel discs, or just the L/R outs for stereo DVD-A discs). For more information on DVD-Audio and the other new high-rez audio formats, such as SACD, see the following:
http://www.epinions.com/content_2514985092
The player also decodes Dolby Digital DVD soundtracks, which would be handy if you only had a Dolby Digital-ready receiver. The digital-audio outputs (one coaxial and one optical) will pass either a Dolby Digital or DTS bitstream to be decoded in an appropriately-equipped A/V receiver.
Of course, the RP91 plays back regular CD's. It has an audio enhancement feature for these known as "digital re-master." There's an "audio only" mode which deactivates the video circuitry in the player, eliminating a potential source of interference during audio-only playback.
Besides regular movie DVD's, DVD-Audio discs, and CD's, the RP91 will play back CD-R's, CD-RW's, and MP3's.
There's a headphone jack on the front panel with an adjacent volume control.
Remote
The remote on this player is a little nicer than the standard unit Panasonic throws in with their RV31 and RP56 machines. It's fairly large, with a bulge toward the top containing a small joystick-type button allowing you to handily navigate up/down and left/right through the DVD menus. The transport (stop, play, pause, rew, ff) buttons are just below the joystick. Some of the buttons glow in the dark, but the remote is not backlit. The remote is also pre-programmed to control some brands of TV's.
Warranty
The warranty covers parts for a reasonable period of one year, but labor for only 90 days. Since replacing any broken part would necessarily require labor, at what would likely be a high hourly rate, the warranty effectively only provides you with real coverage for 90 days. Considering how unlikely it is that any DVD player, especially from a company like Panasonic, would be working properly upon purchase and would then break down within the first year of use, it's silly for Panasonic to limit the labor coverage to 90 days. Panasonic should also stop to consider that this is a pricey machine. It's one thing to offer a lightweight warranty on a $150 item, but people justifiably expect a little more confidence from the manufacturer on a $500 DVD player.
Conclusion
Unless you own a widescreen HDTV and buy or rent unusual DVD's, such as non-anamorphic or pan & scan discs, the manual scaling features of the RP91, the features that make this machine cost about twice as much as otherwise-identical players, you'd be better off going with one of the other choices mentioned above such as the Panasonic DVD-RV31 (high quality standard player), the Panasonic DVD-RP56 (higher-quality progressive-scan output with the Sage 2200 chip), or the Toshiba SD-4700 (progressive-scan and DVD-Audio for $250).
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 499.97
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radioguy
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