Hello I'm considering a possible purchase of a universal DVD audio player, I'm Canadian and was hoping for some feedback from anyone who owns one of these toys, especially Canadians, as I have a few questions in regards to the availability of these universal players as well as the availability of the media to play on it..
Also what exactly is the difference between a SACD an the audio dvd disks, are SACDs cheaper to buy? is there a huge difference in sound quality
basiclly I'm looking to be educated on this topic, I was able to hear a DVD audio disk a short while ago and the sound quality blew me away.........However my hubby brought up a very good point by saying what if your speaker system is not high end quality or your receiver is not high end quality , how (much) will this effect the quallity of the actual Universal dvd player? in terms of sound?
our reciever is a sony 6.1 STR-DE597, and our speakers are Athena AS series, so far we are quite happy with our sound system, and am hoping that this will be effeciant for the purchase of A universal DVD audio
any feedback would be greatly appreciated, as we are "newbies" to this type of DVD audio formats
You need a reciever with 5.1 analog (6 RCA) in, and you can use the globally (EVEN in Canada...) available Pioneer 575A which has a very good price-performance ratio. Other players are Denon 2910/3910.
Very good Canadian sources for DVD-Audio are DVDSoon and DVDBoxOffice.
For high quality, forget the junk Pioneer machine and grab yourself a Denon 2910/3910 or higher.
If a Pioneer has to be the way, then get the DV-45a.
Forget those nasty 565/563/578 things though. Garbage.
He has already bought the 578a, so no need to whack him on his head...
Not everyone is convinced the cheaper Pioneer's ar garbage, especially at that price. Many won't invest too much in a DVD-A player, now when it's certain that DVD-A/SACD will never take off. Soon there's time for the Bluray/HD-DVD war.
Of course I hear a difference between my Pioneer 575A and my Meridian G98DH, but the Meridian is 30 times more expensive...
Quote:You might think that comparing a $200 player to one that costs six times as much is unfair. Still, the DV-578A's audio performance is at least 80 percent of the DV-47Ai's. Considering that the price of the newer model is less than 20 percent of the older one's, the DV-578A starts to look really good. And its overall performance?both visually and aurally?is very good. If you're on a budget and you want to start exploring the wonderful world of high-resolution, multichannel music with a player that also kicks ass with DVD movies, the Pioneer DV-578A should be on your short list.
I bought those 2 Pioneers, and they were almost useless.
The 563/565 has a long, long list of discs it will not play.
There are also problems with things just not working correctly due to Pineer's odd interpretations of the specs.
The 578 is not much better.
Some things that were broken on the 563/565 are fixed, other stuff that was not broken is.
You will be better off not buying the Pioneer. Not for DVD-A.
It's fine on SACD, and fine for DVD-V (although not as good as the similarly priced Cambridge Audio 540D Azur unit)
Was your Pioneer players noisy? Pioneer had (has?) QA problems with their cheaper players, usually the "noisy ones" also inferiour sound quality (and sometimes bad progressive component output). My is silent, and works good. Better at DVD-A than SACD, but for DVD-A I of course use my Meridian. The 575 plays the few SACD I bought before getting the G98DH - then it was just DVD-A - and also a few DivX movies my wife watches.
BRD/HD-DVD?
If the movie/record companies are as stupid as they usually are, and try to make some extra bucks immediately by pricing discs high - I'm quite sure your prophecy will be right. They will get no volume and will be obsoleted, possibly not by another physical format but rather downloads to media systems. You "just" need better bandwidth for people so the download of HD material is more feasible.
If they try to just break even (or less) in the beginning, so they can start making money when they crank up the numbers, they may stand a chance. DVD-A and SACD has been selling very bad, but music DVD's pretty decent. A DVD-A with full-motion video wouldn't be that bad...
