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Review 1 of 5
Price Paid:
$250.00
from Best Buy (Yes I did) Summary:
First reviewer breaks down the price factor very well. In the end, you're paying less than a hundred bucks for the player if you manage your rebates well. And that's where I want to comment here: How is this thing as a standar DVD player? I have a 40" Samsung LCD, and so with low rez dvds the artifacts are easy to recognize. I had a sweet Denon player - their midline universal, sells for 800 - and my wife loved it. Great picture, great image quality during action scenes. During pastoral moments landscape looked rich and beautiful. But through the AD-H2, there were some artifacts. Some flesh tones that seemed too white and too yellow. There's that scene in Pride and Prejudice when Mr. Clemons is walking up to the party at night, and there's a lot of candle and firelight, and the artifacts were many with the Ad-H2.
But that was only for about a month. We started playing the same movies that gave us trouble - Rocky 1, Pride and Prejudice, Master and Commander - and noticed that the blacks had settled down, flesh tones looked good. I hooked up the Denon now and then to play sacds and would test/compare it. We weren't dreaming.
The AD-H2 is a very, very, very solid standard DVD player. I love Hd on it. But unless you're going to drop 800+ bucks on a standard dvd player, you're not going to find a dvd player with much better picture. And I'm on a forty-inch LCD.
One last thing: two channel dvd soundtracks are good, better, I thought, than my Denon's two channel with DVD. Excellent bass, actually, and mids are great. I have wonderful ampage, too, but the player does it's job well. And even though you only get "core" of the hi-def tracks, maybe I'm crazy but core sounds dang good. Better than standard dd or dts. Strengths:
- awesome standard dvd video image after burn in - amazing for a 100 dollar player (if you factor in the free dvds Toshiba offers, right).
- very strong with two channel sound tracks.
- my wife loves the picture image. She's quite the videophile and was pro-denon for a month. Once the AD-H2 burnt in, she was pleased. She'd never seen the Sting, and we got it on HD, and she was blown away. Great sound and picture! Weaknesses:
Sure, I wish we had the analogue outs for surround sound on the back. And I'm just not going to get messed up in the receiver HDMI war/mess. But, wow, get a dvi-hdmi cable on accessories4less.com for like twenty bucks, buy a monster convertor for 25, and you'll have world class picture quality and a cable that cost 250 brand new for 45 bucks.
CD play isn't too hot, but it doesn't give me headaches. Have a dedicated CD player. Similar Products Used:
Denon 2910
Phillips dv 963sa
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