Great picture. Best value for a super Progressive scan DVD player with DVD audio and MP3, DVD RAM playing ability in its Price range

The loading mechanisms just a little noisy

Well, I remember when this player was at the top of the list in the DVD ranking. Of course some audiophiles just had to blow it down because they spent over $1,000 for their Sony SACD Progressive scan player or Mcintosh. Haha.

This player rocks for the money. Nothing in its price range is better. And of course its just now, that the big reviewers are taking notice. Better late than never.

Check out the review:
http://www.cnet.com/electronics/0-6342369-1304-6145314.html?tag=belt

Beautiful smooth picture, great sound, no chroma upsampling error, DVD Audio.

None yet, still looking.

What a beautiful DVD Player. The picture is crisp and clean without softness. The audio is tight and clean. I've tried just about every DVD player out there, even the new DCDI players that use the sage chip. I really don't understand how the panasonic RP56 uses the DCDI chip and the RP91 doesn't because the RP91 (genesis chip) totally blows away the RP56. Im not too crazy about the new DCDI players out there, it is a great chip but I think that it makes the picture less detaled and a little soft. The only player that can compare to the RP91 is the Pioneer DV-37 which is a fantastic player but you are going to have to put up with the chroma problem. The RP91 has no chroma problem, a beautiful picture and a great price ($400-$500 online) I haven't tried the dvd-audio yet so that's what im on to next.

Similar Products Used:

Pioneer DV-37, Sony 9000ES, Philips DVDQ50, Kenwood dv-5700, Panasonic RP56

Sound, picture quality, features, remote, look.

Slow to initialize disc

I bought this Pan. RP91K to replace my Sony dvd530D. So far I've been very happy with it. The picture of this player is very clear, colorful, vivid both in interlaced and progressive mode. The remote is very good looking and useful. The sound is deep, clean and natural. It can play many formats including the Audio-DVD which is a big plus. You will hesitate to listen to CDs again after you listen Audio-DVD, but too bad there aren't many softwares available yet.
I have also compared this player side by side with the Denon DVD2800 and the Pioneer Elite DV-37. To be fair, the Pioneer's picture a bit more colorful than the Pan. but the sound is too warm and colored, not clear and natural. The Denon's picture is a little bit soft, not as clear as the Pan., but it sounds very good. The Pan. sounds very close to the Denon. The built quality of the Pioneer and the Denon are superior compare to the Pan., but that isn't very important.
Overall, the Pan. is still a winner considering the price, features, and quality.

Similar Products Used:

Denon DVD2800, Pioneer DV-37, Sony DVD530D

Spectacular audio, outstanding video, thoughtful styling, fast function execution, multiple media formats supported.

User manual needs some work.

First of all, my thanks to all the reviewers who have preceeded me here. My decision to buy this unit was heavily influenced by your reviews :)

Secondly, the minutia and specs are so well represented in earlier reviews that I see no reason to repeat them again.

Thirdly, this DVD player is not an upgrade to my existing home theatre system. It was to be the basis for a second system in my basement, with the primary focus of the basement system being "audio/stereo".

That said, I find that every superlative heaped upon this unit is well-deserved and accurate. In comparison to the Pioneer DV-05, it's a tough call using 480i component video. They both deliver outstanding pictures. No HDTV monitors here in the house yet, so I can't comment to the progressive scan features or issues. There's no comparison between the Panasonic DVD-RP91K and the DVL-909 ... the Panasonic wins in every category. I keep the DVL-909 around for it's exceptional picture quality on LaserDiscs. The audio is pretty good too.

I'm blown away .... and now I'm a convert. After numerous hours of listening to DD, DTS, and DVD-audio, 2-channel stereo has begun to sound lifeless and confined. For any "stereo" purists who read this, sit down with some high quality DTS DVD's and DVD-Audio discs, and be prepared to be surprised at the least. If you need a suggestion for source media, try these:

Blue Man Group - Audio (DVD-Audio)
Dvorak - Symphony #9 (DVD-Audio)
Eagles - Hell Freezes Over (DVD, DTS)
Steely Dan - Two Against Nature (DVD, DTS)
Robbie Williams - The Ego Has Landed (DVD, DD 5.1)
The Matrix (DVD, DTS and DD 5.1)
Armageddon (DVD, DTS)
Santana - Supernatural (DVD, DTS)

The system:

Panasonic DVD-RP91N
Pioneer DVL-909
Yamaha RX-V1000 receiver
JVC 32D501 32" monitor tv
JBL S412P mains
JBL S-center center-channel
JBL Control 5 surrounds
No subwoofer (the S412Ps handle that function)

Similar Products Used:

Pioneer DVL-909, Pioneer DV-05

It plays a cornucopia of formats. Built in DTS and Dolby Digital decoders.Progressive scan. Relatively inexpensive.

Only one tray. The fact that it practically plays anything makes me want to switch between DVD, CD, and MP3 but that requires me to be at the side of the player at all times.

It's solidly built, nice faceplate, readable LED display from 15 feet, logical onscreen menu layout, quick chapter changes on DVD movies, It has a convenient and usable joystick on the remote that doesn't need an agile or light touch. Strong IR signal from the remote: you can change songs even around a corner by casually bouncing the IR beam off a wall. Separate power button for the TV.

It plays my 140 MP3's on a CD-RW disc I burn at leisure on my Mac in ISO 9660 format. It reads .mp3 files even in subfolders so you can separate songs by genre. It doesn't read the names of the songs, though. The songs are just numbered in the player's menu.

With all that it does, I wish Panasonic released an accompanying carousel model, but oh well, they didn't. This beat out the Pioneer Elite DV C36 I was looking at before which does practically everything too, but it doesn't play MP3's. The Pioneer C36 doesn't have DTS or DD built in decoding and the Panasonic's Progressive Scan was noted by others to be better. The Pioneer C36 is a carousel though.

I haven't tried playing any burned VCD's yet but other reviewers say it reads them just fine.

I'm still saving up to build my home theater so I can't comment on the A/V quality issues unlike other reviewers that have sophisticated systems.

Overall, this player has a VERY low cost to value ratio.

Similar Products Used:

Pioneer DV Elite C36

Almost 3D Video quality, Audio quality (up-converts all CD's to 96Khz), Price, Fully adjustable speaker settings for DVD-Audio, DVD-RAM playback, Looks, Build, Set-up options. I mean good God, need I go on?. Basically, this thing is two generations above most other players on the market now. At any price.

It doesn't print money and I didn't buy it sooner.

Oh my God. I've heard, and felt, the buzz about this player for the last couple of weeks and needless to say it's all justifiable.

I've only owned it for a few hours, yet I'm still almost in a state of shock. Honest. This replaces my 6 month old Pioneer Elite DV-05 THX Ultra, which was good, but had a non-progressive output. After I recentley purchased the Panasonic PT-56WXF95 HDTV 16:9 monitor, the shortcomings of a non-progressive player became a little too aparent. While the picture was good, it wasn't as outstanding as I had originally hoped. So I hooked the RP91 up, slapped in Toy Story 2 / Galdiator / T2, and low and behold - a difference like night and day. And this is before I've fully re-calibrated the TV's progressive component input with the AVIA test DVD.

The audio side is unreal for a player at this cost. It upconverts all CD's to 96kHz via either the analogue OR the digital outputs. Imagine my joy when I played Beck's 'Mutations' CD (HDCD) and all of a sudden my Pioneer Elite VSX-26TX THX Ultra Receiver unexpectedly chirped into life with a big fat 96kHz scrolling across it's display. And it's not a gimmick. The bass was incredibly low, yet still held a good tone and the highs were sharp & defined, but not even close to being bright.

I can't go into too much depth right now as I haven't had it long enough, but let me just say this ;

"If you were thinking about it, stop. Just go buy it."

This is the player that you should buy if you have a non-progressive player and were thinking about upgrading to a progressive scan machine.

PS > I have a Pioneer Elite DV-05 THX Ultra for sale, any offers?

Similar Products Used:

Pioneer Elite DV-05 THX Ultra
Toshiba SD3109

Nice remote, nice picture, great audio, Plays all kinds of formats.

CD Tray loads slooow...user manual sucks...MP3 playback is just barely supported.

Well, I hate to be the one to bring down the perfect 5.0 rating, but I gotta be honest...

This is a very nice player. No question. But it just isn't as great as everybody said it was...at least not for me. The biggest problem is that with all of these rave reviews, the unsuspecting buyer may expect the perfect DVD player. This is a great player, but not perfect. So I give it a less than perfect rating to temper the rave reviews, and to let everybody know that picture quality is subjective and a function of the monitor. "Jaw dropping" to some is merely "nice picture" to others.

Here is the deal. I have a Tosh 65H80 HDTV, and I am watching the DVD via component input. With such a large, clear picture, anything less than perfection is easily noticed. With the RP91 that means you will still see some jaggies...still see shimmering...and still see pixelation on certain DVDs. Even when on progressive output (and even with sharpness dooown, brightness down, etc). And progressive output, a MAJOR selling point with this $500+ DVD player, is virtually worthless to me. I have determined that this is due to the extremely high quality line doubler in the Tosh. There is ZERO difference between progressive on and off when viewed on my Tosh. I have been to other forums, and have found the reviews to be more similar to mine (great product, but...no diff on progressive, not as great as everybody says, etc) rather than over the top ratings that this board has bestowed the unit.

Then there is the "left shift" issue. The picture is shifted to the left on the player. There is a workaround, but this does not bode well for the player.

There are a number of digital noise reduction modes...that do nothing but make the picture worse...just marketing stuff, I'm guessing, though I have heard that it makes a really bad picture (home VCD) better...you just won't want to use it on a decent DVD, IMHO.

The DVD tray is sloow to open and slooow to load. Not the end of the world, just stating my experience. It also makes a clicking or chirping sound on occasion, much like a hard drive occasionally does.

The picture controls are very nice, but the manual is not very complete in describing these and other features. The ever so important Progressive scanning feature has exactly one sentance written about it in the manual...

The remote is nice, as are build quality and audio.

Net/Net: A great player. But, if you are setting up a big system, and really looking for jaw dropping performance, your expectations may not be met. In hindsight, I see many reviews of this player are on non-hdtv sets...so the interlaced performance may be a true leap over other players. All this said, I have yet to see a better picture than the RP91 provides, though I have only looked at a few DVD players on my Tosh...

It's a "fair deal" (3 stars, and not worthy of great deal, IMHO) and it is a very good product (4 stars...did not exceed my expectations).

Similar Products Used:

Sony DVD

Decent picture

some video noise, confusing software, lots of little quirks, crashes on certain movies

As usual, the frenzy of internet "reviews" has blown yet another product out of proportion. I guess these reviews are better than nothing, but there are so many of us (myself included) that crave information on new electronics products, that these things take on a life of their own. I only wish that people that reviewed these things actually had them....

I cycled through (bought, used and returned) the Pioneer DV-37, and the noisy and bug riddled Denon 2800 and eventually arrived at this unit. I will return this unit too and re-purchase the Pioneer DV-37. There was such a frenzy over this unit, that my expectations were high. The context of my comments are Progressive Video only, to a 16:9 HDTV. Here is my 2 cents:

This is a nice player, but it has lots of issues like all the rest. The progressive picture is kind of nice, much better than the Denon 2800 but not nearly as nice as the Pioneer DV 37 which has the crispest picture i've seen (feels like HDTV).

There is some background noise (grain). Some people seem to think this is "film like", but look at the DV37 through a calibrated HD set: No noise, crystal clear!

The software is cooky, but because lots of people have bought these, there is lots of info about this machine on various web sites about how to set it up. Still though, you need a backround in hirolglyphics to navigate some of the menus, but at least the menus work most of the time (as opposed to the Denon, where you are lucky to get them to come up)

This player crashed on "outside providence" twice during the movie. It pixelated heavily then hung. Oh well, but the good news is that it did get its marbles together just by removing and replacing the disk. It also gets confused on DVD menus sometimes.

If you believe all the non user reviews of this player, they drool that it is "bug free" no "dreaded chroma bug" (most wouldn't know a chroma bug if it bit them on the nose), etc. Trust me, it is buggy, just different bugs than the groupies have read about on the AV web sites but have never seen.

I defnitely like this unit, but as I only have 1 HDTV, I want the DV 37 paired to it. The build quality is chintzy, the Pioneer and Denon (build quality only) are much much nicer, but all I care about is the picture, as I don't play football with DVD players. If I never tried the DV37, I would definitely keep this thing.

Similar Products Used:

Pioneer Elite DV-37, Denon 2800, Sony 330

features,dvd-audio and progressive scan for under 500 bucks

lackluster performance

Ive been waiting watching the reveiws for this machine whaiting for somebody to bash it but it was seeing all 5's I honestly thought I had a lemon.I also have a toshiba hdtv set and all the problems are in progressive scan.First let me say if you use this player for 480i and you play conventional cd;s Im sure you;ll be happy.The build quality remote and fancy champane color really do look classy on this 450 machine but Id prefer to look at the T.V. screen. In progressive the picture gets grainier and the colors get less vibraint almost like a bleached effect.This could be because everyones used to wathing players with bad MPEG chips.But if you put back in interlaced no grain and colors back to normal.I must admit in progressive the picture does display more depth and look more theater like.Anyway heres the kicker in 480p the player produces a great amount of pixelation on 60% to 70% of dvds.On motion scenes with a good display you will notice them and It will try you crazy.

Similar Products Used:

had sony and pioneer 480i dvd players

Further to my review below:

Panasonic techs said player was in perfect working order. As far as I can tell my Zenith IQC60H95W was built by Hitachi and has the same 'blackout' issues as the Hitachi SWX series RPTVs when paired with a variety of PS DVD units.

I'm still waiting to hear back from LG if the same fix used for the Hitachi's will work with the Zenith.

I suppose that will help ease the minds of any potential buyers of this product. That is of course unless you happen to own a Hitachi (apparently newer ones are fixed) or a Zenith RPTV.