Buying an extra. That's a good idea. On the other hand, it looks like Panasonic are going to keep making the 820 for a while, but we'll see. My only saving grace in having a used Oppo 83 and the 820 is that I don't have much time to watch TV during the week, so during the weekend is when I will put wear and tear on either of my machines. That should prolong the life of both, and the Oppo will only get used when I'm in the mood for watching old TV shows...if the Oppo 83 pans out like I want it to.
That's good to hear about the 820 being around for awhile. I did plan to wait until they weren't going to make them anymore. The 820 is also a semi region free blu-ray player, don't know if it's the same for dvds though. I watch a blu-ray or dvd almost everyday and more on the weekends. I'd be lost without a decent player.
I bought the Panasonic DP-UB820-K, it’s pricier, but I wanted analog outs. It does a fantastic job upscaling DVDs. I recently watched a Ford vs. Ferrai DVD, and it looked like Blu-ray quality.
I'm going to have to try some newer DVDs evidently, because everything I've seen on DVD via my UB820 still looks like booty. In fact, I've asked around on the AVS forum if my settings on the player are correct. This is what lead me to purchase the Oppo 83 for proper deinterlacing; otherwise, as beautiful as the 820 is for BDs and UHD, the story goes that Panasonic did the bare minimum for DVD deinterlacing algorithms for their player.
Start here: DVD Player Benchmark - Introduction and take notes of the features you may want. To me, Part 5 is the most important. Those who say that all BD players have built-in scaler and deinterlacer - yes, they do, and many of them still suck. My Sony BD player has a worse deinterlacer than my OPPO DVD player - for example, whenever I watch Simpsons or Futurama I see ugly combing, which means that it cannot deinterlace cartoons correctly (cartoons often have fewer than 24 frames per second). Also, my OPPO is multi-region. allowing me to watch European DVDs. It does play SACDs, but this I don't care about. You cannot create new information from nowhere. You can only hope your player does not degrade what it has to work with.
I have an Arcam DV-139, which was one of the last dedicated DVD players made and had the very latest chipsets upon its release. It does produce the nicest DVD images I have seen. I actually only bought it for DVD-A and SACD, but was very impressed by the quality of the images it produced. That having been said, the gains over other equipment are marginal. Pretty much anything you buy at a reasonable price will do a very good job.
Hands-down, without a doubt: Oppo's BDP-83 and the outstanding, insurmountable Anchor Bay VRS processor...
Who mastered the DVD will have an influence on the image quality on any player, DVD and BD. I've found several of my DVD's that were companion discs to BD purchases of current movies looking quite soft compared to movies shot in the '80's on film that look better than some BD's of similar older movies. Below is a photo I shot of my 32in. 720p Samsung HDtv of the 1985 After Hours DVD on my Sony BD player I bought used at a local thrift store for $20.
In my experience on dvd nothing on my old Panasonic Plasma looked better than my Denon 1940 dvd... I think this is related too the TV or projector also, it can look good if the Tv handle it/have a good scaler... My Denon Bdp 2010 looked just ok on DVD, but lacked the SACD, Spotify Connect and streaming services..... My Sony Uhp-H1 is great on both bluray and music/Streaming services but lack in Dvd picture quality.. Im holding on to my Panasonic PX80 will change it if it breaks or get worse....
Im new here, I tried to edit... But worth to mentioned that Ive ordered a Panasonic S700 DVD player with HDMI, so Im curious if it can beat the old Denon dvd 1940......
