Philips DVD 963 SA....your thoughts??


I'm looking to buy a new DVD player, that I suspect will end up in the bedroom. The player will ultimately be matched with either a Samsung DLP RPTV (43” or 50”) or the Panasonic Plasma 4P (again 43”-50”). TV size will depend on how big the furniture that’s coming this week actually is in the room...

This isn't my main system, but I will need a progressive scan DVD player for this system, given the TV's I'm looking at (currently running a Pioneer Elite DV-09 in the Living room...until I upgrade this!). The DVD player will also be my CD player in this system, and for the pool area. The SACD is an added bonus in this unit, but all and all, barely a factor for me.

OK, onto the real questions:

1) What do you all think of this player?? Video, Audio, CD, and, OK SACD??

2) Any experience with it?

3) Any other units I'm missing/ you'd recommend??

As for the rest of the system, it's also kind of up in the air. I'm thinking of going mid-Fi with something like a Sunfire Theatre Grand III and a Proceed Amp 5 or HPA 2 and 3 (OK maybe not mid-fi!) Speakers are currently JSE 1.0's for fronts, Snell K.5 surrounds, and center will likely go to a Snell CC.5, Sub will be either a Sunfire Ture sub (for space considerations, or a Velodyne HGS 15/18... The bedroom is pretty large @ 24' x 13.5' but the TV will be against the long wall, part way down from the middle, as the pool doors are in the center, so the effective area I'm looking at for a HT setup is really more like 15'x13.5', with the ‘sitting area’ on the other end of the room.

I appreciate any input you all have, as I need to buy a DVD player soon as the youngest’s just died, and therefore my old one will go to her… I’ll need a new one!

Thanks!

Ken
kennyt
Funny you should ask- I am sampling one as we speak. I bought this player specifically to be modded. I think it sounds great(it is still breaking in)It has alot of great audio features. You can turn off the video circuitry from the remote to obtain better audio quality. You have 3 different CD upsampling options. The remote is very well laid out,and simple. The video features- Their pretty confusing,and not well explained. For progressive scan options you can adjust the chroma delay,gamma,,sharpness,and there is a feature called DCDi. They don't give you much explanation on how to balance out all these adjustments. I haven't had my player modded yet. So my impressions are based on a stock player. My video complaints are-Some times on darker DVD's(Sade)everything is way to dark. On the contrary other DVD's are absolutely brilliant(Monster's Inc) I am still playing with the video adjustments. I just adjusted the black level shift-so hopefully things will lighten up for my Sade DVD. The bottom line for me- I think this player is a steal for the 373.00 I paid JR Music World. They also have a 30 guaruntee. I think at this price range this is a good buy. It also has SACD. I hope this helps- John
Your Sammy also has DCDi video processing so don't be swayed by that feature on the Philips- you are paying for redundancy.
Very GOOD overall especially compared to its price.

Users Manual, Remote are the only things I didn't like