My results with the Panny RP56 vrs. the Sony NS700p

Ron-P

Last night I had the first opportunity to put these two players head-to-head.

HT System
Mits 46" 16:9 (calibrated via AVIA and the Spot)
Sony DVP S530D
Monster Component Cables
Marantz SR5000
Polk Audio Speakers

I finally had some spending cash and wanted to upgrade my Sony S530D to a Progressive Scan model. Both of these players fit my budget. Last Friday I brought home the RP56. Wednesday, I brought home the 700p.

Movies I used for testing
SPR-Opening sequence with Tom Hanks
Toy Story-Ch.4 Woody gives speech to group
Toy Story 2- Opening sequence
Nightmare Before Xmas-Selected scenes throughout the movie
SuperBit Desperado-Selected scenes throughout the movie
The Lost World-Opening beach sequence
SW:TPM-Selected scenes, scrolling intro

Let me start by saying that both of these Progressive Scan players provide excellent picture and sound quality. For the $300 and under price range one cannot really go wrong with either. Both players have their positives and negatives.

Build Quality / Remote

Both are constructed quite well, but the 700p overall has an edge over the RP56. The 700p is very solid, refined and the remote, much more user friendly than the RP56. The buttons on the 700p's remote were solid and firm, the RP56, loose and soft.

480i
Here is where the 700p is noticeably superior. The picture quality of this player in interlace mode extremely good, the RP56 has a noisy, grainy look. My old Sony S530D preformed better. One scene that stood out was the Pixar intro in the Toy Story movies. As the desk lamp looks up and the word Pixar fads out, the 700p preforms this fade out smoothy. The RP56 seems to have a little trouble and the fade out is blocky looking. Also, A Nightmare Before Christmas, a movie with lots of dark scenes. The RP56 had a more grainy and noisy look over the 700p.

I also played around with the lighter/darker setting on the RP56. I do not like this feature, it seems as though neither are correct and I had to make some minor adjustments to my Mits to compensate for the either overly dark or bright picture.

480p
Here is where both players preformed very well. I was quite surprised by the picture quality difference between interlace and progressive. This is due in part by the sub-par line-doubler in the Mits TVs.

The differences in progressive mode between the two players are subtle but noticeable. One thing I discovered with the RP56 is that it defaults to the darker setting in progressive mode. At first I thought I could switch back and forth, that is not the case. But, when I went to switch back to interlace, I had to enter the RP56's menu and manually switch back to the lighter setting if I did not do this the interlaced image was too dark.

The RP56 puts out a nice picture, but after a couple days of switching back and forth between interlace and progressive, the image seems to be a bit washed out in progressive mode. When I played the 700p, that is when my suspicions were confirmed. The 700p has a mildly richer looking color and they do not change between the interlace and progressive modes. The 700p was basically a plug-n-play. I did not need to enter the menu at all on it or my TV to get a great looking picture, where as with the RP56 I had to.

During the sequence in SPR when Hanks hands are shaking and he drinks from his canteen, I noticed more detail in his jacket and sleeves viewing with the 700p. The RP56 was darker yet slightly washed out looking, almost overly bright and this was defaulting to the darker setting. This is where I had to addjust the contrast and brightness levels on my Mits.

I will say that the RP56 can, at times, produce a cleaner picture over the 700p, but it is very minor and not noticeable all the time. Certain scenes looked a bit cleaner. A scene in The Lost World, when the little girl is feeding the baby V-Raptor. I noticed a bit cleaner of an image off the RP56 over the 700p, but that was the only scene I could see a difference. Both produce a very clean, sharp picture. Both players did an excellent job with the Phantom Menace and looked nearly identical. I could not see a difference between the two in progressive mode except for the washed out look that the RP56 gives off. During the stadium shots at the beginning of the pod races, I did notice some stair-stepping edges, but both players showed the exact same problem and it was very minor.

Bugs
This is where the RP56 reared its ugly "Flicker Bug". During the scene with woody giving his speech to the group I really could not see the bug, although reports say it is there. But, during the opening of TS2. When the word Toy Story appears and then the number 2 appears you can see a flicker in the blue edging. It was really noticeable in the blue edge at the bottom of the #2. I was not looking for it hear, but it caught my eye.

As for the chroma bug in the 700p, I looked for exactly what others have pointed out, I have seen pictures of what to look for, but I could not see it. If it is there, it is not nearly as noticeable as the "Flicker Bug".

Sound
Both have dd/dts out, the 700p has optical and coax, the RP56 has optical only. Both players were excellent in the sound category. I noticed an improvement in my surrounds with both players. The surrounds were much more active and noticeable with regards to my S530D.

All-in-all, both players are excellent. But for me, it looks like the Sony NS700p is the better of the two players. The Sony offers switching between interlace and progressive via the remote, the RP56 does not, front panel only. I do not like the lighter/darker setting on the RP56. They need to add an "off" or "normal" option. The "Flicker Bug" is annoying. Although at times the picture was a bit cleaner on the RP56 it is, to me, not enough to justify the other quirks of this player. Sure the picture might be a bit better at times, but setting it up to get a properly calibrated picture is a lot of work and it must be changed, or re-calibrated between interlace and progressive modes.

In closing, I apologize for the length of this review. I am not a professional reviewer, writer or fluent in all the techo-babble with regards to these players. Just wanted to post my findings.

I plan on keeping the RP56 over the weekend mainly so I have more time to read the 700p's manual and get into it more. I still want to run some more disks thru both.


Peace Out~:D

Micah Cohen

Awesome post, Ron. What a great lot of info. Thanks, man!

MC

SPEAKER7

Ron,

very good review......too bad you couldn't add the Toshiba sd4700 and the sd5700 in your comparison tests and see how they all performed!

RuSsMaN

....it's not like you have a JOB or anything, why didn't you just buy EVERY dvd player and test them....

JEEZ MAN

R

BTW, well written, good job.

Ron-P

Thanks guys:)

The reason I left out the Toshibas was that they were never on my list as a machine to purchase. I have read too many threads at other forums on how they do not handle difficult disks. So, I figure because my old Sony never stumbled once and the Pannys were getting such high marks they would be the two to choose from. Toshiba has probably improved upon them, but there are really too many differnt models so I just went with what I liked and read.

Belive you me, if I could just sit in my HT and review equipment with a beer at my side, I would. But alas, my job must comes first:( It sucks, but I had fun last night playing with these two players.


Peace Out~:D

Ron-P

Let me add also that as far as I know, Toshiba still uses the older Genesis deinterlacing chipset. The latest and greatest is the Sage chipset like in the RP56, Sony makes their own which is rated better than the Genesis, but not quite as good as the Sage, but it is close.

Over at HomeTheaterHiFi.com. There aren't any tests on the Toshibas, which was another draw-back.


Peace Out~:D