Sony’s stealing a bit of Denon’s release thunder today with its Elevated Standard line of home theater receivers. Not only does it have Wi-Fi, like the Denon, there’s the PlayStation 3/PSP/Sony Bravia Xross Media Bar onscreen interface, six HDMI 1.3 inputs, Faroudja DCDi Cinema 1080p upscaling via HDMI, Sirius and XM satellite ready, Deep Color support, a 100-watt amp, and a Bluetooth receiver for streaming music from Sony Ericsson phones. The High end Denon has a better Silicon Optics Realta video processor, but its also almost 3x as much cheddar. There will be three models available. STR-DA5300ES for $1700 in September, STR-DA4300ES for $1300 in October, and STR-DA3300ES for $1000 in August. [Sony]
Denon’s compact home theater systems just got some big improvements. Both the S-302 ($1699) and the S-102 ($999), which are due in September, can upscale DVDs to 1080p; the S-302 bumps up all analog incoming video to 1080p as well. The S-302 also has built-in Wi-Fi and can display cover art of the music streaming from a PC or Mac. The new S-32 and S-52 are in the “clock radio” or iPod dock family, though they are far more loaded than the typical competitor. Both the S-32 and S-52 are wireless and networked; on top of that the S-52 will have an HD Radio tuner, a slot-loading CD player and a USB jack for local content.
The Philips HTS8100 Ambi Sound DVD Home Theater System can pump out some amazing sound. It plays back DVDs, scaling their video from their lowly standard-definition up to 1080p. The system also includes an iPod dock that rocks your tunes into those superb speakers and splashes your pictures all over your HDTV, fed via HDMI. We got our hands on the first of these just-shipping systems to hit these shores, loaded up DVDs, CDs and our iPod, and gave them a serious look and listen. galleryPost('philipsambisound', 8, 'Philips Ambisound');
IGN did some extensive testing on the PS3′s new update that scales PS and PS2 games to full 1080p resolution. Even shrunk down for embedding purposes, it’s obvious that the upscaling and smoothing can really just add a lot of blur to an image. In some places this is good (like those crowds in the back) while in others, it just makes us need glasses (like on the text or maybe even the Undertaker himself).
It’s a predictable response from Sony, really. Ditch the jaggies in 480i games and accept the consequences. But how does the system deal with 480p-supported games?
Ten Things You Should Know is a new feature series here at Gizmodo aimed at first-time buyers or people who don’t have (or need) extensive knowledge on a product before making a purchase. To blast things off, we’re starting it up today with Ten Things You Should Know Before You Buy an Upscaling DVD Player.
Although the high definition players are already fairly cheap (HD DVD at $299 and Blu-ray getting close), the lack of content and their uncertain future is still putting a lot of people off. What’s the alternative? An upscaling DVD player that turns all of the movies you own—plus all the ones you can rent from Netflix or Blockbuster—into high definition goodness.
Sure, the quality isn’t going to be as good as HD DVD or Blu-ray, but if you add in the extra features that these very refined DVD players have—streaming, Internet radio, and DivX playback—you can possibly get an even richer media experience. Here are the ten things you should know before you buy one.
We’ve been known to download DivX files using BitTorrent on occasion, and there’s nothing better than using an upscaling DVD player like the Helios H4000, the LG DN191H or the Oppo DV-981HD to watch these shows and movies on our TVs in high def. But the Ziova CS505, much like the Helios X3000, can stream the files directly from your computer without having to burn them to a disc beforehand—the ultimate in convenience.
Although both this and the Apple TV stream video, they’re in totally different classes. Apple TV is made for playing back movies and music purchased from the Apple store, and unless you re-encode your downloaded BitTorrent movies from DivX, it’s not going to play on Apple’s offering. This and the Helios X3000 are for every other non-Apple format.
In many ways, the Ziova CS505 is even better than the Helios X3000 we tested before—which technically makes it the best streaming, upscaling and DivX player we’ve used yet. Make the jump to find out why.
galleryPost('ziovacs505', 8, 'Ziova DivX and DVD Player');
