Watching DVD on Samsung DVD-1080PK

Finally, I get to play some DVDs on the new Samsung DVD-1080PK player that I got recently. It’s a nice machine, sleek design with HDMI output and upscaling of DVD to full HD.

Setting up the player is pretty easy, just a HDMI cable will do it all. Though, you might want to tweek with the sound output because you don’t want your sound to come out from the crappy TV speakers unless you got a HDMI amplifier at home.

I connected the DVD player via HDMI cable to the TV, then I muted the sound on the TV. As for the sound output, I uses left and right channel to my Panasonic DVD Home Theater system. There’s actually output for rear, subwoofer and center speakers, I don’t really know where it connect to, speakers or an amplifier. But whatever it is, I can be sure it’s for providing a home cinematic experience.

Although it’s not digital output, I manipulated the left and right channel output to a 5.1 Dolby Digital channel and it sounds good with the rear and all the speakers working. It’s just not as loud as DTS.

For first usage, remember to change the display setting to a 16:9 if you are on a widescreen TV, I bet most of you are already on a widescreen HDTV. Then video output should be always in Progressive Scan mode. When these are done, you are ready rock your DVD.

I was watching Traitor on this player with upscaling on. What I saw was the picture quality it’s just okay, not as good as a Bluray. When you go closer, you can actually see that the picture when pixelated or sharpen because of the upscaling. I’ve test on both machine, one with upscale and another without, there’s indeed a little bit difference. Pictures are sharper with a HDMI cable than component cable.

Though, there’s not much significant difference when watching a DVD on your comfy couch far from the TV. If it’s a Bluray player, then there will be because I’ve tried Bluray before and the quality was superb. Samsung should have send me a Bluray player instead. Haha.

Anyway, I do like this player in term of it’s HDMI output and design. The setup menu is a bit slow but that don’t really bother you a lot. There’s extra feature like CD ripping to flash drive and karaoke mic input which I haven’t tried yet, but the main feature of this is still watching DVD.

To improve this, make it a Bluray player. =)