Universal Players: Video Quality?

I've had a few universal players and currently use an APL modified McIntosh MVP861. The stock player is "essentially" a McIntosh re-engineered Denon with a hot-rodded power supply in a nice case. The video on the player is fantastic! Easily better than the Denon 3910 (which had strange macroblocking issues).

The sound quality of the stock MVP861 is just hideous. Dark, closed in, undynamic, etc. Terrible!

I took my MVP861 to APL HiFi who has a very popular and highly regarded modification service for the Denon 2900, 3910 and other universal players. I begged them for help!

Fortunately APL was able to help.

Most high end modification services focus on re-building the stock (cheap) power supplies but in the case of the McIntosh APL said it was an awesome power supply - and they doubt that they could improve it.

What APL did do to improve the sound was to parallel the DACS and add a DSP Clock. Not an expensive modification.

I must report, the sound of the revised McIntosh is way, way, way, better than I ever expected. Even Alex at APL was blown away saying that the MVP861 sounded somewhere in-between his modified Denon 3910 and Esoteric UX-1.

Good stuff on this post. I too use an older Camelot Tech, Roundtable MKIII for both DVD and CD playback in my media room. CD audio sounds awesome, with no outboard DAC inline, and the video quality, running component as Roundtable lacks DVI/HDMI outputs, is very solid, detailed and filmlike. My display is a front projector single chip DLP with Faroudja processing 720p native res. I have a separate stereo system in another room with Camelot Morganna used as Transport with a BelCanto DAC inline. I don't listen to much music in my theater room until I get one that can play DVD-Audio and SACD. My concern is getting into an HDMI player to tide me over until HD DVD/ BlueRay shakes down. I'd heard the Denon 2910-3910 are nice inexpensive options. And what about a current model ARCAM Universal player with DVI/HDMI outs? Also reasonable and very well-reviewed?? Anyone seen it?

DBLD: What make is a dv-50?

Thanks,
Bob

The DV-50 is made by Esoteric. Does the Arcam play both DVD-A and SACD? I thought it only did one one these formats.

Dbld,

My experience with the Esoteric is just the opposite. I had the DV-50, and had it upgraded, and found the picture to have a much more detailed display via DVI, almost adding a three dimensionality to the picture on the 61" Samsung DLP RPTV.

Ken

Arcam only does DVD-A not SACD. Thanks Dbld for yur "long" input, very much appreciated I think others do too. Please keep it coming!

I used to used a iScan with an old Pioneer DVD player and video improved: but with my current Camelot (same one used by Bob, it doesn't: the internal scaler in Camelot I think is from iscan. But some Universals should be using Faroudja's DCDI chip so your observations are both helpful and perplexing. For example I expected the Lexicon to do much better..hmmm. I guess you just have to try them one by one even for video.