Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion Meridian - Systems Meridian DVD Player is it worth it anymore?

Hi all, My comments on Bob saying CD players are up was not meant to suggest an overall trend. As Mr Doody says, it cannot.
Its just a fact that for whatever reason, Meridian are selling more CD players now.

This means that ordinary people (Non Gadget-philes) who love music are still pre-pared to buy a quality disc spinner.

Believe it or not, there are plenty of people out there who find the idea of owning and useing a PC and all it involves, a complete nightmare.

They dont want to Rip and Burn, even if they knew what it meant.

The new technologies and the acompanying speed of change scares and paralises alot of people, but they do like quality Music, and have the money to spend!

Enter Meridian with simple(ish), credible, quality solutions.

Solving problems in any field of endeavor, pays well; doing it with Integrity and offering copper bottom qaulity and gauruntee's, pays better still.

Thought for the day: You will always remember quality long after you have forgoton the price.

Cheers, Chris

I still like my G98DH DVD for two reason's

DVD-A playback trough a digital link MHR I have an extensive DVDA collection.

Decoding off DD/DTS in player and transfer trough MHR which means that i can use uppsampling in my G68 for movies. If you feed a G processor an dd or dts signal directly you don't have any uppsampling. I like uppsampling before any other processing or MHR filtering etc is done. My thinking is that processing in a 24/96 domain is more transparent than 16/44, M does volume in partly in the digital domain ? so i value this.

But i never thought that the G98DH was "worth it" as a standalone player it's only worth considering bundled with a G68/G61 I see them as one machine in two boxes. And i use the "DH" wich is digital out only for sound. A little bit "cheaper" than the other variants

Mnyb,
I agree with you that's what I said in my intro post. The "value in integration" is very strong. although I would have loved to buy DVD-A but I couldn't buy that many Jazz albums. I'm still looking for Art Pepper and the Rhythm Section without success (Japanese Edition).
If I buy a G68XXV I will do exactly what you are doing decode+upsample the DVD-V tracks!
But I've held back because like a lot of people here I'm waiting to see what's happening on the HDMI front for decoders :rolleyes: ...

Meridialien, I will not use the G9x as a CD playback but only as a DVD-V/A because I'm playing CD through my dedicated CD player.

If the option is to have 1 player only for CD+DVD, outputting in analog stereo only then M is probably still better than Denon (at the high end) and Oppo (at the low end) assuming you put a high weight on music which I do.

I bought my whole G series combination as an early adopter, before any of this HD debacle began. I was actually going to get the 5xx series but hesitated so long that they introduced the G series, then waited some untill they launched the G68J.
I thought back then that the pricing where a little to stiff on the G series but i could afford the G68J/G98DH combo.

Now with HD everything is a mess, there is no clear path for me, personaly i'm fence sitting ;-) another year.

I want to see that M can maintain their original idee with a complete digital system from source to speakers before investing further.

The ongoing HD debate is mainly about video, how about HD music ? that matters more to me.

I'm certain that upgrades are in the pipeline...

I think the message from mother is that they are not stupid, they know what they are doing, they are ahead of the game (they gave us an example in confidence of evidence of this).

Reading between the lines, I got the feeling that, what is out there at the moment is transitional, no matter what the manufacturers want you to believe, the current implementations simply will not cut it long term.

I expect Meridian will be one of the first to come up with a full implementation, but whether it will have their name on it I do not know

VK, is this based on anything firmer than pure speculation?

Cliff

Pure speculation based on the fact that Meridian will lose a significant fraction of its customer base if it doesn't provide upgrades for both the G9x and G6x (800 upgrades are a given). Now when is a different matter...

I hope you're right! But, so far, with respect to upgrade potential, the G-series has not delivered.

Based on what I've seen of the way the G68 is built, I'm with VK. I don't have any firm info, but Meridian could have had a ton of extra margin if they'd stuck it all on one PCB. That upgradability costs them as much as it does us.

Think about the integration headaches with getting the right s/w on an 861 - an upgradable G68 would have the same issue. I think the problems are 'soft' rather than 'hard', and for that reason, I think that when the return is significant enough, M will deliver.

Just another opinion, though.

Don't know how many G68s were sold, but I think it would be a major blunder by M to alienate G owners w/no upgrade path -- brand loyalty is hard won and valuable. I expect a solution, just hope it makes economic sense for us owners.

I don't need the first solution; I'm willing to wait for the right solutiion, which I don't think is out there by any manufacturer at the moment. But then I'm willing to wait out the HD format war, so maybe I'm more patient (and disgusted) than most.

Like others, I keep my 598 mostly because I don't see much value to selling it. It's PQ is surpassed by a $150 Oppo player, and in a very brief test, I didn't hear any difference between it and a Squeezebox through the G68. Have twenty or so DVD-As, and like them, but it's a dead format, so who cares. Upsampling movie soundtracks is a very minor plus. Must say though that M was better than most small guys in justifying their transports w/unique functionality.

I don't think any boutique manufacturer could/can touch the big names on PQ from a value standpoint. Better vid. technology gets cheap fast. Knew this when I bought the 598. Processors are an entirely different story; the big guys aren't setup for that playing field.

Hard to predict when disks will disappear; the tech is there, but we're waiting on a) bandwidth infrastructure and b) copy protection/legal concerns. I think a) will happen long before B).

That is exactly the same test (Oppo vs. 598 vs. SB into G68) that I performed ... and with the same outcome. Interesting.