Opening photo, remotes, and back panels by JaymeThornton.com
But all DVD players are not alike. With players now in more than 40% of American homes, the options abound — from DVD/VCR combos to DVD recorders to models whose playback capabilities extend to formats like DVD-Audio and Super Audio CD. In short, DVD player design is expanding into a pleasing diversity — one for any particular reality you happen to inhabit. To help survey the increasingly complex matrix of DVD, let’s zero in on three distinctive models: Hitachi’s DV-PF73U DVD player/VCR combo ($180), Panasonic’s DMR-E50 DVD player/recorder ($500), and Integra’s DPS-8.3 “universal” SACD/ DVD-Audio/Video player ($1,200).
The First Dimension
The Hitachi DV-PF73U represents both the best of times and the worst of times. The VCR was once the mightiest of electronics products. As recently as 2000, the videocassette recorder’s peak year, Americans bought 35 million VCRs. But DVD quickly overcame VHS despite videotape’s recording advantages. DVD picture quality is dramatically better, surround sound became the rage, and rewinding was eagerly forgotten. Yet legions of VHS tapes are still in collections, archiving everything from feature films to family vacations.
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The DVD side is understandably more modern. The Hitachi can provide a progressive-scan output through its component-video jacks and can play CD-R/RW discs (including those with MP3 files) as well as DVD-R discs. Its disc navigator displays a thumbnail of the first scene of each chapter in a title — the current one is even animated. There are all the usual transport features, including random and programmed playback for CD-R/RW discs with MP3 files. A screen saver and automatic power-off round out the features.
The black-faced remote control is rather formidable looking, particularly for a $180 player. This is partly because it operates two disparate devices, but it also offers a comprehensive set of controls.
Setting up the DV-PF73U did not require solving any metaphysical paradoxes — the player’s setup menus are so straightforward that even a child could run through its limited options. The rear panel has an RF input to connect an antenna or cable box to the VCR side and a handful of other standard A/V inputs and outputs (see back-panel photo below and "Features Checklist" PDF).
I connected the antenna input to my cable tap and both the coaxial digital and analog audio outputs to my receiver, the first for DVD playback and the second for VCR playback. I connected the component-video output to my TV for DVDs — of course, this connection provides the best picture quality — but for the VCR I had to use the composite-video connection in the A/V output shared by the two sides.
A front-panel button lets you choose either DVD or VCR playback — you can’t have both at once, though you can play a DVD while making a recording. So I started my evaluation of the DV-PF73U with tape playback. Like most folks, I have a box of old VHS tapes I use mainly to gather dust. Picture and sound quality were certainly not in the DVD league but more than satisfactory for VHS.
Although you can’t tape most DVDs because they’re copy-protected, the Hitachi deck does a few tricks that my old VCR couldn’t. Each time I started a recording, it set an index mark, and during subsequent playback, I could set the number of index marks I wanted to skip over. Alternatively, I could enter the length of time I wished to skip over. During recording, I could set a stop time in 30-minute increments.
To evaluate the DVD performance of the three players in this roundup, I turned to the quintessential parallel-universe parable, The Matrix — the original movie and still a visual and sonic feast. The first fight scene sets the tone for all the rest. The Hitachi player’s component-video output made virtual reality seem pretty damn authentic on my widescreen Princeton HDTV monitor. When the policemen shine their flashlights through dusty air, I saw smooth gradations of gray across the beams of light. When Trinity is cornered in a dimly lit room, the muted colors looked properly dark, and her slo-mo, mid-air fighting moves looked properly three-dimensional as the camera swings around her body. In short, picture quality was surprisingly good.
Although the DV-PF73U’s role in audio reproduction is limited, its coaxial digital output conveyed all the nuances of the soundtrack to my receiver without any glitches.
The Second DimensionPanasonic’s DMR-E50 ($500) lets you make high-quality recordings in the write-once DVD-R and rewritable DVD-RAM formats, whether you’re time-shifting TV broadcasts, archiving camcorder footage, or creating your own DVD movies. A double-sided, 9.4-gigabyte (GB) DVD-RAM disc holds up to 6 hours of video and stereo Dolby Digital audio per side and can be played on other DVD-RAM-compatible players. DVD-R discs are playable on most (not all) standard DVD players.
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The recorder’s front panel won’t win any awards for industrial design, but it does manage to tuck a lot of functionality into very few buttons. The Time Slip button and Chasing Playback capability are the killer apps. Because the DVD-RAM format lets you record and play at the same time, you can use the former to watch instant replays and the latter to watch a program from the beginning after you’ve already started to record it.
The back panel has the standard audio and video inputs and outputs (see back-panel photo below and "Features Checklist" PDF) plus an antenna input and output. Unfortunately, there is no FireWire input for connection to a camcorder. For my evaluation, I connected the Hitachi VCR’s analog audio and composite-video outputs to the DMR-E50’s inputs. Then I connected the DVD deck’s optical digital audio output to my receiver for outboard Dolby Digital/DTS decoding and its component-video output to my TV. I also wired its antenna input directly to my cable tap. The recorder can utilize VCR Plus+ channel settings, and you can assign the same channel numbers used by broadcasters (and listed in published program guides) to the corresponding cable channels. This makes it easy to choose channels for timer recordings (up to 16 programs up to a month in advance).
The DMR-E50 can record on 4.7-, 9.4-, and 2.8-GB DVD-RAM discs, both cartridge and noncartridge types, and 4.7- and 9.4-GB DVD-R discs. A blank 4.7-GB DVD-RAM disc is supplied. Recording time depends on the quality level. A 4.7-GB disc holds 1 hour at XP (high-quality) level, 2 hours at SP (normal), 4 hours at LP (long play), and 8 hours at EP (extended play). To help remember what you’ve recorded, you can enter program and disc titles. You can also create and edit playlists and programs. For example, you can erase or divide a program and even protect it against accidental erasure.
I started my evaluation with simple playback — or at least as simple as The Matrix permits. When Neo is first told about the Matrix, he sits in a hotel room with Morpheus. The colors are warm and dingy, the lighting low. Morpheus slowly spins a silver case in his hands, its surfaces reflecting the room around him, and Neo looks back at himself in Morpheus’s sunglasses. These dark and subtle hues were convincingly reproduced, and the details looked sharp. On the audio side, the recorder’s digital output didn’t hit any snags in conveying the scene’s dialogue, sparse music, and occasional cracks of lightning.
Of course, DVD recording is the DMR-E50’s forte, so I recorded an episode of Dragnet from cable. Playback quality of the parts of my new DVD-R recorded at the XP and SP levels was excellent, with good color and picture detail that was indistinguishable from the original broadcast signal. I also copied some unprotected VHS tapes and was equally pleased with the result. With these top-quality recording modes, video quality is limited mainly by the source material (cable, satellite, or tape) rather than by the recorder.
On the other hand, picture quality was noticeably inferior in recordings made at the LP and EP levels, with slight fringing along with video noise and washed-out colors. Also, fast-moving objects were not reproduced smoothly. Overall, image quality was several notches below what I saw at the XP and SP levels. In any case, the A/V inputs are analog, which limits fidelity, and you’re limited to S-video picture quality and stereo soundtracks. Since The Matrix is copy-protected, the recorder refused to record it. On the other hand, it dutifully copied the nonprotected feature presentation from the Sound & Vision Home Theater Tune-Up DVD.
It was a drag watching the commercials in my Dragnet recording. No worry — the CM Skip button jumps playback ahead by 1 minute, and the Time Skip button skips ahead by a user-selected interval. I could also watch an entire program, but if the plot was a little slow, I could play it back at 1.3x speed — Dolby Digital soundtracks are reproduced without a pitch shift.
Thanks to the miracle of time travel via data compression, a.k.a. Chasing Playback, I could watch Dragnet from the start while the DMR-E50 was in the middle of recording it, I could record a new program while watching a previously recorded one, or I could jump back to review an earlier portion of a program still being recorded. These three functions conclusively prove that reality is just an illusion.
The Third Dimension The Integra DPS-8.3 is a high-end “universal” player that can handle both DVD-Audio discs and SACDs as well as CD-R/ RWs (including MP3 files), DVD+R/ RWs, and DVD-R/RWs. To vouch for its pedigree, the player is THX Ultra-certified. Its black front panel exudes solidity — it looks quite formidable compared with the increasingly popular silver-faced models. The button count is somewhat greater than today’s norm, including a small but highly ergonomic cursor control to navigate onscreen menus. Three principal buttons are nicely haloed by blue light, and small LEDs glow for SACD, DVD, or CD playback. There’s even a headphone jack with level control, an increasingly rare perk.
Overall, this is the classiest front panel I’ve seen in a long time, and a welcome relief from the junky plastic that becomes common as prices are driven down. Speaking of welcome relief, the backlit learning remote is light years beyond the usual handset. Its buttons are cleanly laid out, and the lettering is highly legible.
Because it has a Dolby Digital/DTS decoder onboard, the rear panel is busy with connectors, including a set of BNC jacks — a real rarity. (See back-panel photo below and "Features Checklist" PDF.)
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To get the best results from the player’s multichannel analog audio output, it’s essential to set up the bass management. The front left/right speakers have a fixed “large” setting. The center speaker and left/right surrounds can be set to “large,” “small,” or “off” (but the surrounds cannot be set independently). The subwoofer can be set to “on” or “off.” For DVD-Audio playback, the center and surround speakers are automatically set to “large” on the menu. If you reset them to “off,” the multichannel audio is automatically downmixed to stereo, unless the DVD-A title doesn’t permit downmixing. You can also boost or cut levels for the multichannel analog outputs by ±6 dB in 0.5-dB increments, and a test-tone generator helps you set these levels independently for each channel.
For speaker-distance compensation, you can set distances to the listener for the front left/ right pair from 1 foot to 30 feet in 1/2-foot increments. As usual, these distance settings do not apply to SACD playback, but they do apply to DVD-Audio.
Like any upscale player, this one provides some nice perks: A Last Memory feature lets you continue playback from a specific location on up to five different discs. You can save settings (such as video adjustments and subtitle languages) for up to 15 DVDs. There are three factory picture presets and three custom presets in which you can make a long list of video adjustments, from color and brightness noise reduction to sharpness and gamma.
With all that video optimization on hand, I felt confident that the DPS-8.3 would provide excellent playback, and I wasn’t disappointed. The Matrix glorifies two distinct fashion statements: the color black and automatic weapons. Nothing demonstrates this as vividly as the shootout in the skyscraper’s marble lobby, which probably holds the world record for the most rounds squeezed off in a movie scene. Visually rich with flying debris, marble dust, gunsmoke, and muzzle flashes, it’s further dramatized by reflections on the marble walls and floors, and Trinity’s shiny clothing. All of this was precisely conveyed by the player’s component-video output. I did not detect any flaws whatsoever in its MPEG decoding or in the video output signal. Moreover, with its full set of video controls, I could compensate for any disparity between the player and my TV.
The sound design of this scene is busy indeed, with heavy, metallic clanging, whooshing sounds as the actors fly though the air, the ping of shell cases hitting the floor, and, of course, the staccato of gunfire. The DPS-8.3 didn’t shrink from the mayhem — its Dolby Digital decoder and digital-to-analog converters (DACs) kept pace and were as transparent as glass.
Cleansing my palette, I turned to music playback — Mark O’Connor’s Hot Swing Trio In Full Swing, a multichannel SACD. The title track starts with O’Connor’s energetic violin accompanied by Jon Burr on bass and Frank Vignola on guitar. The complex harmonics of string instruments are always hard to reproduce — here they sounded crisp but not harsh. On “Honeysuckle Rose,” the gang is joined by singer Jane Monheit, who was recorded with her lips very close to the microphone. The Integra player accurately reproduced the slight edginess on her loudest notes — less accurate DACs might have smoothed this out or made it sound worse.
Whether it’s movies or music that you care most about, this elegant player will do justice to your favorite entertainment material. One small complaint: my review sample’s power cord was a bit loose in its rear socket. No reality is perfect.
The Final Dimension
These three players demonstrate the diversity of today’s DVD scene. Traditional DVD-Video/CD-and-nothing-else players might still outnumber the others, but there are more and more with new twists. The Hitachi DV-PF73U neatly unifies the two parallel universes of VHS and DVD. Its VCR will satisfy any lingering sentimentality for tape and maybe even let you put off buying disc replacements for some of your favorite movies. The DVD player is basic, but the quality of its component-video output is respectable and shows exactly why DVD trumped VHS. Best of all, you get two realities for the price of one.
The Panasonic DMR-E50 is a neat piece of technology. Its playback chops are great, and its ability to record on either erasable or nonerasable DVD discs will rock the world of anyone accustomed to tape recording. Moreover, its recorded quality at XP and SP can be almost indistinguishable from the original. But remember that you can’t copy DVD movies. For less than the price of some playback-only models, this DVD recorder is extremely nifty.
Technologically, the Integra DPS-8.3 is a far cry from earlier disc players, but it inherits the mantle from older CD and DVD players as today’s version of a traditional, high-end model. It looks the part with its black front panel, and it rests its case on comprehensive video adjustments and as close to “universal” playback capability as you’re likely to find today.
All three players offer a different perspective on the DVD scene. While audio and video quality can be a function of price, diverse functionality often is not. This opens the door to exciting options for buyers. Whichever way you go, there’s a DVD dimension waiting for you.
PDF: In the Lab