A DVD player is already a terrific bargain — an inexpensive black box that can play discs full of razor-sharp images, immersive surround sound, and fascinating extras. But what if you could wed a DVD player with another popular entertainment device like, say, a TV, VCR, or game console? Well, it’s already being done. Test-driven here are four of the more intriguing examples: the Go-Video DVR4000 DVD player/VCR, Sony’s DVD-playing PlayStation 2, Panasonic’s PV-DF2000 TV/DVD/VCR/FM combo, and Neon Technology’s SurfReady NTV-2500, which shares its DVD player space with a TV tuner, MP3 player, picture phone, Web browser, and karaoke machine.
These combo devices have advantages beyond melding your favorite entertainment technologies. Because everything is in a single box, they can save lots of space in an equipment rack or on a bedroom dress er. And that integration means you won’t have to deal with the cable spaghetti that results from patching together different components.
So on paper all of these components seem to have a lot going for them. But do they deliver the goods?
Go-Video
DVR4000
There’s no doubt that more and more people are coming to prefer watching
movies on DVD instead of VHS. But opting for a DVD player won’t help you play
your collection of videotapes — unless, of course, you get a DVD player/VCR
like the Sensory Science Go-Video DVR4000 ($349). Its predecessor, the DVR5000
(which we reviewed in January 2001), was one of the first such combos. The DVR4000
is essentially a stripped-down version. It has one laser pickup instead of two,
which means it can’t play CD-Rs and CD-RWs. The lack of VCR Plus recording means
you have to enter the start and stop times and channel number yourself, while
the absence of full Dolby Digital decoding means there are no multichannel analog
outputs. And it can’t play S-VHS videotapes.
So what’s left? For one thing, the DVR4000 makes dubbing a non-copy-protected DVD to tape as simple as pressing the front-panel Copy button. (Pause the DVD, and the tape pauses, too.) Unfortunately, this feature isn’t all that useful since there aren’t many discs around that don’t have copy protection! I was, however, able to dupe an adult title I keep on hand for just such occasions. The copy maintained as much picture detail as you’d expect in transferring a movie from DVD to VHS. I also had no trouble copying a mainstream Hollywood movie from Video CD, a lower-resolution pre-DVD format still popular in Asia. The movie looked as good on tape as it did on the VCD.
The DVR4000 is one of the few DVD players that sports an RF (radio frequency) output and comes with an RF cable, which is useful if you want to hook it up to an old TV that lacks any other video inputs. Of course, the DVDs you play won’t look or sound any better than standard broadcast TV in that case. The player also has composite-, component-, and S-video outputs, stereo analog audio outputs, and both coaxial and optical digital audio outputs.
In The Lab:
Go Video
| Sony |
Neon | Panasonic
One of the first things you’ll want to do is let the VCR’s tuner search for TV channels it can receive. Once this process is completed (it takes a few minutes), you’ll be able to use the channel up/down buttons without hitting static.
As a DVD player, the DVR4000 has a couple of frills, including three bookmarks and 2x and 4x zoom. The zoom feature allowed me to blow up my 2.35:1 letterboxed copy of Pulp Fiction into a full-screen version, which also helped me appreciate how grainy — sorry, Quentin, I meant gritty — the film is. There are six scan speeds, including the mind-bending 128x, which lets you glance at a 2-hour movie in about a minute.
This scanning flexibility is almost sabotaged by its implementation on the remote, though. In a button-reduction effort gone horribly wrong, you press the forward or reverse button once to jump to the next or last chapter and have to keep pressing it to increase the scan speed. This means you have to hold the button down 3 whole seconds before the action speeds up to 2x, another couple of seconds before 4x kicks in, and so on. Duh? Accessing slow motion is faster, but there’s only one speed, and you can only go forward. One thing I did like: six of the buttons glow in the dark, which makes it easier to find and operate the remote.
The DVR4000 is an okay DVD player that produces a visually loud picture — it can be muted somewhat if you turn down the contrast on your TV (see the lab notes). As a VCR, it offers 16-event/1-year programming, the ability to record searchable index marks, and the option of briefly superimposing the date, time, and source of a program at the beginning of the recording. There’s no output for an infrared emitter, though, so you won’t be able to program it to change the channel on a cable box.
Since the combo’s $349 price tag is about as much as you’d expect to pay for an average DVD player and a basic VCR purchased separately, the value is in the integration of the most popular home video formats in one device. If you have both a limited budget and cramped space, the DVR4000 is worth a look.
Sony
PlayStation 2
Until recently, Sony was uncharacteristically low-key about the ability
of the PlayStation 2 ($299) to play DVDs —probably to keep attention focused
on the console’s state-of-the-art gaming capabilities (and not to hurt the sales
of its own DVD players). But the company now finds itself up against Microsoft’s
Xbox, which not only offers its own take on state-of-the-art gaming but can
play DVDs as well. To set itself apart from its competitor, Sony is now quick
to point out that, unlike the PS2, Xbox needs a $30 add-on before it can even
play movies. Since we had a PlayStation 2 on hand but were still awaiting the
arrival of a fully functional Xbox, I wasn’t able to compare the two consoles
as DVD players. Of course, hard-core gamers are probably wondering why anyone
would even bother to watch movies on a PS2 considering its ability to engross
a user in car races, sports simulations, and martial arts tournaments, among
other diversions.
As a DVD player, the PS2 isn’t exactly chock full of bells and whistles. It does have an optical digital audio output, but the proprietary A/V connector used for gaming means that if you want a higher-quality video connection than composite video (joined to a stereo cable), you’ll have to buy an accessory S-video cable for $30 or a component-video cable for $20.
When it comes to playing DVDs, the PS2 is geared toward people who want to pop in a disc, hit start, and leave well enough alone. The game controller, which is tethered to an 8-foot cable, lacks DVD-specific labels and has few DVD-specific buttons. (Tripping over a cord in the dark is no fun either.) While it’s pretty easy to figure out that you begin movie playback by hitting the arrow-shaped start button (it also doubles as a pause control), it takes a little experimentation to figure out that the button with the orange “O” stops the movie and that the R2 button makes the player scan forward.
There’s only one scan speed, and you have to hold the button down the whole time or the player reverts to normal speed. For slow motion or to jump directly to a chapter, you have to bring up the PlayStation 2’s onscreen control panel, which looks like a keyboard with numbers and icons. You use the controller’s directional buttons to move the cursor to a function, then press its X button to access it. Don’t even think about doing stuff like setting bookmarks.
Control freaks will want to buy Sony’s DVD Remote Control accessory ($20), which comes with a setup disc and an infrared receiver that plugs into one of the PS2’s front-panel controller ports. (Since there’s no pass-through port, though, you have to detach the infrared receiver if you want to connect another wired controller during game play.) The add-on remote can’t do anything more than the supplied controller, though, unless you store the setup disc’s contents on a memory card, which you then leave plugged into the console. (An 8-megabyte card is $35, and you can use it to save games as well.)
While its buttons are cramped and its labels tiny, the add-on remote has direct-access buttons for forward and reverse slow motion, plus three forward and reverse fast-scan speeds. The wired controller’s button set is duplicated on the lower half of the remote, so you can also use that to play games or as a second controller for multiplayer games. But the wired controller does one trick the add-on remote can’t: provide vibrations that add to the realism of game play. When my car went off the track while I was playing Infogames’ Le Mans 24 Hours, I felt it.
Of all the components covered here, PlayStation 2 provided the best value and performance as a DVD player. It wouldn’t make sense to buy the PS2 as a DVD player if no one in the family is big on playing videogames, but for a reasonable price it gives you both state-of-the-art gaming and a decent DVD player in one small box.
Neon
Technology NTV-2500
Sneaking under the radar while larger companies have stumbled in trying
to market “convergence” appliances, Neon Technology’s SurfReady NTV-2500 ($649)
is a multipurpose information/entertainment device in a box the size of a typical
DVD player. Bundled with both an infrared remote control and a full-size wireless
keyboard, the NTV-2500 is a Web broswer, picture phone, karaoke player, MP3
player, TV tuner, and, oh yeah, DVD player all rolled into one.
The NTV-2500 also comes with a bunch of accessories, including a mushroom-shaped camera, a microphone and stand, a karaoke disc, two RF cables, an RF splitter, a 25-foot phone line, a phone-line splitter, a stereo audio cable, and both composite- and S-video cables. The back panel has composite- and S-video inputs and outputs (the inputs are for use with a camera), an antenna connector, outputs for both digital and analog audio, a parallel/printer port, a VGA port, two USB ports, a serial port, a phone jack for the built-in modem, and an Ethernet port for a broadband connection. There’s also a port for powering the camera. The front panel includes two microphone inputs (for karaoke duets) and a headphone jack, all with level controls. Six AAA batteries are supplied (two for the remote and four for the keyboard).
Setting up the NTV-2500 to play movies is no more complicated than setting up any other DVD player, but taking advantage of the browser, e-mail functions, and picture phone will probably mean spending some time on the phone talking with Neon’s technical support staff. Unlike when you subscribe to WebTV, you need an Internet Service Provider (ISP) to use these functions (and you can’t use America Online).
The NTV-2500 is a full-featured DVD player handicapped by lackluster audio and video performance (see lab results on page 84) and a remote that serves too many masters. The remote has a dedicated A/B repeat button, but you can’t access any of the three fast-scan speeds without first cycling through two slow-motion speeds. Having both a Menu Bar button and a DVD Menu button is confusing, and I found it too easy to inadvertently hit buttons that booted me from the movie without being able to return automatically to where I’d left off.
Once I hooked up an antenna and ran a modem line to the NTV-2500 and connected it to a set of inputs on my TV, I let it scan the airwaves to find stations. A commercial TV station appeared, accompanied by a list of functions along the left side of the screen that included DVD playback and Web browsing.
Having been a WebTV enthusiast, I was curious to see how SurfReady performed. Getting on the Internet and surfing to various sites using the built-in 56 kilobit-per-second modem was as fast as any dial-up device I’ve used. The screen was readable, but there’s no way to adjust the size of the image. We’re all used to scrolling down Web pages, but here they loaded with the right-hand side lopped off, which made it necessary to scroll across, too.
A nice touch is a magnifying window that pops up when you press the remote’s Display button. The magnifier can then be moved over any portion of a Web page. And I was pleased by the variety of audio formats the SurfReady browser played hassle-free. Though it couldn’t handle flash animation or video or Windows Media Audio files, it played RealAudio newscasts, streaming (but not downloaded) MP3 music, and MIDI files. It also showed JPEG and GIF images in e-mail and played audio WAV-file attachments.
Attaching the microphone and camera allowed me to converse with and see Neon’s tech-support guy in California on the TV screen in my New York office. There was about a 2-second delay after I asked a question before I heard his response, and the picture wasn’t video but still images updated at the sender’s discretion. (Each image took about 10 seconds to scan into a quarter window on my TV screen.) But I wasn’t using a broadband connection, and it was easy to see how farflung family members could get excited about being able to converse at length, along with seeing live snapshots of each other, for the price of a local phone call and a monthly ISP fee.
While you’re watching TV, you can display thumbnail images of the six most recently tuned channels and switch directly to one of them by highlighting its thumbnail and pressing the enter button. You can also watch TV in a window while surfing the Web. The remote has an EPG button (for electronic program guide), but there is no program guide — the label is apparently a vestige of an unimplemented plan. The supplied karaoke DVD (Top Hits English Songs 5) coaxed several Sound & Vision staffers into belting out Beatles tunes. Once I adjusted the microphone level, the karaoke system sounded pretty good.
At $649, the NTV-2500 costs more than three times as much as a WebTV Plus receiver. But it is a DVD player, picture phone, and karaoke player, too. So while you probably won’t consider an NTV-2500 as your primary CD/DVD player, it could be useful in an office, dorm room, or den.
Panasonic
PV-DF2000
The great thing about Panasonic’s PV-DF2000 all-in-one TV/DVD/VCR/FM combo
($900) is that you can pop in a DVD and start watching it right out of the box
without having to connect cables or work through a setup menu. You can also
use the same remote to control volume on both the DVD player and the TV without
having to program in a code. And the single-cabinet design makes the combo a
natural as an entertainment center for a bedroom or den. The 20-inch (diagonal)
screen invites relatively close viewing, though. (Panasonic also offers the
similar $1,300 PV-DF2700 combo with a 27-inch screen and picture-in-picture
capabilities.)
One of the DF2000’s most striking traits is its Tau PureFlat screen, which reduces ambient-light reflections and edge distortion. Despite its flatness, though, it’s still a direct-view television, so you’ll need a tabletop or stand that can accommodate its 20 inches of depth and 66 pounds of weight. The TV touts a three-line digital comb filter, but the maximum of 400 lines of resolution measured in our lab is significantly less than the DVD format is capable of. Also, no matter what the source, the image was surrounded by a black strip about a half-inch wide, which appears to be a mask that was applied to the picture tube itself.
Why Panasonic chose to dub this model Triple Play when it can play not only DVDs, CDs, and videotapes but also TV and FM broadcasts is a bit of a mystery. There’s a headphone jack and a set of composite-video and stereo audio inputs conveniently located on the front panel; the back panel has an S-video input plus a second set of composite-video and stereo inputs, a stereo output, an optical digital audio output, and an RF input. An onscreen menu lets you reduce the TV’s Normal brightness setting (which is pretty bright) to Movie level or further to Night level. Auto-scan functions lock in TV channels and FM stations.
The DVD player had decent performance limited by the TV. It features five search and reverse speeds, five slow-motion speeds, two zoom levels, and the ability to read Video CDs.
The hi-fi VCR has three recording speeds (including the now rarely seen Long Play, which records 4 hours of material on a standard 120-minute videocassette). It also supports VCR Plus, which lets you record a program by entering a numerical code from the TV listings instead of having to enter start/stop times and the channel.
The remote has a time-saving feature called CM Skip. Pressing the button while you’re watching a tape causes the VCR to fast forward by 1 minute. Two presses advances the tape 2 minutes, and three presses, 3 minutes. A 3-minute block of commercials in a program recorded at SLP speed dissolved in 10 seconds, or 30 seconds at SP speed.
The DF2000 can simulate surround sound from the small stereo speakers flanking its screen. Since people are less likely to use an external sound system with a combo player, building in virtual surround sound makes sense. Its effectiveness, however, depends heavily on the movie or program you’re watching. I noticed the surround effect most in The Price Is Right, where the screaming and clapping from the audience seemed to come from a large studio space.
I was disappointed the VCR wouldn’t record the same non-copy-protected DVD that the Go-Video VCR dubbed without complaint and annoyed that it couldn’t time-shift FM programs. Having National Public Radio’s All Things Considered waiting for me when I got home would have been a nice touch.
On the other hand, the DF2000 can function as an alarm clock. The TV turned itself on at the appointed time, but a loud beep sounded for a full minute before it finally switched over to the TV audio. This feature is clearly aimed at buyers who put the DF2000 in a bedroom and have trouble waking up. And if you like to watch TV in the dark, the Panasonic’s remote has a switch that lights up seven of its 54 keys, including channel up/down.
The DF2000 obviously isn’t meant to be a reference-quality video system. But it is a versatile TV/radio and multiformat player that’s perfect for casual viewing and listening in a bedroom, a summer cottage, a basement gym, or any number of other places.
Clearly, each of these combos is loaded with features — in the case of the Neon Technology box and the Panasonic TV, lots and lots of features. But it’s just as clear that they really aren’t meant to be used as primary players in home theater systems. They don’t have the flexibility of a dedicated player and weren’t engineered with that single purpose in mind. Still, each of these devices can fill an entertainment niche in just about any home. All you have to figure out is which one fills your particular bill.