Denon - DVD-2200

MPEG Maker: Mitsubishi MPEG Model: Deinterlacer Maker: Silicon Image Deinterlacer Model: Sil504     MSRP: $629.00 Website: http://www.usa.denon.com

Deinterlacing

The DVD-2200 is Denon’s least expensive offering that features their preferred Silicon Image deinterlacing solution. This deinterlacer has always tested well and is one of our preferred solutions. As expected, it did nicely in the de-interlacing tests, but is only recommended in Mode 1. Mode 2 had a tendency to drop out of film mode too quickly.

The Basics

The DVD-2200 is Denon’s entry level universal player. It is very similar to its big brother the DVD-2900. However it features a slightly smaller power supply and different audio DACs. Some would be happy to find that they have included a bass enhancer for the multi-channel setup, which was sorely missed in the 2900.

Like the 2900 some of the drawbacks of the 2200 stem from its Mitsubishi MPEG decoder. While tweaked better than Pioneer managed to do, it still suffers from a few quirks. The most obvious is the chroma upsampling error (CUE) with 3-2 alternating flag material. You’ll find this mainly in Buena Vista titles, especially their animation. The result is a stripping and flickering in solid colors.

Some other drawbacks come from the white level of the player. It measured out at 106 IRE, when it should be at 100 IRE. The 2200 offers some user adjustable contrast settings that can bring this down, but one notch off resulted in 97 IRE which is a bit low for our spec.

Overall this is a solid player with minor quirks, but given the performance of other low priced offerings like the DVD-1600 and DVD-910, I was hoping this one would test out just a little better.

Video Frequency Response
Denon

Yamaha - DVD-2300MKII

MPEG Maker: Panasonic MPEG Model: MN677531KA Deinterlacer Maker: Faroudja Deinterlacer Model: FLI-2200     MSRP: $999.00 Website: http://www.yamaha.com/yec/index1.htm

The Yamaha DV-2300MKII DVD player is the follow up to the previously benched 2300. Like its predecessor, it uses the Faroudja FLI-2200 chip for its deinterlacing solution, making this player a spectacular video performer. The chip is set up correctly and didn’t seem to have any of the flicker associated with the Cross Color Suppressor being set incorrectly. As always, the chip sailed through our tests.

The MPEG decoder is the same Panasonic chip previously used. This is the same chip found on the vastly popular RP-82 and XP-50. So, the 2300MKII passed all of the chroma tests including the ICP error due to the Faroudja color filter. (The FLI-2200 has no CUE problems.)

Overall, this is an impressive player, boasting an extremely rugged construction for a player at this price point. Opening up the player revealed a beefed up analog stage and multi-board construction. I have seen players at 3x’s the price that don’t come near this build!!

In our core tests, the Yamaha did pretty well, with only a few shortcomings. The biggest issue was Y/C delay. While the Pr channel measured in at less then 5 nanoseconds, the blue was closer to 20, but in the opposite direction. This leads to a Pb/Pr delay of just over a pixel. Pixel cropping was on the border with 3 pixels cropped on the right side and 2 on the left, but the top and bottom were fine. The responsiveness of the player was quite good, with menu navigation and chapter skips being quite breezy, but the layer change clocked in at about 1.5 seconds.

The 2300MKII is a very solid offering from Yamaha. We plan on doing a full evaluation soon that will cover more of the player’s features as well as its audio performance.

Video Frequency Response
Yamaha

Lexicon - RT-10 Disc Player

MPEG Maker: Mitsubishi MPEG Model: unknown Deinterlacer Maker: Pioneer Deinterlacer Model: Pure Progressive Cinema     MSRP: $3495.00 Website: www.lexicon.com

The Lexicon RT-10 is based on the Pioneer and Marantz shared platform and features the Pioneer “Pure Cinema” de-interlacing chip. It appears the deinterlacer has been tweaked a bit compared to the Marantz 8400 that shares it, but isn’t quite as dialed in as the newer Pioneer DV-59AVi. When using this player, we suggest the “Pure Cinema ON” selection for de-interlacing. This mode is cadence-based and performed the best of all the options. It is a shame that Lexicon didn’t pursue a better deinterlacer, especially given its price point.

The RT-10 is a beast in terms of build. You won’t find the cheap plastic of its cousins. The outer shell is made of one solid piece of aluminum encasing and inside you’ll find an impressive analog stage and multi-board layout. The face plate is also a carved piece of aluminum, adding to the heft and fitting in nicely with Lexicon’s processors (MC-12). This player features some nice extras including a complement of both RCA and BNC component outputs as well as a balanced two-channel audio output.

The player responded well to both navigation inputs and chapter skips but was a tad sluggish with layer changes. It features the same Mitsubishi MPEG decoder used previously by Pioneer and displays all of the CUE problems associated with it. Again it is unfortunate that they didn’t employ the newer “tweaked” Mitsubishi chip that at least remedies the main CUE issues.

As far as core performance, this player did an excellent job with both Y/C delay and frequency response. This will lend to a sharp, stable image. There is some pixel cropping with 6 combined pixels being cropped from the left and right sides of the image, and 3 from the bottom. White level was a tad under reference at 99 IRE, which isn’t bad at all.

This player’s main draw is the audio section which features both DVD-A and SACD playback. The audio section is completely different from the Marantz and employs an impressive analog stage. All in all, as a DVD player, this is the part of its performance that I can really recommend. I hope in future players Lexicon starts implementing newer chips for their video stage to compliment the audio stage.

Video Frequency Response
Lexicon

McIntosh - MVP851

MPEG Maker: Panasonic MPEG Model: MN677531KA Deinterlacer Maker: Genesis Deinterlacer Model: VLX1A-X     MSRP: $3500.00 Website: www.macintoshlabs.com

Like many DVD manufacturer’s, McIntosh has built their player on an OEM platform. The MVP851 is basically a spruced up Panasonic RP-91 and incorporates the stellar MPEG decoder that was used on the RP-91, 82, and XP line. Unfortunately it also incorporates the same Genesis deinterlacer the 91 used. This deinterlacer isn’t bad but doesn’t quite measure up to the offerings from high line models that feature Faroudja and Silicon Image solutions. If only they had based this transport on the RP-82!! The player did essentially the same as the RP-91 with our tests in regards to deinterlacing.

On our core tests, the 851 did okay. The player would not pass a blacker then black signal, similar to the RP-91 and has some pretty excessive pixel cropping with a combined 19 pixels taken from the left and right side of the image. White level measured out at 98 IRE which is a bit low from the reference 100 IRE level.

The transport also had some issues. It was noisy, especially when loading a disc. It also refused just about every disc I put in it the first time. I suspect this was just a problem with the review unit and not typical.

You can read more about this player in our full write-up in the DVD player review section.

Video Frequency Response
McIntosh

Amoisonic - NetPlay NDP9100

MPEG Maker: MPEG Model: Deinterlacer Maker: Deinterlacer Model:     MSRP: $299.00 Website: http://www.amoisonic.com/english/index.htm

Introduction

The AmoiSonic Net DVDPlayer arrived on my doorstep a couple of months ago. It came pretty much unannounced and lacked any sort of user documentation or professional packaging. It did have a press brief explaining the many features it provided and a business card with some contact information. I had remembered a manufacturer several months before talking about a DVD player that would double as a client for streaming media like MP3s and DivX movies off a PC. It was an interesting concept which intrigued me. Needless to say this brown box contained just such a player.

The NetDVD player’s front has a mirror like finish with several bright blue lights that emerge with a hit of the power button. The unit is attractive and will have great Geek appeal, but will not hide itself in a dimly light room or a home theater. The chassis is substantially heavier than my Panasonic RP-82 and appears to be solidly built. The AMOI logo is embossed on the top cover, and the unit sits on some large round feet.

Smatterings of logos appear across the front right side, and directly under them are two mic inputs and controls for some form of Karaoke functionality. The rest of the buttons on the front panel are what you would expect from any DVD player with the exception of the ‘My Net’ button which enables the connection to a PC to stream media to the unit over a network connection. This DVD player, like most, neglects putting directional and menu keys on the front panel.

The remote unfortunately does not have the same build mentality as the player. It is a plain beige unit with too many poorly laid out buttons. The player also lacks the ‘Title Menu’ button which can make navigating some DVDs cumbersome.

Setup

During the setup phase I ran into a few snags, nothing serious, but a couple of little annoyances. In order to set up the progressive output of the player, you need to enter the setup mode, choose video, and press the ‘scan’ button on the remote. Seems simple enough, but upon closer inspection of the remote there was no scan button. Due to my determined nature and a process of trial, error, and elimination, I discovered that the scan button is labeled ‘PS/IS’. My assumption is it stands for progressive scan/interlaced scan. The PR firm believes this remote was a pre-production unit and the buttons may now be properly labeled. As a warning, when the progressive mode is enabled, the composite and S-Video outputs are not active, so if you are going to move the unit to a system without progressive inputs, make sure you change the output back before you disconnect the player.

The player was supplied with an 802.11b PCMCIA wireless card which is installed in the back of the unit. The network setup was very simple and worked fine on my WEP enabled 802.11b wireless network. It found my PC running the AmoiSonic server software (also included with the player) and showed me a list of all the music I was sharing.

The player includes 5.1 analog, 2-channel analog, Toslink and Coax digital audio outputs. The 5.1 channel output supports DVD-Audio playback as well as Dolby Digital soundtracks. The setup menu allows for changing the delay and level of the 5.1 analog outputs, but the settings are not fine enough to be used as a replacement for a good SSP. On the video side there are outputs for composite video, S-Video, and component video. As mentioned above, the component output can be interlaced or progressive.

Media Support

One of the most impressive parts about this player is the amount of media it supports. On the music side, it can play CDs, MP3, or WMA from CDs or streamed from a PC, and DVD-Audio discs. On the video side, is supports DVDs, DivX, VCD, and SVCD. In the case of DivX they can also be streamed off a PC. The player does not support SACD which is about the only media format they left out.

Net DVD

Before we take a look at the results of our DVD benchmark tests, I want to spend some time on the streaming media aspect of this player. Setup of the server software was fairly simple and easily allowed me to point to my existing music archive. This archive is in lossless windows media format, as I have been converting CDs over to this for some time. Unfortunately, the player would not play these files, although it does support lossy WMA. I did want to test the Net DVD functionality, so I ripped a couple of CDs to MP3s and pointed the server at those instead. Overall, the interaction between the player and the server was reasonably fast, provided the computer was not in the middle of any intensive CPU cycles. As for playing the MP3s, there were no gaps or blips in the audio stream unless the computer was doing other CPU intensive tasks, or I transferred large files over the wireless network. My guess is that, if the Net DVD player had a little more buffering capacity, it would work almost flawlessly even with the computer under slight load and on wireless networks much more heavily used than mine. The Net DVD player also supported very high bit rate MP3s (I tested up to 320kbit/s) which is good for trying to retain as much quality as you can when ripping from CDs.

The interface for accessing media is clean and allows you to choose media types of Music, Movies, or Pictures. It also allows browsing by Titles, Artists, and Genres. There is no search functionality, but as long as your Music and DivX titles have decent meta data encoded in them, you should be fine.

Progressive DVD tests

On our Benchmark Tests, the player did not perform very well. For the most part, the player failed anything beyond standard 3:2 flags. It did however almost pass the per-pixel motion adaptive de-interlacing test on the Faroudja test DVD. In the end it flickered every 1.5 pendulum swings but came much closer than most of the recent players I have tested. It also managed to get through some of the bad edit tests, but not enough to pass. The chroma bug (CUE) with this player is one of the worst I have seen, and is noticeable right from the FBI Warning onward.

Conclusions

This is an innovative DVD player, and from a features and function standpoint, is a very good step in providing a seamless environment for a large selection of media and file formats. If your primary use of this player is for DVD playback I would recommend that you look elsewhere due to the poor choice of MPEG decoder and deinterlacer for this unit. If the Network features are your main concern, and you are using a small interlaced TV, this player might be a viable option.

Arcam - DV-78

MPEG Maker: Zoran MPEG Model: Ziva 5 Deinterlacer Maker: Zoran Deinterlacer Model: Ziva 5     MSRP: $999.00 Website: http://www.arcam.co.uk

The Arcam DV-78 is the new entry in their Diva line. Unlike most manufacturers, Arcam builds their players from the ground up and doesn’t OEM (they don’t outsource). While their flagship player uses the Silicon Image chip, this player uses the capabilities of its MPEG decoder the Zoran Vaddis 5. The Vaddis chip doesn’t have quite the capabilities of the Silicon Image chip, but didn’t do badly overall. The chip is motion-adaptive but trips up a bit with poorly authored discs. This shouldn’t be too big of a deal if most of your viewing is the latest big Hollywood movies on DVD.

The Zoran chip does have all of the chroma problems (CUE) associated with it. The good news is, they are toned down almost to the point of non-existence. Depending on your display, you may or may not see these issues at all. The player does pass below-black properly, but the white level was a tad hot at 101 IRE. It did exhibit one full pixel of Y/C delay in both the Pb and Pr channels, so this may or may not distract you, again depending on the display.

As a transport, the DV-78 has a very solid build and can be ordered as a normal DVD player or a DVD-Audio player. I felt the navigation was a bit on the sluggish side with menu navigation and chapter skips. The player also has a “fade” feature that shows up when you navigate, and that contributes to its rather slow operation. While at first I thought this was rather neat looking, it became slightly annoying when trying to navigate test discs. The video frequency response of the player was quite good with only a slight rolloff at higher frequencies, but this didn’t seem to affect detail in playback.

Overall the DV-78 is a solid offering that is improved upon with their flagship DV-27A. The 27A will be featured in our next benchmark report.

Video Frequency Response
Arcam

Focus Enhancements - CS-2

MPEG Maker: MPEG Model: Deinterlacer Maker: Silicon Image Deinterlacer Model: Sil504     MSRP: $2495.00 Website: http://www.focusinfo.com

The Centerstage CS-2 is almost identical to the previously tested CS-1. The main differences come from the added features, the highlight of which is the optional SDI input. The CS-2’s de-interlacing comes from the Silicon Image Sil-504 which always does well with our tests. I am still not sure what Focus Enhancements is using for scaling but the unit did a good job with only some light artifacts noticed.

Overall this is a very user friendly unit. It comes pre-programmed with most of the popular resolutions out there and can be custom tailored to just about any resolution you want. This new CS-2 offers a few more features including:

• Standard DVI HDCP encryption • Option slot for SDI Input option • RGBS input support • Time base correction (TBC) • Rackmount brackets • BNC analog video input connectors

Overall this is a great offering but is being challenged by the new DVDO Iscan HD in some departments. The standout feature here is no doubt the SDI input which allows for a pure digital pathway. Due to this feature, this scaler gets our highest recommendation of Focus Enhancement’s Centerstage line.