Panasonic - DVD-S77

MPEG Maker: Matsushita MPEG Model: MN2DS0004AP Deinterlacer Maker: Genesis Deinterlacer Model: FLI-2310 LF     MSRP: $249.95 Website: http://www.panasonic.com

The Panasonic DVD-S77 was a bit of a surprise for me. I just recently reviewed the updated S97 flagship player that seems to be almost exactly the same as the S77 . . . well at least from a build and chip standpoint. Both players use just about the exact same components to deliver the goods, but the S97 is a bit more refined in the end.

The S77 is a two-chip-based player. For its core processing, it relies on a Matsushita MPEG decoder that is pretty much shared throughout the Panasonic DVD player line. What separates the S77 from the lower priced options is the inclusion of the Genesis/Faroudja FLI-2310 video processing chip. This chip not only offers spectacular de-interlacing performance, but also top-of-the-line video scaling for up-conversion to high definition resolutions.

De-Interlacing

The S77 uses a new chip from Genesis called the FLI-2310-LF. I had heard rumors that Genesis and Faroudja had figured out the dreaded “macroblocking” issue that has been so rampant with the latest Genesis chip. Since this chip seemed to be a new iteration of the 2300, I thought for sure this player would not have macroblocking. Unfortunately, that is not the case. In fact, it is worse in this regard than its big brother the S97. Using my tried and true reference scene, Chapter 22 of A Bug’s Life, macroblocking was clearly evident through almost the entire scene. I don’t know why we haven’t seen this problem fixed yet, but it has become more and more frustrating for everyone. As with all FLI-2310 based players, I don’t recommend the S77 if you have a display that shows the issue. Unfortunately we don’t have a list of what displays those are, but we do know that Panasonic plasmas are one of the worst offenders. On a positive note, none of the Sony Cineza (HS-20, HS-50, HS-51) based projectors show the macroblocking bug at all. I cannot comment on the rest of the Sony line.

Aside from the macroblocking issue, the Faroudja continues to be one of our favorite de-interlacing/scaling solutions. It is one of only a few true 10 bit video processing chips available, and its diagonal line processing is still the best in the industry. Since the S77 has an HDMI output, it can deliver a true 10 bit video signal if the output is never converted to DVI. There is a common misconception in the electronics world that DVI and HDMI are identical except for HDMI’s ability to carry multi-channel audio signals on top of video. This is not true. DVI outputs 8 bit RGB signals only and cannot carry 10 bit video like HDMI can. In fact, HDMI is actually capable of 12 bit transmission as well. What does this buy you? Well if you are lucky enough to have a display with an HDMI input, you can significantly reduce the contouring artifacts that are commonly associated with digital displays. A lot of this may depend on the internal processing of your display though too. This is one of the gripes I’ve had with DLP based projectors and displays. Most are DVI- based and only incorporate 8 bit processing internally. So contouring in gray ramps is quite evident. You’ll also usually see it in skies and underwater scenes. If you are lucky enough to have a display with an HDMI input, and with high bit processing, this is pretty much eliminated.

Like most other Panasonic players, the S77 has three distinct video modes; Auto 1, Auto 2, and Video. Auto 1 and 2 are identical except for 2-2 processing. Auto 2 is the only mode that features this processing since it requires a different tap setting in the Genesis chip. This mode is great for video-based DVDs and some PAL material that is flagged incorrectly for video. The video mode is pretty much useless as always.

The Genesis settings seem to be right with this player. The cross color suppressor is defaulted to OFF, but there doesn’t seem to be any way to turn it back on. The chroma filters are all turned on appropriately as well, and this player does pass all of our chroma up sampling tests. The drawback to this is that Faroudja’s filters truncate the vertical chroma resolution. This was clearly evident using the vertical chroma sweep on AVIA Pro. This is one of the only drawbacks to the Faroudja design.

Core Performance

I always find it amusing when a higher end player in a manufacturer’s line doesn’t perform to the level of a lower end unit. At the same time I had this player for evaluation, I was testing their low priced S29. The S29 is a fourth of the S77’s retail price so one would expect the S77 to be at least equal in every respect to the S29. Well, that is not the case. The S77 exhibits the same slight trace of Y/C delay that was present with the S29. It also has some minor pixel cropping, but in this case it affects all sides of the image and not just the sides.

Another issue I found was the S77's black level. For some reason, the S77’s component output is at 7.5 IRE, and I couldn’t get it to output 0 IRE. It does pass a below-black pluge though. Like the S29, the analog white level of the S77 is much too high at 110 IRE. However, the HDMI levels seemed to be right, so this is only an issue via component video output.

Usability is the same as most of Panasonic’s line of players. Menu navigation and chapter skips are quick and painless and the layer change is the standard 1 second for the entire Panasonic line. Build quality is slightly higher then Panasonic’s lower line but not near the level of most other manufacturer’s top end products. Panasonic has seemed to abandon flagship designs like its previous beasts the H-1000 and 2000. That is too bad.

I was impressed to see that this player supports the newest version of HDMI; the 1.1 spec. This version allows for high resolution multi-channel PCM support from DVD-Audio discs. Some other high profile players on the market don’t yet support this. Panasonic also has a digital receiver that accepts this signal and will decode DVD-Audio. Very impressive given the price point of these products.

Conclusions

Video Frequency Response
Panasonic

Onkyo - DV-SP502 Universal DVD Player

MPEG Maker: Mediatek MPEG Model: MT1389EE Deinterlacer Maker: Mediatek Deinterlacer Model: MT1389EE     MSRP: $300.00 Website: http://www.onkyousa.com

If there is one thing that has become increasingly popular in the DVD player market, it is rebadging. When you go into a store and look at the selection of DVD players on the shelf, you’d probably be surprised to know that most of them have basically the same electronics. The problem is that it's very expensive to design a player from the ground up and to recover the research and development costs. But if a larger outfit can come up with a good design that is well implemented, it can sell that design to other manufacturers and recover those costs.

The most popular example of this has to be Pioneer. In my experience, there isn’t a design that's copied more than theirs, from their Elite models to their bargain line. So, Pioneer has the market corned in terms of replicas, and the copies span the entire price range. Some of them are exactly the same as the Pioneer model, with the exception of the outer shells, but that sell for considerably more than the platform they are based on.

The SP-502 is a rebadged Pioneer player, but thankfully it does not fall into the category of duping its customer base. The 502 is a replica of the popular DV-588a, which is one of the best low priced universal players on the market today. The 502 does come in at a higher premium though. It is listed at $100 more then its Pioneer counterpart, but Onkyo has made improvements in the build and look of the player. Whether this is important to you or not is the question. Personally I liked the look of the Onkyo far more then the Pioneer and appreciated its spit and polish in comparison.

De-interlacing

Conclusions

So, if you had to choose between the Onkyo and Pioneer, they are so similar it really won’t matter from a performance standpoint. The question really comes down to what you want to spend and what you want to look at on your A/V stand. Personally I prefer the looks of the Onkyo and the features on the front panel, but those can be easily overlooked by the savings you get with the Pioneer.

Panasonic - DVD-S29

MPEG Maker: Matsushita MPEG Model: MN2DS0003UP1 Deinterlacer Maker: Matsushita Deinterlacer Model: MN2DS0003UP1     MSRP: $69.00 Website: http://www.panasonic.com

The Panasonic DVD-S29 is one of Panasonic’s newest entry level players. The design is simple but maintains a few of the cosmetic touches of their somewhat pricier upper tier. A few years ago Panasonic was at the top of our DVD Benchmark ratings and they released a string of affordable DVD players that offered superb video playback; unfortunately those days have come to an end. While the upper tier of Panasonic players such as the DVD-S97 and S77 offer excellent video performance for the price, the S29 groups itself into the mainstream norm of average-at-best players.

The S29 uses a proprietary Matsushita MPEG decoder. This single chip is the heart of the player and performs all of the video processing duties as well as audio decoding. Like most one-chip solutions, the Matsushita offering is decent enough with film based DVDs, but lacks the more advanced video processing that is demanded by today’s DVDs.

De-Interlacing

The S29 features three separate de-interlacing modes; Auto 1, Auto 2, and Video. This is pretty common with Panasonic designs, and the results are nearly always the same with this chipset. Auto 1 is essentially a film based mode and lacks the capability to deal with a 2-2 based video cadence. So, if you don’t find yourself watching a lot of TV shows now available on DVD, you may just want to stick with this mode. Auto 2 is exactly the same, except that it features 2-2 processing. I didn’t see any signs of compromise with film based material (at least compared to Auto 1), so this is a safe mode to leave the player in if you want. Last and definitely least is Video which I found essentially useless for the most part. No flag or cadence detection at all. Since Auto 2 deals with video based material just fine, I would recommend sticking with that.

This player had quite a bit of difficulty with cadence errors and was quick to drop into video mode. This resulted in lots of combing during our tests. This is pretty much the norm on the market today despite the decade of DVD technologies that have been developed. It seems that the consumers just don't demand enough from the manufacturers, so why should they bother spending money to fix problems?

Core Performance

Unfortunately, this is where most players come up short. Since typical video processing chips will handle a basic film cadence for I/P conversion, most of the deficiencies you see in DVD players today are from problems in the core areas of video playback. This includes Y/C delay, video levels, chroma up-sampling errors, and more. The DVD-S29 again did about average in this department, but had some major oversights in my opinion.

The biggest oversight is the default level of white in the video signal. Our pass criteria is a level of 102 IRE or lower, with 100 IRE being the ideal. The S29’s white level is 110 IRE as measured with our oscilloscope. That is outrageously high. The Panasonic does have picture settings that will help out, but this shouldn’t be an issue that the consumer has to deal with. On the plus side, the S29 does pass a below black pluge signal and the black level of the player can be adjusted for both 7.5 and 0 IRE.

There was some slight Y/C delay measured, but the player was still in the consumer spec of less then 5 ns. When I evaluated the player on my display, I didn’t see any trace of the Y/C delay in normal viewing. The Panasonic had a very good overall video frequency response that remained flat for the most part with only a slight nudge down in the mid-frequency band. Using a resolution chart on AVIA Pro showed that the S29 did indeed resolve the highest resolution DVD was capable of.

Like most DVD players, the S29 did have issues with a few of our chroma up-sampling tests, i.e., the 4:2:0 ICP test, which requires special chroma filters to resolve, and the 3-2 alternating cadence CUE problem. Both of these are very common but won’t show up on a lot of material you will see in real world viewing. The 3-2 alternating problem will show up occasionally on some of Disney’s animated DVD fare.

Pixel cropping was a tad excessive on the left and right sides of the image, mainly the right which was clipping 5 pixels from the video signal. Since the S29 doesn’t use any chroma filtering, the player retains the full vertical chroma response.

Usability of the player is high. Response times were high and menu navigation and chapter skips were breezy enough. The player’s layer change clocked in right about 1 second which is decent. I wasn’t impressed with the overall build of the player; especially the tray, which seemed a bit flimsy.

Conclusions

Video Frequency Response
Panasonic

Mitsubishi - DD-8050 Universal DVD Player

MPEG Maker: Matsushita MPEG Model: Deinterlacer Maker: Matsushita Deinterlacer Model:     MSRP: $208.99 Website: http://www.mitsubishi-tv.com/

Mitsubishi has always been a huge influence in the DVD market, even though you don't see many players with their name on them. The reason is their MPEG decoders, which have been used extensively in players sold by other manufacturers. One of the best examples of this is Pioneer, who continues to rely on these chips even today.

Unfortunately, the Mitsubishi brand DVD players don’t fare quite as well compared to the other companies using their chips. In most cases, the other companies employ proprietary video processing techniques using the Mitsubishi chip for other functions. That is not the case here. The DD-8050 is like most bargain DVD players, as it relies heavily on a one chip solution that delivers average to below average performance.

De-interlacing

Video Frequency Response
Mitsubishi

JVC - XV-N420B

MPEG Maker: ESS MPEG Model: Vibratto II CL Deinterlacer Maker: ESS Deinterlacer Model: Vibratto II CL     MSRP: $89.95 Website: http://www.jvc.com/main.jsp

JVC hasn’t been much of a factor in the DVD market in the last few years. They seem to lag behind in technology and never really catch up in terms of features or performance. The XV-N420B continues that trend for JVC and is about as basic as a progressive DVD player can be. No advanced features like DVD-Audio or SACD support, and run-of-the-mill progressive video performance. But, looking at the rest of JVC’s line of DVD products, I couldn’t find any real differences between their upper tier and this player, with the exception of DVD-A support. Having tested most of JVC’s line at one point or another, the difference in video performance is usually minimal.

The N420 is built on the ESS Vibratto II CL MPEG decoder. ESS is fairly common in the mainstream market and is used by other companies like Denon and Cary Audio. Unfortunately, most other manufacturers don’t rely on this chip for I/P conversion and usually couple it with an outboard de-interlacing solution. The ESS chip itself is pretty average overall on its own.

De-Interlacing

The N420 performed about average for its price range with our de-interlacing tests. Like most all-in-one solutions, the ESS chip does okay with film-based material but is a flag-based de-interlacer. As soon as a bad flag is encountered, it drops to video mode. This results in combing and usually an obvious loss of resolution in the video signal. Both of these can be pretty annoying if encountered frequently. We at Secrets always recommend using players that rely on cadence-based de-interlacing, since most of these issues can be avoided.

The N420 is not motion adaptive, which is almost unacceptable this late in the game. Again, here is a manufacturer that is touting their progressive scan processing as state-of-the-art, when we think it is really one of the worst you can get. I also noticed some painfully obvious artifacts with our resolution strip charts that reminded me a lot of scaling artifacts. The resolution lines were not crisp and clearly defined from each other, but instead showed what looks almost like moiré patterns.

The diagonal line processing in this player was very bad. Using the 3 angle pattern on the Silicon Optix Benchmark DVD, the JVC showed significant aliasing in all three angles. Anyone who watches a lot of video-based material (e.g., DVDs that contain TV programs) may want to steer clear of this player.

Core Performance

The core performance of the N420 is also pretty mediocre. I was hoping that this side of the player might make up for the shortcomings of the I/P converter. The N420 will not pass a below black pluge signal, but its black level is appropriately set up for 0 IRE and can be switched to 7.5 IRE. The white level measured in at 101 IRE, which is within our acceptable range.

The video frequency response is a bit high in the upper end. This produces a rather harsh look in fine detail with artificial ringing evident. It is important that a player maintains a flat response, so that artifical information is not added. This will lend to a “digital” appearance with an exaggerated harshness to the picture.

Pixel cropping was excessive on the sides of the image. Both the left and right side were clipping 5 pixels each, but the top and bottom were perfect.

The ESS chip did pretty well with our chroma testing. In fact, it did better with this player than it does with most of the Denons that use a similar chip. This ESS chip is probably a different iteration of the Vibratto II. The Denons have been showing some nasty performance with an alternating 3-2 cadence test, but that was not the case here. The JVC looked clean, with no obvious issues. The ESS is not engaging any chroma filters that I noticed either. Using a vertical chroma resolution pattern from AVIA Pro showed that the full resolution was present. Unfortunately, this player does suffer from over a full pixel of Y/C delay, which contributes even more to the ringing artifacts the artificial sharpness is adding.

The player’s responsiveness overall was quite sluggish. Menu navigation and initial loading times were extremely slow. I also thought the remote was poor. It it extremely small and hard to navigate. The layer change was quick though and clocked in at about a quarter of a second.

Conclusions

Video Frequency Response
JVC

Kenwood - DVF-8100

MPEG Maker: ALi MPEG Model: M3355A Deinterlacer Maker: ALi Deinterlacer Model: M3355A     MSRP: $150.00 Website: http://www.kenwoodusa.com

The DVF-8100 looks to be a return to form for Kenwood and is very reminiscent of the DVF-3080 I reviewed a short while ago. It is based on the same chipset, but some improvements have been made. Unfortunately, there are not enough improvements to put it back into the same league as Kenwood’s Sovereign players.

De-interlacing

Video Frequency Response
Kenwood