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You may have noticed that we have changed the look and feel of this latest
shootout. If you have not yet read the
Guide to the Progressive Scan Shootouts, then please do so
before continuing. If you do not read the guide before hand, you may not understand the new system. We have also
worked hard to move over the previous shootouts to the new look. You can now
view all shootouts at once.
We also recommend you read the latest updates to
Part 5 of the DVD Benchmark and the
Chroma Upsampling Error.
The Test Results
| |
Pass |
|
Borderline |
| |
Fail |
|
Not Tested |
Player data table:
| DVD
Player Results |
|
General |
Deinterlacing |
Core |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
| NetPlay N> |
Default |
52 |
| | | | | | | | 15 | | | | | | | | | | | | 1.5 | 3.5 |
| NetPlay N> |
Default |
41 |
| | | | | | 2 | | 9 | | | | | | | | | | | | 1.5 | 3.5 |
Notes on individual players:
Amoisonic - NetPlay NDP9100
|
NetPlay NDP9100 - Default |
|
Passed |
Borderline |
Failed |
Not Tested |
Blacker-than-Black
Sync Subtitle to Frames
3-2 Cadence, Film Flags
3-2 Cadence, Alt. Flags
3-2 Cadence, Video Flags
Film Mode High Detail
Video to Film Transition
Incorrect Progressive Flags
Motion Adaptive
| Layer Change
Responsiveness
Recovery Time
| Chroma, 3-2 Film Flags
Chroma, 3-2 Alt. Flags
Chroma, 2-2 Film Flags
Chroma, 4:2:0 ICP
Image Cropping
3-2 Cadence, Mixed Flags
2-2 Cadence, Film Flags
Bad Edit
| Video Levels
YC Delay
|
|
NetPlay NDP9100 - Default |
|
Passed |
Borderline |
Failed |
Not Tested |
Blacker-than-Black
3-2 Cadence, Film Flags
3-2 Cadence, Alt. Flags
3-2 Cadence, Video Flags
Video to Film Transition
Incorrect Progressive Flags
| Layer Change
Responsiveness
Recovery Time
| Chroma, 3-2 Film Flags
Chroma, 3-2 Alt. Flags
Chroma, 2-2 Film Flags
Chroma, 4:2:0 ICP
Image Cropping
3-2 Cadence, Mixed Flags
2-2 Cadence, Film Flags
Bad Edit
Motion Adaptive
| Video Levels
YC Delay
Sync Subtitle to Frames
Film Mode High Detail
|
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.
