Zenith - DVB-318 DVI

MPEG Maker: STMicroelectronics MPEG Model: Omega DVD STi5505 Deinterlacer Maker: Faroudja Deinterlacer Model: FLI-2310     MSRP: $249.99 Website: www.zenith.com

The DVB-318 is Zenith’s first scaling DVD player. This player also marks a first since it is the only DVD player on the market with the Faroudja FLI-2300 chip that scales via its component outputs. The player features a DVI output as well with the same scalable resolutions of 480p/720p/1080i.

As always the Faroudja chip performed extremely well in all of our tests. It did fail the 2-2 Cadence test showing that the filter is not activated in the Faroudja chip.

Unfortunately the rest of the testing did not go as well. This player has a lot of issues in its core performance. It has some very severe pixel cropping in all resolutions, with up to 15 pixels being cropped from the right side of the image. There are also various amounts of Y/C delay when using the component outputs. The 1080i resolution did the best in this respect with only about 5ns of Y/C delay, but the other resolutions showed at least a full pixel of delay. White levels for all output resolutions were on the hot side, varying from 102 to 104 IRE. The player did pass blacker then black though as well as breezing through our chroma tests.

On the DVI side things are also a bit amiss. There seems to be some Y/C delay on all output resolutions but 1080i. Thankfully though, the DVI output still passes blacker than black, which is a shortcoming with a lot of DVI based players out there.

Like most of the inexpensive DVI DVD players out there, this one definitely has its issues. I love the fact that it uses the Faroudja chip and allows for scaleable resolutions via component, but the analog section needs some work. Hopefully Zenith can improve on the design with future models.

A big thanks goes out to Chris Allen from AVS for providing us with this player to test. We can’t always get a hold of the players out there so we really appreciate the loan!!

Zenith - DVB-318 Component

MPEG Maker: STMicroelectronics MPEG Model: Omega DVD STi5505 Deinterlacer Maker: Faroudja Deinterlacer Model: FLI-2310     MSRP: $249.99 Website: www.zenith.com

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Zenith

Zenith - DVB-412

MPEG Maker: ALi MPEG Model: M3355A Deinterlacer Maker: ALi Deinterlacer Model: M3355A     MSRP: $59.99 Website: www.zenith.com

I recently tested the Zenith DVB-318 which not only offered a DVI output but also incorporated a Faroudja de-interlacer and scaler. The 318 did fairly well with our de-interlacing tests, as expected, but was pretty weak in our core testing. The 412 looks almost exactly like it but doesn’t use any of the same internals.

The 412 utilizes an MPEG decoder from ALi. This all-in-one solution is not nearly as good as the STMicroelectronics chip used in the 318. The ALi chip didn’t impress me at all with its performance. The chip has all of the chroma problems associated with it and most of them are quite bad in degree. The only core test this player did pass was the Y/C delay measurements. The 412 did not pass blacker-than-black information and had some rather severe pixel cropping issues with 9 pixels chopped from the right side and 2 from the top.

The white level of the player was quite high at 104 IRE. This would exaggerate contrast levels on most displays. The player did quite well with the layer change test, clocking in at just under a half second. The menus and chapter skips were also quite good, though not as fast as the Media Tech-based players.

The de-interlacing tests didn’t go so well either. The ALi chip is not motion adaptive which led to some obvious artifacts in the image, including instability. The chip is flag-based and showed a few hiccups with some of our flag testing. We really hope that companies will move away from this as time goes on.

Overall, this was a pretty disappointing showing from Zenith, especially after the 318. I would look elsewhere if you are in the market for an inexpensive, but decent progressive scan player.

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Zenith