About DVD Players

What the CD did for listening to music, the DVD is doing for watching movies: bringing high-quality reproductions to an optical format that doesn't degrade every time you use it. DVD video quality is twice as good as VHS tape quality, and one disc can deliver anything from two channels of standard, CD-quality sound to compressed 6-channel surround sound from formats like Dolby Digital and DTS. Most DVDs offer multiple language and subtitle options, alternate sound tracks for an isolated music score (no dialog), or a forum for the director, the writer, the stars, or a noted film critic to engage in running commentary on the onscreen action.

2. Digital Audio Outputs These outputs enable you to connect the DVD player to an audio-video receiver with Digital Theater Systems (DTS) and Dolby Digital processors, which decode the DVD's digital-audio tracks--including discs encoded in 5.1-channel surround sound. Look for players with both optical (fiber-optic) and coaxial (75-ohm) digital outputs; this will give you more options for enjoying music and movies through your home entertainment system. If you're buying a DVD-audio player, make sure your receiver will accommodate 5.1-channel analog outputs, since most DVD-audio players don't pass the high-resolution DVD-audio signal digitally.

3. Surround Formats Virtually all DVD players are capable of outputting Dolby Digital 5.1-channel surround sound. Although nearly all of today's DVDs are encoded in Dolby Digital, there's an expanding list of DVD and CD titles available in 5.1-channel DTS (Digital Theater Systems), which uses less compression and is generally considered to be a superior-sounding format. If you're interested in enjoying DTS-encoded discs, you'll need a DTS receiver, or you'll need a DVD player with a built-in DTS processor that can be mated with a compatible receiver. If DTS is important to you, be aware that some budget DVD players have difficulty passing the 5.1-channel signal onto DTS-compatible receivers. If DTS is not important to you, most of today's Dolby Digital-only budget DVD players are reliable.

4. Disc Capacity Models range from single-disc machines to 2-disc, 3-disc, 5-disc, and 6-disc players to mega changers that can hold up to 301 DVDs. If you're planning to use the player for music listening and you like to play several hours' worth of music at a time, you might consider purchasing a multidisc machine. The 5-disc and 6-disc models use traditional carousel platters to load DVDs and CDs, while the 3-disc variety uses either a carousel or sliding-drawer mechanism.

5. Screen Dimmer and Video Bit-Rate Meter Neither of these features will enhance a DVD player's performance, but both are very cool. Players that allow you to dim or turn off the front-panel display are preferable, because bright LCDs are distracting in the dark. Bit-rate displays, which appear either on the TV screen or on the player's front panel, reveal how much MPEG-2 compression is being used from scene to scene, with higher numbers representing a larger bit-rate allocation and lower numbers indicating a lot of compression. Action sequences, for example, will typically measure 8 to 9.5, while highly compressed, static scenes often dip below 2.

Overview
While most DVD-Video players offer superb picture and sound quality--including outstanding playback of conventional CDs--there are many important differences in features and performance. We'll cover the gamut in this guide, exploring the relevant issues to help you locate the best match for your system. By having all the facts at your fingertips, you can be sure of buying the DVD player that best meets your needs and budget.

User Interface
DVD players come in single-play formats, multidisc changers, and DVD-laser disc combination players. Regardless of price and format, a DVD player should be almost effortless to use. The panel controls should be clearly labeled and neatly presented. The remote should be ergonomically pleasing. The buttons should be well-marked and easy to distinguish in the dark. The better remote controls should also be backlit. More expensive players will offer "jog/shuttle" controls on their remotes, which let you move around the disc more easily. Player setup and configuration using the onscreen display should be easy to figure out. You should also note how quickly and easily the player navigates the menus and features programmed on discs. The manufacturer's manual should be provided in plain language, free of jargon and stilted translations.

Video Performance
When you're examining a DVD player's performance, it's important to look at the overall picture quality and pertinent features. While only the most expensive first-generation players offered 10-bit video processing--for better picture quality during action or other high-motion sequences--today, even modestly priced DVD players offer it. Picture-quality differences tend to be subtle on all but the largest screens, but players do show variations in color balance, brightness, portrayal of black level, color saturation, and other visual parameters. Finally, there's the subjective emotional reaction to the overall visual presentation.

You should also examine a player's searching features. Note how well it's able to rapidly fast-forward and reverse-scan while providing a glitch-free picture. Some players offer special visual effects such as zoom, which allows you to examine elements of a scene in greater detail.

Progressive-Scan Technology To understand the significance of progressive-scan video (also referred to as noninterlaced or sequential scanning), it's important to first understand interlaced scanning. Interlaced scanning is what we all grew up with. Each TV frame in a 30-frame-per-second signal is composed of horizontal lines (about 400 for cable or VHS tape) drawn twice per frame: once for the even-numbered lines and once for the odd-numbered lines.

DVD-Video technology has, for the first time, delivered noninterlaced, progressive-scan video signals in a consumer format, reducing the flickering endemic to interlaced video and making it much harder to discern the picture's individual scan lines (DVD players generally output more than 500 lines). Using progressive-scan, a DVD player will render the image scan lines one full frame at a time, scanning from top to bottom in one fluid pass, greatly improving resolution and even brightness while minimizing distortion. The catch? To enjoy progressive-scan's detailed, filmic picture quality, you need to use a progressive-scan DVD player in conjunction with a high-definition or HD-ready TV.

Video Connections
The state-of-the-art video connection at this point is component video. In this system, the video signal is divided into three separate bands: luminance, or "Y"; a modified red (minus the Y component); and a modified blue (minus the Y component). This method of video transmission, which requires a TV or monitor with component-video inputs, is about as good as it gets. If you have a TV or projection system with component-video inputs, look for a DVD player with component-video outs; only a few DVD players and televisions currently offer this system. S-video transmission offers the next-highest quality after component video. Composite transmission is the next notch down in quality after S-video. Most DVD players have both composite and S-video outputs. Even if you have to use the much-more-common composite transmission format, you'll still see a huge improvement in picture quality over VHS and even laserdisc--just not quite the same quality as you get with component or S-video transmission.

Widescreen Playback
Many DVDs come "widescreen-enhanced" or "anamorphically squeezed," which means the actual picture is squeezed into a horizontally narrower frame (making the image taller and thinner than normal). A special widescreen television with a 16:9 aspect ratio can unsqueeze the picture so it fills the screen. While being able to view anamorphically squeezed DVD video on a widescreen TV provides the ultimate in DVD picture quality, most folks have conventional 4:3 aspect-ratio (square) televisions, in which case the DVD player itself has to do the unsqueezing and create a letterboxed version to fit the screen.

CD Playback
One of the other benefits of DVD technology is higher-than-CD-resolution audio playback. While CDs are recorded using a sampling frequency of 44.1 kHz and 16-bit words, the DVD-Video allows for 96 kHz recording at 24 bits, offering the potential for wider frequency response and higher dynamic range, respectively.

All DVD players can play CDs as well. You won't be compromising much (if anything) if your DVD player is going to do double duty as a CD player. In fact, depending on the DVD player, you may find that your CDs have never sounded better. Some players also include a decoding chip for HDCD (High Definition Compatible Digital) discs. There are thousands of HDCD-encoded CDs, and you probably own many, perhaps without even knowing it (they all bear the HDCD emblem somewhere). HDCD-encoded discs sound great without HDCD decoding and can be played in any CD or DVD player. With the decoding, however, they offer substantial gains over standard CDs in dynamics and perceived depth. If you're an audiophile or just someone who appreciates good sound, HDCD decoding is a feature worth checking for in both DVD and CD players.

Surround Sound and High-Resolution Audio
One of the biggest advantages to the DVD format is that it can play back surround-sound audio. A surround-sound format like Dolby Digital 5.1 consists of five discrete, full-frequency-range channels plus a restricted-range, low-frequency "effects" channel. Some DVD players have "virtual" surround built in, which synthesizes a surround sound effect using only two speakers. If you only have a "Dolby Digital-ready" receiver--which might not decode the digital signal but does offer six-channel analog inputs--you should look for DVD players that have built-in Dolby Digital decoding and six-channel analog outputs.

Many discs are now available with DTS (Digital Theater Sound) surround sound as well. DTS is another 5.1-channel format that uses lower compression rates than Dolby Digital (and thus tends to sound a little better), but uses more disc space for audio. If you're interested in exploring DTS surround sound, you'll need a player that passes the DTS bit stream, and most current models do.

For the very best in surround audio, you'll want a multichannel DVD-Audio player or a multichannel SACD-DVD player. While both DVD-Audio and SACD are music-oriented formats requiring special decoding found in compatible players, the chips used to decode both formats also deliver outstanding sound from standard DVD-Videos and CDs. For the most part, DVD-Audio and SACD are competing formats, though there are one or two obscure (and expensive) players that accommodate both.

DVD-Audio offers super-high-fidelity (192 kHz/24-bit) sound. DVD-Audio discs provide multichannel and stereo sound, incredible storage capacity, and unique bonus materials not available on regular audio CDs. Because the DVD-Audio signal is too high-resolution for the digital-to-analog converters in current surround receivers (and also as an antipiracy measure), these models perform their own decoding of DVD-Audio signals, passing high-resolution analog, not digital, audio to a surround receiver. This means you'll need an audio-video with multichannel analog-audio inputs.

SACD stands for Super Audio CD. It's a format developed by Sony with the intention of superseding the compact disc. Founded on Sony's Direct Stream Digital (DSD) encoding technology, SACD boasts a frequency response that's almost five times greater than that of standard CDs. The format offers a dynamic range of 120 dB, compared with 96 dB for CD. All DVD-Audio discs are mixed for surround sound, while SACDs are configured for a mix of stereo and surround sound (though all the multichannel discs also contain stereo mixes).

Audio Connections
All DVD players offer some form of digital output for Dolby Digital, DTS, or conventional 2-channel PCM sound. Some players have both optical and coaxial digital outs; others may use one or the other. If you've already purchased an AV receiver, check to see whether it has optical or digital inputs, and plan on buying a DVD player that uses that output format. If you're using a DVD-Audio or SACD-equipped DVD player, you'll need six channels' worth of analog-audio interconnects feeding your receiver, rather than a digital connection.

Construction
The quality of a DVD player's construction is also important. Some players are built better than others and simply feel more substantial. Usually, not always, the more you spend, the better the build quality will be.