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DVD Player Buying Guide

DVD Player Buying Guide
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Since its introduction in the 1990s, DVD has been the most popular format for Hollywood movies and has become the de facto choice for video gamers, software installation and now music and audio too. Even at its most basic, the DVD player is a technical wonder. The DVD is a high-density optical disk that can hold up to 4.7GB of data and supports multiple and often incompatible technical formats including the ability to play music CDs and is available in a wide-range of shapes, sizes and prices and functionalities, ranging from about $50 to $1,000. Pronto's DVD Buying Guide can help you determine which one's for you (see also Portable DVD Player Buying Guide, DVD Recorder Buying Guide, Combination TV Buying Guide).

Progressive Scan

Most DVD players are progressive scan. The consensus is progressive scan technology provides better overall picture quality than its predecessor or alternative, interlaced pictures. Look for progressive scan in descriptions of the players. Interlacing is the process of just displaying all the odd lines and not the even ones in a picture-scan, while progressive scan displays them all. The upside to progressive scan is an increase in sharpness that improves most current films, but the small downside is older films and home movies may suffer poorer picture quality as a result of this new super-clarity.

Some DVD Players, including the Samsung HDDVD 960, are now shipping with Faroudja, a technology first used by broadcasters. Like progressive scan, it is a technology that “helps” the picture. Faroudja, which is a kind of DCDi (Directional Correlation Deinterlacing) essentially smoothes out jagged edges in diagonal lines in the picture that result from the pictures clarity being sharpened ‘too much.’

Sony’s DVD players (like the DVP-NS55P) claim to solve picture quality problems caused by mishandling or overuse (e.g., DVD rentals) with its patented Precision Cinema Progressive system that identifies changes in the image at the pixel level, instead of the scan line level like most other DVD players.

Inexpensive?

The DVD format came about when a coalition of manufacturers including Phillips, Sony, IBM and Matsushita were determined to avoid a repeat of the costly and unproductive video format war of the 1980s. When first introduced in the 1990s, DVD players cost between $500 and $800. Today, only top of the line players, and those featuring emerging technologies like Blu-ray and HDDVD cost that much.

If you are buying a DVD for your home and it is to be a centerpiece of your entertainment center, you should probably avoid the sub-$100 models and stick with the brands you have had experience with. Much of the time, everything about these models—from connection ports to software and even the remote control—is somewhat better than their no-name competitors.

Existing and Emerging Formats

If your only worry is how to play your Sopranos DVDs over and over again, then you needn’t worry much about the formats your player can handle. If however, if you regularly use your computer to make amateur videos (DVD or VCD), slide shows using JPEGs or mix CDs with MP3, WAV or WMA technology, you should make sure that the DVD player you are going to buy supports those technologies. Advanced users will be familiar with various other computer formats such as MPEG, AVI or DIVX file formats as well as MPEG-4 and other codecs (compression schemes that reduce the sizes of video files) that are currently in use.

Blu-ray and HD DVD are two major emerging technologies that are vying for the title of ‘successor to the DVD’. Most experts advise that if not a technophile, you should avoid choosing sides until the ugly battle has been settled. Otherwise, you could wind up spending a lot of money on a defunct or non-supported format. On the plus side, if you do purchase a DVD player with support for either format you’ll get additional storage—both Blu-ray (BD) and HD DVD promise additional storage capacity (HD DVD at 15GB and Blu-ray at 25GB) and backward compatibility for your existing DVD library.

Looking to play both new formats? “Universal”, the word to describe players that play both, is more a marketing term than an apt description of the player. The first-to-market “Universal” is the LG BH100. At nearly $800, it’s expensive and has some surprising drawbacks, like not playing audio CDs.

Connectivity

Most purchasers will be happy if their new player can connect simply to their existing Television or AV set up and then play DVDs flawlessly. However, revolutionary changes in connectivity (the way you connect your entertainment device to your display device) means your two-year old television may not have identical slots and ports to match your brand-new DVD player. RCA jacks (the red, white and yellow cords) were replaced by S-Video and DVI, only to then be succeeded by HDMI (High Definition Multimedia Interface) and in some cases, USB and Firewire.

HDMI has been a breakthrough both in content protection (prevents copying) but also in picture delivery. Previous connectivity methods converted the digital signal FROM the DVD to analog for your television. HDMI promises a streamlined digital delivery, and as a result, greater fidelity to the original images, such as blacker blacks.

If you need a specific connectivity, whether it is composite or component video, make sure you know that before you proceed to click the ‘buy now’ button. Some of the cheaper players don’t feature ALL connectivity options. For instance, the Sony DVP-NS57P/S Progressive Scan DVD Player Silver doesn’t come with the S-Video output. Cutting edge models or ‘step-up’ models are likely to feature the HDMI port, which looks like the emerging gold standard in HDTV and DVD connectivity. Other top-line models may feature USB, Firewire, Ethernet, Component Video, Composite Video, S-Video and Standard RCA jacks. Most DVD players don’t come with cables, so read the ‘comes with’ line carefully; make sure you have everything you need already or plan to make a separate purchase.

Additional Features

If you are buying a DVD player to double as an audio jukebox and be part of your home entertainment center, then these might be a good by. But in practical reality, due to the loading time of the DVD (and depending on the manufacturer’s software) you can’t quickly shuffle through your videos the way you shuffle through audio CDs, reducing the value of this feature. Also, the carousel is just another part that can malfunction, and it’s easier for children to insert non-DVDs in.

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