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The Really Easy Guide
... to choosing and using a DVD Video player
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by: Richard Morgan
It's official … well at least according to virtually every market analyses I've read: DVD has had the fastest uptake into consumer land of any technological introduction in the history of consumer electronics. It's a huge phenomenon which, with clockwork regularity, grows significantly bigger every month.
 You don't have to take my word for it, just look at how rapidly the DVD section of your local movie rental store has grown in the last year. The DVD disc sales has grown even more rapidly, plus we have a number of Rewritable DVD disc formats currently being touted that promise outstanding form and function … and will no doubt eventually spell the death of the humble video recorder (no, don't throw yours in the trash just yet).
With new high definition DVD-Audio moving quickly in from the wings there's also the potential for the medium to offer exemplary performance in the field of music and win over a new legion of dedicated fans.
Despite the current success there are still huge numbers of people considering buying a DVD player and this is where this short(ish) article comes in - to provide you with the type of advice you need to make a good buying decision when yo do decide to venture into the world of DVD or upgrade to a machine with better performance or features and functions.
The DVD medium is robust, space efficient and convenient system to use. It's harder to damage with conventional use than videotape and the quality of both sound and picture is quite astonishing. By comparison video tape is a pale reflection of DVD in convenience and you won't get high performance digital images or surround sound encoding on tape, the medium just can't handle that type of information density.
It's important to remember that just because a DVD player is in the lower price area of the market doesn't necessarily mean that it generates sub-standard performance or diminished capacity. Nor does it mean that it's a stripped-down machine devoid of features and facilities.
A number of useful features such as virtual surround sound are already finding their way into reasonably priced units and many are including high quality on-board digital processing for Dolby Digital (while being DTS compliant).
If you intend plugging your DVD player directly into your television and using the television's sound virtually any low end player will do the job quite well. The picture will also be very good because the majority of such players produce nearly perfect pictures. At the bottom end you can find machines that create colour bleeding or make image artefacts, but on name brand machines this isn't usually a problem - and the situation is getting better all the time.
DVD is all digital movie technology. The pictures and sound are stored in multiple information layers on a disc that has the same dimensions as a music compact disc. Sometimes you'll find both sides of the disc contain information so that a single disc can hold an entire productions (these are called 'flippers').
DVD also includes the storage capacity to allow the inclusion of other information on discs like movie trailers, different languages (spoken and on subtitles), actor interviews, new scenes, commentaries and a whole host of other options, including alternate movie plot endings. It's also possible for a disc to hold versions of the movie in different censorship classifications, or with a 'director's cut version'.
The sound information is stored in digital form by default (for all six channels) and generates outstanding performance because the audio and video signals don't go through the stages of conversion suffered by analogue sound on video tape.
You'll get Dolby Pro Logic as standard and often Dolby Digital (inbuilt processing but compliance as a minimum), which gives you five full range full performance channels of sound. Compliance for DTS (Digital Theatre Systems) surround sound is making an appearance, even on lower priced players.
You should look for a player that handles Anamorphic Enhancement so that is switches between conventional aspect screen and widescreen. And you will be presented with a wide variety of features included as standard on most players. Plus, all DVD players will play audio compact discs and the majority will accept Video CD (but why would you bother).
All Australian DVD machines and movies are Region 4. While some machines can be modified to play discs from different Regions we cannot endorse or condone such activities. Besides there are plenty of Region 4 titles to make the whole exercise well worth while.
The next thing to consider is which brand to choose and here it's select one that is established in Australia and well known for its products and reliability. There are a number of low cost players from new and unknown a manufacturers and importers that look appealing on paper but could prove cost inefficient as purchases down the track when they break down, or merely don't perm to spec. In short, choose a name brand.
You have some excellent DVD players options around the $700 mark and, ostensibly at least, it just gets better from there. There are some features you will want included on your player and can be regarded as essential.
Digital outputs (coaxial and optical) are needed for connection of audio for surround sound (passed to the A-V receiver in a system) and a six or eight channel input facility can take care of any future format introductions.
The player you buy should be compatible with Dolby Digital and DTS. It can do this by having the facilities to pass these information formats directly to the processors of you're AV receiver or have processors in-built for one or both. Any player you consider must have the 5.1 channel capability to match your receiver.
If you're A-V receiver has surround processing (and most do) then you don't need it on the DVD player, unless the processing on the player is likely to be better the than processing capacity of the receiver (which in a matched system is unlikely). The main problem with decoders built into DVD players is that they often don't allow full adjustment of surround parameters like speaker size and level selection. It's unlikely you'll get an in-built DTS decoder in all but esoteric machines.
The capacity of a player to read and relay information from a variety of discs is standard, however, a few players don't read CD-R and CD-RW discs, particularly if they have been created on a computer. Check the machine if playing these formats is important to you.
The rest, as they say, basically comes down to your personal preference in terms of the features and facilities you want, need or simply are partial to. I guess you should try and get as much for your dollar as you can, but the prime directive is to first and foremost do everything you can to maximise picture and sound quality for your money before quibbling over the window dressing - that is, choose performance over features every time.
There's no reason why the machine you choose can't look good and make sure that you are comfortable with using the remote control since you'll be operating the player from your armchair a lot and mostly in the semi-dark (so consider that too).
To recap. The features you can expect to find on a unit priced at or below, say, $700 include: multiple-speed fast-forward and reverse controls; slow motion (although there could be some image interruption during screens); stereo audio outputs; optical and coaxial digital audio outputs; composite, S-Video (and in a few cases) component video outputs; a virtual surround sound system of some sort; maybe 2X zoom on still images; a well featured remote control; compatibility with DVD, CD Video CDs and CD-R discs (MP3 if you're lucky).
Some players have built-in amplifiers and offer a space saving alternative to getting into DVD without compromising sound or image performance. There are a couple of DVD players built into televisions too. Once again they're space saving solutions that offer different options.
It's also important to acknowledge at least that you may need to upgrade your television when you make the move to DVD. For one thing you'll want the biggest image possible and the highest quality too. And you'll want to maximise the benefits of widescreen aspect ratio.
Of course you'll need to audition each player you are considering, view the quality of the images it's presenting, listen to make sure the sound it produces is up to scratch and play with its features so you are comfortable the players has what you want (and does what you want).
Also, make sure you use a good television for your auditioning and decent discs (if you know the performance capability of those discs so much the better).
The last and possibly best piece of advice is to buy your player from a specialist retailer.
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