Buying a DVD player can be confusing. At Fortress recently I was confronted by a wall of DVD players and a clerk who looked as overwhelmed by my questions as I was by the number of models on offer. And a trip to the manufacturers' websites yields gobbledygook indecipherable to most folks.
In the hope of making the task easier I have picked out a few machines to give you an idea of what is out there and what you can expect for your cash.
At the top of the price list is the Philips DVDR1000, which sells for a whopping $12,000. But while it may take pride of place on the retailer's shelf, it should not be top of your list of must-have gadgets. The price is high because it can record DVDs: a slick idea, but one whose time has not quite arrived. The price of such recorders will fall significantly in the next few years, and for now you could easily outfit your computer with a DVD recording drive for far less than $12,000. Thinking computers, you can buy a new iMac with a DVD recording drive for not much more.
Next on the list is the Pioneer DV-S733A, which weighs in at a hefty $6,180. Three elements, which we shall consider in relation to the Pioneer, determine the price of most DVD players. The first is the audio digital to analogue (D/A) converter, also known as the audio DAC. DVD and CD discs are of course digital and their data must be converted to analogue before your speakers can do anything with them. The converter is responsible for that step and the better the converter the better the sound. There are two figures in the converter's description, referring to bits and kilohertz (kHz). Bits is the more important, and the higher the number the better the sound. In the Pioneer DV-S733A you're looking at a 24-bit, 196-kHz converter.
The second element is the video D/A converter. Again, your television set needs an analogue signal, and the same rules apply. The DV-S733A uses a 12-bit, 108-megahertz video D/A converter.
The third element is more interesting: what the player can do to that video after converting it. In the case of our Pioneer player, several filters help to reduce the compression noise inherent in any digital video, which is something you probably don't care about if you have a 27-inch, or smaller, TV set. But if you have a big plasma display you should consider a DVD player to match. Large TV sets push the quality of DVDs to their limit, and you may find there is a distracting amount of picture noise with such large sizes. The DV-S733A's block- and mosquito-noise reduction filters help with that.
The really attractive bit of post-processing kit this box has is something called progressive scan, which tries to make video more film-like by removing certain characteristics added when the film is converted to video. The result is a sharper, cleaner picture.