Having recently purchased a tube HDTV set with true 1080i capability (not downconverted 1080i as found in most LCD projection or DLP units), I felt an HDMI capable DVD player would be a nice addition. Having priced out some of the Denon models with DCDi technology, I decided to wait a while for the price to drop.

When I found out about the Samsung DVD-HD941 with HDMI output (this may be the only difference over the DVD-HD841) and DCDi upconverion for under $250, I was sold. The fact that it will play DVD/SVCD/VCD as well as DVD-Audio/SACD on any media DVD-Video/DVD-R/DVD+R/DVD-RW/DVD+RW was a pleasant bonus. (The only formats I have not tested are DivX, XSVCD and DVD+R DL.)

Upon receiving the unit, my first impression is positive with the overall build quality. The chassis is very solid and completely metal (even the front bezel). Aesthetically, I find the minimalistic style (only two buttons and a dial on the front panel) appealing but worrisome if you were to lose the remote. The rear panel is easy enough to navigate. The remote is busy but logically arranged.

Hooking up the player was very simple. Plug in the power and connect the HDMI cable between the player and the TV and your finished. Setting up the DVD player required a few pushes on the remote to enable the 1080i mode on the DVD player.

Now for the picture quality. The good news is that I would rate the picture upconversion to be very good. One should realize that upconversion has its limitations regardless of quality of the upconversion. You cannot get more information that what is available. Good quality DVD titles give the illusion of higher resolution through this upconversion process. I emphasize "good quality DVD titles" here because "poor quality DVD titles" do not get any better and one might argue that it gets worse with the upconversion. No noticeable staircase effect (sometimes called jaggies by some) or motion/field artifacts. The bad news is that there seems to be little control over the picture level. As mentioned in a previous review, black level can vary from reasonable to annoying. My observations are that "poor quality DVD titles" are encoded at low bitrates which tend to reduce the quantization levels in the video and therefore reduce the levels of grey. But this is no excuse for amount of darkness in some of the pictures. In short, it seems that this DVD player follows the "GIGO" principle of Garbage In = Garbage Out.

Some comments on features. The unit does have Dolby and DTS decoding built in. Picture aspect ratio can be modified using the EZ View feature. Movie start-up is quick. One thing I find annoying is the fast search capability of this unit. When using the fast forward to speed up the video playback, the first push of the button gets you 2x followed by 4x then 64x and 128x! I find 4x too slow and 64x too fast (what happened to 8x or 16x?). 8x is available but only through the jog/shuttle dial.

Overall, I am pleased with unit and it will serve its purpose for now. Better technology will follow and hopefully lower prices as well.

Recommended: Yes

Amount Paid (US$): 240