Beautiful Image Quality Up-Conversion While The Blue-Ray HD DVD War Rages
Written: Sep 02 '07
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Pros: Compact, Very good image, inexpensive
Cons: Must use DVI for good output, Poor remote response.
The Bottom Line: If you have a DVI set and want to use up-conversion on your DVDs, this unit works. All others, you can do better if you look elsewhere.
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| Pirich's Full Review: Samsung DVD-HD755 DVD Player |
The Samsung DVD-HD745 DVD Player counted as an experiment when it first appeared. The player is built to take HDTV resolution sets to their resolution limit by interpolating a smooth image from the data in the DVD to produce a more pleasing conversion to higher resolution. In practice, this makes all of the date present in the original image visible, and does result in a a very sharp video image. This DVD player does have some teething issues such as unusually poor performance if it is asked to operate as an older standard DVD player with coax or RCA combined video. In this role, the image is beset by periodic lags, which yield an extremely annoying playback as there are periodic momentary jerks in the image which are closer together as the image is changing more quickly.
Description and Usage
The Samsung DVD-HD745 looked like a perfect match for our 1080i television to be able to see DVDs in higher resolution. The bonus here was our television had a DVI input instead of the currently more common HDMI version, and the DVD-HD745 came with the DVI cable. This wasn't a minor consideration since cables are currently running at prices close to the cost of what they are hooking up.
The unit itself is extremely compact and fairly handsome with a brushed metal front. The window for the display has an unusual metallic sheen which looks interesting when the unit is off, but otherwise makes the display significantly more difficult to read as it appears dimmer and mixed with a strong reflection from any light in the room which greatly reduces contrast. This unit is firmly in the blue-LED cult, so all lighting is in bright blue.
The remote control is an enlarged version of the Samsung television remote, with an all gray body and an unusually complete set of functions, including disk eject and a slow motion puck. This last feature is a bit ironic since the DVD-HD745 is semi-blind to its own remote thanks to that metallic coating on the window. As a result, if you are more than about 15 degrees from dead in front of the DVD player, it simply cannot see the remote. And even from directly in front of it, the DVD player seems to have trouble seeing the remote so you have to hold down buttons longer than normal, and carefully watch what it is doing. Given that most of its commands can only be accessed through a remote, this is definitely a problem for setting up the DVD player.
I first tried setting up the unit with the television in DVI mode. The DVI system only produces video data, so a separate audio channel has to be provided. This DVD player is also one where you have to switch between modes in its own control menus on screen before the various video channels become active (unlike ones where the various outputs are always available). The system therefore requires an old-fashioned 3-RCA cable (video, right, and left stereo) hookup to be in place, whether you are going to use DVI or progressive scan or not.
However, when I attempted to put the TV in DVI with the player apparently in DVI mode, I simply got a scrambled image. The strange thing here is the TV will display a gray screen if there is no data in the channel; the DVD player was actively displaying gibberish. I tried the different combinations for the DVI input without success.
So, the first trial I did with this unit ended up being in the standard RCA cable mode because of the difficulty I had getting the DVI link to activate. The result was frankly abysmal, with an image which started to seize when the scene had rapid changes. The sound would continue, but there would be a momentary skip in the image to a time index where the player had skip about half a second of video. So, while it was possible to see what was going on, this was obviously not acceptable for long term use.
However, one thing I had noticed was how long the unit was taking to react to the remote, and the instructions said you needed to confirm the DVI mode within 15 seconds. I had assumed the counter wouldn't be a problem if you started pressing appropriate buttons within the 15 seconds. But it actually took a bit of surfing on the TV to put it into DVI mode so the DVD player image could reappear so you could surf through its menus to the right spot. So, what you had to do was move through the right menus on the TV and then quickly move through the right menus on the DVD player within the 15 seconds to confirm the DVI mode to keep it from shutting off. The problem was waiting to see the image first, and since this unit only gives one output, if the method you chose was wrong, you would leave the player in a mode where it was impossible to see any image from it.
So, I got used to where the buttons were on the remotes, with the TV in my left hand and the DVD in my right, and I started going through the commands. My first trial was too slow. So was the second. And so it went until the 8th try, when the DVI mode stayed confirmed. Definitely, this was the sort of thing you only want to do once.
So, I put in my copy of Winged Migration and took a look. The result was a magnificent image with perfect detail and fluid motion. No trace of the faults with the lower resolution signal showed themselves. And so, the DVD player has remained in use, giving a sensibly perfect image from whatever is put into it. The only cases where we have had problems have been when borrowing DVDs from the library, which sometimes have been badly scuffed. Usually, a little cleaning with water fixes this and they play perfectly.
The up-converted image has some interesting tie-ins with my own hobby: Astronomy. Some of the image processing techniques for photographing objects in the night sky are apparently used in the up-conversion process. So, for example, an image where an object with a sharp curved profile is seen against a separate background, the background will actually get darker close the the curve of the object, which is an image artifact caused by unsharp masking. What they have done is the first map the DVD image onto the up-converted resolution, and then blurred it to keep it from being blocky or pixelated. The resulting image would look like a soft focus, so the second step is to perform an unsharp mask, which is a technique where a further-blurred image is subtracted from the first image. The result is real objects in the image look sharper because they have a strong component in both blurred images. In my view, this doesn't detract from the result, but it does mean it is a little different from the original film image.
Sound quality is the same really as the bulk of higher end DVD players in the market for stereo sound. I would have to say no better, and no worse, is the best description I can give. The unit does have an optical channel out, but it does not have hookups for the more advanced sound systems. I ended up running a set of RCA cables to a stereo. If you are serious about home-theater sound, this may not be your preferred head unit to drive it (then again, I would assume anyone doing that will get and HDMI system, also).
The remote issue has turned out to be the most aggravating problem the machine has had since it comes up with every single command you try to send to it. Since even extreme action like getting right in front of the player from a couple feet away only yields a slight improvement, this problem has to be ranked as a serious flaw for long term usability. Note, substituting a universal remote has yielded the same result. But combined with the unit's excellent performance in up-converted HD playback, this ends up being a high performing but clumsily implemented product.
Conclusion
The Samsung DVD-HD745 DVD Player has been a pathfinder for better quality images on HDTV televisions from standard DVDs. The main flaws with this unit come from the fact it really has to be used in DVI mode to work well, and the remote performs poorly due to the interference of the metalized window on the player's display. However, if you are using DVI, this is an excellent choice for up-conversion, especially given the scorched-earth campaign both high resolution DVD variants are waging to ensure consumers who buy either will be paying a lot of money to be inconvenienced. If I didn't have to worry about little kids' fingers on the display I would have removed the window and had an ostensibly perfect DVD player for my purposes.
Recommended:
No
Amount Paid (US$): 0.01
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Epinions.com ID:
Pirich
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 in Electronics |
 - Top 500 |
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Member: Rich W.
Location: Tucson, AZ
Reviews written: 137
Trusted by: 40 members
About Me:
Dad, Engineer, Scientist, Astronomer, Traveler; order may vary.
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