An in depth look at Sony's upconversion DVD player
Written: Apr 12 '06
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Pros: Low price, HDMI output, upconversion to 720p and 1080i, great picture on film based material.
Cons: Slow load time, minor issues with video based material. AV Sync is worthless.
The Bottom Line: If you don't mind the video (30fps) issue, get one until you get a true hi-def player.
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| sslabs's Full Review: Sony DVP-NS75H DVD Player |
It’s just a little ironic that as upconversion DVD players begin to finally do the job well, they are just weeks away from being supplanted. DVD players that upconvert a standard DVD signal to various HDTV resolutions are still rather young. It's only now that they've become cheap and good at what they do. In the end, these upconversion players will barely show up as an asterisk in consumer electronics history. They will be remembered as a kind of stop gap solution.
I could see them quickly becoming the Super-VHS or ED Beta of this decade. But then again, consumers are a strange bunch, so who really knows? Well, I’m living in this little footnote in time, and currently, my HDTV is starving for food.
Both flavors of hi-def DVD are weeks away with high price tags and a limited number of titles at launch. Cable and satellite are still very limited content wise with prices leaving much to be desired. Worse yet, we as consumers have no way of controlling just how much bandwidth a service provider will allot any given channel. I’ve seen enough HDTV both over the air, and through cable that look like garbage to be concerned. But I’m getting side tracked here.
Sony’s new DVP-NS75H upconversion DVD player is reason to get excited in a nerdy kind of way. This player is a great holdover for those millions of HDTVs out there with no true HD content. Coming in at $129 MSRP, I’m amazed at what Sony delivered in this budget unit. Just three years ago, I would never have touched a player this cheap. But the whole ‘better, faster, cheaper’ nerd mantra continues to ring true.
Why buy an upconversion DVD player?
If you’ve got an HDTV, a big one that is, an ordinary (cheap) DVD player just won’t do. As the resolution of your set climbs, along with the size, every little flaw becomes a boulder. With my current TV, my once expensive DVD player circa 2001 suddenly became long in the tooth and outdated. The once hardly noticeable graininess and digital artifacts had me looking for something new.
After tapping several of my nerd friends for info, things became clear rather quickly. While there are several brands of upconversion players from Samsung, Panasonic, and Toshiba to name a few, Sony at any price point was the one to beat. For $129, I don’t believe anything at even double the price (except a better Sony) can de-interlace film based material as good. Whether it be through the analog progressive outputs, or through the digital HDMI output, this Sony’s performance shines. I’ll get more into the performance later.
Features
The list isn’t particularly exciting, but still enough features to keep most consumers happy. Sony claims the 75H will handle every flavor of recordable DVD and CD. I have hundreds of recordable DVDs to test this out. The player handled all the DVD-/+R discs that I have, and even the Dual Layer +Rs that I threw at it. It will also handle data CDs and DVDs for the purpose of displaying pictures in JPEG format. Sony also claims this player will handle MP3 whether it’s on CD or DVD. I’m not an MP3 guy so I can’t confirm this.
This player will only handle DVDs in the NTSC format, so no PAL or SECAM DVDs here. At this price point however, this is totally expected. Other features that will bore most to death are the same things that I rarely if ever make use of. The obligatory things like shuffle, random, and custom play are here. You can zoom in on the picture and play slow forward and in reverse as well. The player drawer can be locked (child lock).
I applaud all DVD manufacturers for including flexible parental controls in their DVD players. This unit in particular has some nice features in that regard. After entering the parental controls from the main menu, a prompt will simply ask you to create a 4 digit pin. There are two types of control, custom parental control, and parental control limited playback. The first will simply lock out inappropriate discs chosen by the parent. The player will store up to 40 discs in its memory. If additional discs are added, the very first discs in memory will simply be erased. This can end up being a lot of work depending on how one might make use of it.
The second option is simpler and a better option. Refered to as limited playback will simply not allow a disc to play that’s above a pre-selected level. For example any disc beyond say a PG or PG-13 can be locked out. With this function activated, the number of discs is unlimited since the player is simply looking for the MPA rating.
Sony also gives you the option of making rudimentary picture adjustments at the player rather than your TV set. I’ve always been a fan of processing in the DVD player when possible. Whether it be de-interlacing or other picture processing, it’s best done in the digital domain. And yes, all picture adjustments are passed out through the HDMI output including the zoom feature. There are two options to deal with mpeg noise and other digital artifacts, but I didn’t care for them. They helped a little, but ended up causing more strange side effects, so I keep them both off. These effects can soften the picture too much, and lower detail in faces more than I care for.
Performance: Audio
There’s no need to get into details concerning sound quality. The 75H doesn’t have an onboard Dolby or DTS decoder. So in the case of multi-channel sound, it’s all about how good your gear is. Analog outputs? Please get with the times, I won’t even touch these outputs in the present.
AV Sync is worthless
The only bone I have to pick with Sony in the audio department is the AV sync function. Sony touts that this player can delay the audio in case of dialog sync problems related to the display. This problem usually rears its ugly head with some plasma TVs via HDMI, and just about all DLP TVs.
Some early generation plasmas took a considerable amount of time to process picture information, causing a lag time between the audio and video signal. DLP TVs, even in the present have a natural delay between receiving the signal and actually displaying it. Sony gives the false impression that this player has a sync delay (for audio) with a range of 0-100 ms (milliseconds).
That’s nice, but they left a huge piece of information out during their protestations of having solved a problem. This feature has no effect on sound leaving the digital outputs. So regardless of whether it’s Dolby or DTS, carried by fiber optic cable or out of the HDMI output, it won’t work for you.
In the owner’s manual, Sony refuses to simply state that only the analog audio outputs are effected. That’s all I can gather as there’s no other way for sound to escape from this player. So what that leaves the consumer is the ability to address sound sync issues for the crummy speakers that might come with your plasma or your DLP. Someone might be forced to listen in stereo over an analog output to solve a severe sync issue.
The only consumers effected by this issue are watching TV on expensive sets. A huge number of these consumers listen in surround sound whether it be cheap HTIB systems or your more expensive separates. I’m sure countless others are using an HDMI connection that carries both audio and video to their HDTV. For Sony to include the ability to delay audio exclusively via analog stereo outputs is a waste. Worse yet, they touted it in a way that’s very misleading.
Yes some receivers can delay the sound, but that's a whole other discussion. For the seven people that own kilo-buck HDTVs, and listen through analog outputs, clap your hands. Everyone else, you are shit out of luck. Thankfully, my flat panel has no a/v sync issues regardless of input/outputs used.
Video Performance preamble
Just to be up front, I’m only referring to the component output (in progressive mode) and the HDMI output. The component output will pass 480i/p, and the HDMI will pass 480p, 720p and 1080i. If you’ve got a cheap Wal-Mart 27 inch TV none of this review will matter to you, so you can bail now. All of my initial fiddling was done at 720p and at 1080i. Some of my nerd friends swear the picture is better at 1080i even on panels that don’t display a true 1080i picture.
My current panel has a resolution of 1024 x 768. It will accept a 1080i signal and convert it to its native resolution. I had a hard time telling the difference, partly because Sony didn’t give this player the ability to switch between various resolutions on the fly. The disc must be stopped to change the resolution. After the first few hours of critical viewing, this player was set to 720 progressive where it will remain.
Sony also fixed an issue that popped up on the previous model, the NS70H (and the NS80H five disc model). That player did not display widescreen movies via HDMI properly. There was a bar or picture shift at the top that could not be fixed. Here the 75H displays widescreen movies via HDMI properly regardless of aspect ratio.
Picture Quality: Movies (24 fps)
To be blunt, the performance at this price point is nothing short of amazing. The picture is beautiful yes, but the de-interlacing performance of the 75H is the juice. This player handles even tough diagonal lines, complex patterns in clothing, and stars in the sky with ease. Neon signs in movie scenes look especially rich on the 75H. Even the very intense signs show up bright, bold, with intense color and a complete lack of noise over HDMI, and nearly as good over the component output.
Rarely will anything trip up this player. When something does, it’s usually something tough, something that I’ve seen trip up most players, or is simply the result of bad encoding and or low bit rates. Stars in Contact and just about any sci-fi movie are rock solid with no detectable signs of twinkling. While the performance is outstanding for the price, it’s not without some hiccups. Most visible problems arise not in the analog component arena, but in the upconversion process over HDMI. Whether it be 720 progressive (1280 x 720) or at 1080 interlaced (1920 x 1080).
There are some very noticeable artifacts at times when using the HDMI connection. Usually though, it’s very short lived. I’ve noticed it more at ‘splash’ screens at the beginning of many movies. Most noticeable, are severe false contouring and heavy macro blocking within large areas that must simply fade from blue to a light blue for example.
Without another TV on hand to confirm which is at fault, I’ll lay the blame on the DVD player. My reasoning here is that if my panel can display a given problem area through one input without issue, the DVD player is the likely cause. One last caveat, a good DVD makes all the difference in the world. Blowing up a DVD that’s 720x480 (interlaced at that) it helps if the disc is a Superbit title, or just a title with a high bit rate, and a sweet transfer.
Movies like Closer (Superbit), LOTR the extended editions, and Ray all sport high bit rates and sweet pictures. However, things aren’t so glowing for titles that offer both full and widescreen versions on one disc. The bit rate drops and the picture suffers. Of course, some titles just don’t look good on any display, and this Sony isn’t going to fix these more obvious issues. Keep that in mind when I’m lavishing this player with praise.
Picture Quality:Video (30 fps)
I wish I could report aces across the board here, but unfortunately, that’s not the case. Sure the picture quality is still grade A if the DVD is a good transfer sporting a healthy bit rate. But sadly, this budget Sony doesn’t handle video based (30 fps) material as wonderfully as film based material. I’ve noticed the same problem on my PC of all places. For whatever reason, on my PC, Nero won’t detect video based material on its own. Before I make the change manually, the picture looks a lot like the Sony with the same DVDs. The only difference being that on the Sony, I’m stuck with the problem.
But wait there’s a button on the front for such a dilemma. Too bad it has no effect. Switching from a film based option to a video based one, I can’t detect any improvement. Suddenly my long in the tooth DVD player isn’t looking so bad. It had Faroudja processing for video based material and never had these issues. I was spoiled apparently as the Sony shows horizontal stripes or steps at the edges of images during movement. A few examples: Peter Gabriel’s Growing up Live, Faith Hill’s When the lights go down, and Chappelle’s Show.
If you watch few DVDs with material shot on video rather than film, you can overlook this flaw and snag one of these. But if you love music (as I do) you might want to spend the bucks on a better Sony (or Sony ES) or just look elsewhere. Pretty much every music DVD whether it’s a giant concert, or an intimate affair will suffer the same flaws. Titles like Sessions at West 54th, Story Tellers; and collections of music videos, are all examples of titles tripping up this Sony. Even with my many hours of research, I heard no mention of this flaw, so it was a surprise to say the least. Don’t misunderstand me, this isn’t the type of flaw that would render this model defective. The visual flaws are the type to catch the attention of fussy videophiles like myself. The general population will most likely be oblivious.
The Remote is nothing to write home about. It’s basic and totally in line with the price point in mind. It will control your TV set, and I only ran into one issue. When programming my Kameleon remote to control this player, the forward and rewind were actually the codes to repeat the scene you just missed, and to scan forward a set amount. Sony apparently used the stock code for forward and rewind for these other features. That was a dumb move. So I had to manually use the learn function of my Kameleon and program the correct commands.
Overall ease of use
No real complaints here, once you get acquainted with the menu set up, most everything is a breeze. Changing the aspect ratio, resolution, and picture settings was quick and painless. Load times for DVDs were on the slow side however. One annoying move by Sony was preventing the player from passing a Dolby or DTS bitstream by default. So when such soundtracks are played, they are converted to PCM.
That’s no problem for an audio/video nerd like myself, I knew what to do immediately. But for the more casual consumer, I could see someone pulling their hair out. I could see someone screaming, wondering why their surround sound isn’t working properly even if they chose Dolby or DTS from the DVD menu. If you score this player, go straight to the audio menu and activate these codecs if you have the appropriate equipment to decode them.
Final Thoughts
For a buck twenty nine, Sony scored a winner despite the flaws. If you can live with the minor flaws on video based material, the picture on film based DVDs at 720p and 1080i will more than make up for it. This Sony is a great way to get the most from your high definition TV until prices come down on Blu-ray disc.
At a glance pros and cons
Cons:
- Pedestrian remote and looks.
- Video based DVDs show flaws
- Load times are slow
- No option to display audio & video bit rates for DVD movies
- A/V sync is useless to most consumers that actually need it
Pros
- Player remembers your last spot on a previously viewed DVD and the audio codec. Some players simply revert to default soundtrack.
- De-interlacing, and overall picture quality on film based material is stellar
- Basic picture adjustments can be made in the player
- Picture settings and zoom features work even on HDMI when scaling up to 720p and 1080i.
- handled a large number of recordable DVDs in various flavors and brands with ease.
© Tony Flores 2006
StrangerSoundLabs.com
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 129.00
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sslabs
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Member: Tony Flores
Location: Calistoga - Napa Valley Wine Country
Reviews written: 99
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