When we moved to the USA, we had a shock. In the UK, multi-region DVD players are common, with cheap models retailing for the equivalent of $50 or less in every supermarket. Add to that the fact that 90% of TVs will play NTSC signals, as used in the USA and Asia, and playing discs from other countries is as easy as can be. Over here, most TVs will only display NTSC, and not the PAL signals used in Europe. Also, the vendors have severely locked down DVD players by region, so American consumers can't play foreign DVDs.
Well, I brought with me a collection of 150 DVDs from the UK, Europe, Hong Kong, China and Japan. I refuse to buy them again, since in many cases I picked the best version available. Even if I did plan to re-purchase them, many are simply not available in an American, Region 1 disc.
Although players are available on the cheap in the UK, I spent a little extra on a Pioneer player in 2003, which is still in use by a family member now. It had a great picture quality on our widescreen CRT TV, and played any disc I threw at it - even a badly authored disc which many other machines refused to touch. This made a Pioneer player the obvious choice now we needed a new unit.
But some things had changed: We needed a player suitable for a 42" 1080p HDTV, rather than a 28" widescreen CRT. The size and the nature of the display is much less forgiving when it comes to picture quality. It also needed to convert PAL colours to NTSC whilst upscaling the image (and not downscaling it first). This meant there was an element of the unknown when it came to picking our player.
I am happy to report that this player works perfectly. It is built as well as you would expect a $90 player to be built, so don't expect a 20lb chunk of metal. The remote is the same layout as my 7-year old player in the UK, and it has one of the most logical button layouts I've used. Even the on screen menus and displays match that old player. They may not look fancy, but they tell you everything you need to know.
The player is a Japanese version, designed for tourists. It will output PAL or NTSC, and it works on American and European voltages. Change the power cable and you can use this in the UK without a step converter. It's truly an international DVD player.
Using HDMI, Pioneer's Kuro link is available. European users will remember this from the SCART days -- when you power on the player it switches your TV input automatically to the just-activated unit. The manual claims it only works with Pioneer TVs, but my Philips TV has a similar function (as used by the Philips Blu-Ray player attached to it), and it works just the same on my TV. There are other connections on the back of the player, but I see no reason to use them over HDMI. One downside is that there's no HDMI cable included.
So... picture quality. I'm comparing this to the upscaling performed by my Philips Blu Ray player. Obviously I could only test US, Region 1, NTSC DVDs on that player, so the comparison is by no means complete. Regardless, upscaling from 480i to 1080p is of a very high quality, even if detail levels pale in comparison to HD. My Japanese version of Kill Bill Vol. 1 looks great, with the bright colours blaring out at us. Switching to The New World - Director's Cut shows that the upscaling features of this unit outstrip the $100 Philips Blu ray. That player exhibited quite a bit of Haloing and edge enhancement without adding details. Those effects are still present, but much less obvious.
The player will, however, show up low quality discs. My HK R3 edition of House Of Flying Daggers looks atrocious. Pretty much unwatchable. It's a low quality transfer of a visually difficult film, so this should come as no surprise.
On to PAL discs. Out of the box, the player outputs to 480p. Taking a DVD with a vertical resolution of 576 lines and downscaling it as such, the picture quality is nasty to say the least. If you are stuck with a SD NTSC TV, at least they will play. The good news is that with the HDMI set to output at 1080p, the player does not downscale to 480 before upscaling to 1080 - it takes the 576i signal and directly converts it to 1080p! This means that PAL discs look incredibly sharp. With 20% more vertical detail to work with, the upscaler can produce incredibly good images for your HDTV.
I tested the UK DVD of The Incredibles, which has as perfect a transfer as DVD is capable of, and it looked stunning. The chase sequence through the jungle looked as good as I have ever seen it. Compared to NTSC DVDs, this was a revelation. Following this, I tried an old edition of Father Ted on DVD. Produced for TV in a 4:3 ratio, I expected to see numerous interlacing/combing effects, but the show looked as good as one could expect of a 15-year-old TV show filmed on video tape, and no real problems were apparent. We followed this with an episode of Spaced and an episode of The IT Crowd, both produced in 16:9, and in the case of the latter, very recent. They looked great.
In fact, the only thing giving away the conversion process was a slight judder to the end credits of all three TV shows. While watching fast motion, this was not evident. Raiders Of The Lost Ark looked good, regardless of the action on screen.
One note regarding colours -- my TV is already set up to display Blu Ray and HDTV with pretty accurate, natural colours. This unit was rather dark out of the box. We set the HDMI colour to Component and made minor Brightness/Contrast adjustements using a THX Optimizer, but things still appeared a little dark on PAL discs. The solution? We adjusted the Gamma setting to -3 and it solved all our problems.
There is more to this player. It will record your CDs to a USB drive plugged in to the front of the unit. I haven't tried that one yet. Also, it will play DivX and AVI movies from USB, CD or DVD. AVI rips of some UK TV shows and the Berlin premier of the restored Metropolis both looked better that on a computer monitor, thanks to the upscaler's help. The playable formats are very limited, but it's a nice extra feature.
So, in conclusion: if you have many foreign DVDs, buy this player. Even if you don't, it's worth it as a dedicated DVD player, since it has better upscaling that the average supermarket Blu-Ray player. Well worth every penny, and it could only be improved by including an HDMI cable in the box. New Pioneer DV 420K - All Region Free Multi System / Multi Region 1080p DVD Player with HDMI Upconverting & USB'
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