LAND of the MUNCHKINS : Yamaha DV-S5950 DVD player (Upconverting)

"WHAT THE HECK? WHY IS EVERYONE SQUISHED?"

I slammed the remote in my hand furiously pressing buttons and trying to make everything better. Unfortunately, it only got worse.

"Oh come ON, all I want to do is watch my favorite DVD's in HDTV! I REFUSE to sit and stare at these deformed munchkins and pretend to enjoy this movie!"

My stomach sank as I played in vain with the controls and it looked like my enjoyable days of relaxing with a good movie had come to an end.......but I am getting ahead of myself.

You know, before we got sucked into the vortex of the unstable world of television electronics.....

It all started with gym class that I needed to hold in the basement. That meant that we had to have a new television for the little participant to be able to use the new gym DVD on. Well, surely we could not let our 7 year old have access to our personal DVD player, and we did not want to have our TV put downstairs for her, leaving us without one upstairs.

Thus began the most interesting odyssey into the land of HDTV.....


HOW WE ENDED UP WITH SOMETHING WE SWORE WE WOULD NOT HAVE

All I wanted was a plain little TV with a plain little DVD player. We would put them in the basement and keep ours upstairs. I figured that would put us in good shape and we could be done with it. Our daughter would have her little gym class and life would go on its merry way.

I should have known better.

This simple task ended up being a most complicated one with us which led to a grueling 8 hour trip to Best Buy to see what we could finally pick up.

When I asked for the TV, I was dismayed to find that there was not a normal TV with plain features that I could get- unless I wanted one of the flat panel TV's that would have to stand about 2 ft from the wall due to the protruding back.

I was more content to have something flat- which led us to the LCD department.

We are in a very unsettled time in the television industry right now, the choices we had to make were not easy nor were they completely satisfactory to us.

Because we are not able to get our local channels through satellite at our home, we decided to spend a few extra dollars to get an LCD TV with HDTV tuner inside. That way we could still receive local channels for free when the totalitarian laws are in effect to prevent anyone from seeing analog television in the US in the near future....

This allowed us to get a 2 year no interest plan, so we were able to get a DVD player.

Unfortunately, LCD televisions have a completely new way of looking at things, so DVD players are hard to wade through- you have to figure out if they will play the movies on this new screen in a grainy way or a clear way.

I, for one, am a VERY picky person when it comes to visuals. I can not stand staring at a blurry or grainy picture.


THE YAMAHA COMES HOME TO MAMA

After our first day of head spinning wandering through the new world of LCD and HDTV, we went home to sleep on it. We had coupons and discounts and several things to help us defray the costs, but I still was not completely satisfied with our choices.

Unfortunately, our only choice to get anything was with a 2 year no interest payment plan and Best Buy was it for us.

The next day we arrived at Best Buy again, releatively settled on a few choices after doing extensive research the previous night on the internet.

We met a very nice Best Buy employee who told us that he was most impressed with the Yamaha. They used it for their demos and it was quite impressive when hooked up to a sound system.

We had opted for a Philips 26" HDTV LCD TV, and the two of them seemed like a good match. We were a bit put off by the price, as it was considerably higher than the Philips and Sony we were thinking of getting, but seeing it in action in the demo, we brought it home.

And, after installing the unit, I sat down to relax and enjoy a movie, and well, you know how that went- deformed munchkin land. I was not a happy camper.


WHAT IS THE YAHAMA DV-S5950 LIKE?

"Look at this thing- this is ridiculous."

I glared at the screen with fury. My son, the electronic genius grabbed the remote and began to tinker. He was sure that I had done something wrong.

After one hour, I left the room in a huff. That stupid machine was going back to the store - as was everything else. I hated it.

My son finally announced that he was stumped and I stormed in the room and grabbed the remote and started pressing buttons wildly. "SEE? THIS IS THE STUPIDEST THING I HAVE EVER SEEN! WHO WANTS TO WATCH A MOVIE LIKE THIS?"

And we looked at the screen which had suddenly turned to normal and very nice.

What did I do?

THE SPECS

Here is a basic rundown on what this DVD player has:

HDMI
High Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI) is the first and only digital interface to combine uncompressed high-definition video, multi-channel audio and intelligent format and command data in a single digital interface. HDMI switching, providing the most advanced method of delivering high quality video signals to a home theater system to enable the reproduction of DVD and satellite TV sources with HD quality. Compatible with the HDMI Ver. 1.1 format, it can also decode digital audio signals from sources such as DVDAudio, CD, Dolby Digital and DTS.

DVD Video
DVD is essentially a large capacity optical video storage media that contains movies or other video content for home entertainment. DVD has become the standard for video publishing by most movie and video studios.

CD Digital Video
DVD Players equipped with CD Digital Video capabilities will be able to play video and sound media that has been compressed together and recorded onto a CD disc.

Video CD
DVD Players equipped with Video CD capabilities will be able to play video and sound media that has been compressed together using the MPEG 1 standard, and recorded onto a CD disc.

Dolby Digital
The most popular 5.1-channel home theater sound system. An improvement over Dolby Pro-Logic in that it offers: 1) Full frequency response in all channels (3Hz — 20kHz), 2) discrete surround channels, and 3) a separate track for bass only, called the Low Frequency Effects channel.

DTS Digital Out
DVD player equipped with dts surround optical-digital and coaxial-digital output.

DivX
DivX is the video compression codec developed by DivX Networks and based on the MPEG-4 compression format. Its balance of high video quality and low bit rate has made it very popular and quickly established it as the best home video format thus far. The ability to play it on newer DVD models continues to add to its popularity as DivX Networks advances its support to many new household products. This compression technology has the potential for expanding the ways we view video media in much the way MP3 has given us many new ways to listen to music.


MAIN FEATURES
High Picture/Sound Quality Advanced Features

HDMI interface
Progressive Scan
108MHz/12-bit video DAC for high picture quality
192kHz/24-bit audio DAC for high sound quality
Official DivX® Ultra certified product
Plays all versions of DivX® video (including DivX® 6) with enhanced playback of DivX® media files and the DivX® Media Format
MP3, JPEG, DivX® and WMA playback
Easy operation with GUI (Graphical User Interface)
Picture CD playback with thumbnail display
NTSC/PAL conversion
MP3/JPEG simultaneous playback for slide show

OTHER NOTABLE FEATURES
JPEG/MP3 simultaneous playback
CD upsampling
Sleep timer
Screen saver
Resume (10-disc memory) play
Multiple repeat and program play
NTSC/PAL conversion

HIGH SOUND AND PICTURE QUALITY
108MHz/12-Bit Video DAC
A new high performance video DAC ensures superior image quality with all video sources.
192kHz/24-Bit Audio DAC
Listeners will enjoy sound quality that is superior to even some more expensive players for a number of reasons, one of which is a high performance 192kHz/24-bit audio DAC.

ADVANCED FEATURES
MP3, JPEG, DivX® and WMA Playback
Users can discs recorded in the MP3 (audio), JPEG (images), DivX® (video) and WMA (audio) formats.

NIGHT MODE
When you're listening to movies late at night and turn down the volume during loud scenes, dynamic range suffers and you may miss some dialogue and other sounds. With the Night Mode, you can reduce the volume and still enjoy proper tonal balance and dynamic range.

MULTIPLE ZOOM
The Multiple Zoom function lets you vary the size of the image in six steps: 1/4, 1/3, 1/2, 2x, 3x and 4x.


MY COMMENTS

After I played around with this machine a while, I started to figure out how to use it and it did not seem quite so foreign and irritating to me.

SOUND
We just are using the speakers in the television and the sound is decent, but nothing remarkable- but I realize that is because the TV speakers are only capable of so much. There is a certain amount of 3D sound, but nothing that makes me thrilled or anything.

PICTURE
The picture is tricky. I know that most DVD players in this genre are hard to figure out. There are so many different settings that you have to adjust for each movie- I almost think it is too much at times.

However, I suppose that once I get used to it, it will get a lot faster to do.

Depending on how the DVD was recorded, you have to set the picture at different pixels . The older films that were not recorded in wide screen have to be set at 480i and then use the TV screen adjustments to fill it in or the picture will be distored.

It is very hard to get a balance of understanding of the adjustments that the DVD player does vs the TV and when to use which ones. This is not explained that well in the manual- I had to do more research online to find out.

MENU
The menu is all right, but you have to click on a choice, click again until the setting that was yellow turns to white and THEN you can change it.

I am not that thrilled with the menu- it is clumsy and irritating to use. I think they can do a much better and user friendly menu but at least the DVD stops while you make changes so you are not missing the movie.

SIZE FOOTPRINT OF CASE

17-1/8" x 2-1/16" x 12-3/16"
It is a lot larger than our older DVD player- you need to have a good place to put it- with the LCD hanging on the wall, we had to put up a shelf to accomodate the DVD player. It is quite thin though.

DURABILITY
I am not that thrilled with the DVD drawer- it seems flimsy to me. But so did the rest of them.

LIGHTING
The LED lights are gold, which I am not crazy about, but it is clear to read.

REMOTE
The remote is very small and there is not any lighting or glow feature on it, which is annoying, but the important buttons are white on the black remote.

I loved our old SONY remote- it had TV functions with the DVD functions on it and it was much handier. This annoys me because I have to keep switching between the TV and DVD remotes.

I have not tried to see if the TV remote can adapt to the DVD player yet.

MANUAL
The manual is all right- laid out well, but I think it should be a little more educational for people who are new to this technology like we are.


FINAL COMMENTS

All in all this is a nice unit. I am not sure it is worth the high $179 price tag- even though we got it for $160. We are still considering getting another cheaper model to compare it with this and see if we will keep it.

It does take movies to a beautiful new level- for the most part each movie we have tried on it has been really nice. I am not a fan of most newer movies, so using this for older movies is very important to me.

Also, I have to test the WMA capabilities on it yet- another important feature for me. I like to record TV programs on CD from the internet so we can watch them together at night.

I will continue to explore this unit further and perhaps I will love it in the future. For now, we are still sizing each other up to see if we are really compatible.








COMPANY WEB SITE

www.yamaha.com