Samsung DVD-HD960

4.5 stars

"As good as you can get without true HD-DVD or Blu-Ray" on December 14, 2006 by ajbright

Pros: True digital image, best upconversion technology outside a commercially priced unit, the only unit so far that converts to 1080p, much more affordable than HD-DVD or Blu-Ray

Cons: As with all upconverters, it will never be as good as HD-DVD or Blu-Ray, regular progressive scan (480P) not very impressive, ghosting issues on some movies

Summary: Regular DVD players, designed in an era when most people had standard definition (analogue) TVs, often degrade the picture quality by first converting the DVD files to an analogue signal, then back to digital for the DVI/HDMI or HD Component ports.

This conversion process obviously means a lower quality image, because every time you apply a process to any signal, you lower the quality of the signal.

HD Upconverting DVD players do not need to go through this process because the HD compatible inputs (DVI/HDMI) on an HDTV monitor are digital ports.

All things being equal this should mean that any HD upconverting DVD player will give you a better picture than a regular DVD player, even if you don't upconvert the picture.

However as many will testify, this is not even close to being the truth. For whatever reason, most HD upconverting DVD players are a complete waste of money - and sometimes even if they are a great product, like this one is, they are still a waste of money, but for a completely different reason.

The bottom line is that unless you have $2000 to spend on a commercial grade upconverting receiver - that will upconvert any video source, or $800-$1200 for a standalone HD-DVD /Blu-Ray player, or even $600 for the non-existant PS3 or the XBox 360+HD-DVD addon consoles, this device will give you the best picture quality possible.

There are some issues, particularly with ghosting - a sort of blurred echo of the main picture - on a number of movies, particularly if the movie has scenes with distinct contrasts between imagery, but this really is a minor gripe for most people.

The increase in picture quality by faking a 720p, 1080i or best yet (and unique to this player) 1080p image more than makes up for the minor issues this player has.

For some perverse reason the units standard progressive scan resolution, 480P, is actually not as good as some regular DVD players - and considering the digital to analogue to digital process has not occured, this simply should not be the case.

However you're not buying this to watch movies at 480P resolution, because any progressive scan DVD player can do that, and you'd be wasting your money.

So the only relevant issue is how good is the upconversion, is it truely a better picture or are you being conned by this whole HD upconverting thing.

The answer to this question is a resounding no. Older HD upconverting players were often a waste of money - all but a few had no more than the most neglible effect on picture quality - some even made the picture worse in all modes. Fortunately for Samsung this unit does exactly what it says on the box.

My only complaint is the lack of DVI, but as Hollywood are on the verge of forcing the electronics industry to embargo DVI as well as any other port that doesn't have the copy-protection options of HDMI, this is probably not a bad thing. Yes, they are determined that DVI becomes a thing of the past, and intend to design future HD movies in such a way that if you don't have HDMI ports on both the player and TV, the resulting image will actually be slightly worse than the 480P you get from a regular DVD player now. They're wasting their time ofcourse, but they think that they will be finally able to prevent piracy because HDMI has far superior copy protection capabilities that any other method of outputting/inputting multimedia signals.

A word on TVs.

The biggest con on the market today is the 1080P HDTV - unless your TV is made by one of only a handful of manufacturers.

You see most TVs that claim to be 1080P compatible actually perform something the manufacturer calls HD upscaling - the result being a similar conversion to the one performed by this HD upconverting DVD player.

So in effect if you plug any video source into the DVI, HD Component or HDMI inputs on the TV, it upscales either a 720P or 1080i image to 1080P (if you choose that resolution).

This is actually a superior conversion than that performed by upconverting DVD players, but nonetheless it is not a true resolution - and if you buy this unit an expect a better picture than your regular progressive scan DVD player, you're in for some disapointment.

In fact because you're effectively performing the same process twice on the same image, you may even end up with a worse picture quality than normal.

I said this was a con, but that's not necessarily the case - particularly with HDTV delivered from cable or satellite providers.

With a few exceptions, most HDTV providers don't offer cable/satellite boxes capable of 1080p, and therefore the upscaling from 1080i to 1080p done by the TV will actually give you a small increase in quality.

However this won't be the case for too long, so your best bet for true 1080p resolution imagery is to buy Sony (there is another manufacturer that produces what is called direct 1080p resolution TVs, but I'm not sure if its Samsung, Pioneer, Toshiba or Panasonic).

A word about TV and/or old movies.

1080p is great. HDTV channels are wonderful. HD-DVD and Blu-Ray are awesome. However for 99% of movies (and TV shows) none of that matters.

You see a TV show or movie recorded in a 4:3 aspect ratio, using bargain basement film and stored in a dusty basement with no protection from the damp or rodents, can only look so good - no matter how well the TV network tries to tidy up the image.

So while you will see some improvement watching such a program on a TV set to 1080i or 1080p, its not much better than watching the same TV or movie on a top quality Trinitron SDTV, or perhaps a decent progressive scan DVD player.

CRT TVs produce the best imagery, crisper, more colour accurate, and no LCD, DLP or Plasma TV can equal its accuracy or the depth of "black" such TVs produce.

So until all TV is digitally produced, using cameras that natively record in higher resolutions than 1080P, most TV still looks better on a regular TV.

The only real exception is Star Wars - because George Lucas produces everything digitally, and without a doubt watching any Star Wars HD movie on a Sony 1080P TV will be the most mind blowing experience you'll have thus far. The movies themselves may not be masterpieces of story telling but the sound and imagery is unsurpassed - except maybe for Discovery HD.

So the real test of any DVD player is to stick in Revenge of the Sith. Do this and you will definitely become a believer in HD upconversion, and this particular model is as good as this technology has produced.