Have a DVD player like everyone has but never have seen what it’s capable of? Its a device that sits quietly on the table top, spinning discs, sometimes shining, blinking to give you an idea its from another planet. It’s a DVD player but plays everything you throw at it. If I am not mistaken, all the time it’s switched on, 1% of the time it plays DVD’s and the rest, you throw at it, it plays. Now its being around for the longest time ever and is ready to be overshadowed by the Blu- Ray players and the HDDVD players but yet, many of them are clueless what it is.
I always like to act innocent, so once I decided let me see how many of them know their gadgets better. Now which gadget to choose. I found everyone has a DVD player, so now the contest officially began. The questions will not be mentioned here but I have the answers what people gave me. “DVD’s are very clear”, “My DVD player plays everything so clearly that even VCD’s look very clear”, “The best part of my DVD player is I can now experience Dolby Digital with everything I play”
Now I was laughing from inside but again as I like to act innocent, that smile never was shown up on my face. The best part is I asked the person who said that the VCD’s look very clear like a DVD, that how many DVD’s do you watch in a month and the answer is “I never had to put in a DVD in my player as the VCD’s look so clear. Now I won’t act stupid by criticizing people but yes I would like to educate people as what is a DVD player and how to make use of it to the fullest.
Let’s begin with knowing the DVD player better
There is no doubt that DVD player is the hottest selling product these days. In
Today’s DVD players can play wma, mp3, Divx, and so on, but the players that command a premium that also play DVD Audio, SACD. DVD as a format is a successor of VCD’s that had content stored in MPEG 1 format. A resolution of 352 x 288 pixels and frame rate of 25 frames/second. With advertisements seen in the media, print everyday of resolutions as high as 1080p this resolution seems to be poor. DVD overshadowed VCD’s. With an impressive specification as compared to VCD’s they had no place to go. With a resolution of 720 x 576 pixels MPEG2 (Called Full-D1) images on a DVD were much clear and good DVD players displayed them with much precision. Coming down to the Audio Specs of DVD we see that with a sampling rate of 48000 Hz and Up to 8 audio tracks containing Dolby Digital, DTS, PCM(uncompressed audio), MPEG-1 Layer2. That is much superior to VCD’s. Let’s also have a look at MP3’s. You might be surprised what MP3 is doing here but at the later part you will get a hint of what I am trying to say. (MPEG-1 Audio Layer-3) Is the standard technology and format for compressing a sound sequence into a very small file while preserving the original level of sound quality when it is played.
Well that’s was just a round of introduction, lets begin with the story. DVD player will cost you round about Rs. 2500/- and also goes as high as Rs. 4, 99,999/- and much higher as well. But again isn’t it just a DVD player that plays DVD’s? So why pay lakhs of rupees for it? Well I don’t want people to sell their valuables and get that costly DVD player. Leave them for us Videophiles who are ready to sell our Kidney any time to get such a Gadget (well don’t eye on my 2nd kidney as let me live and experience what I have purchased in exchange of my kidney)
A DVD player on its front fascia has a tray to accept 1 DVD at a time and they are slim, with minimal buttons somewhere on the top or in the front and a host of buttons on the remote control. In the back of the DVD player again you will have a lot of connectors in different colors making you wonder when I need 3 pins why do I have 20 or more in the back. Now the front fascia is decorated will lot of logos that say Dolby Digital and DTS digital out in basic DVD players. Well a lot of them also say MP3, WMA and MP4 as well.
Expectations
What should we expect from a DVD player? This is the most stupid question anyone would ask. How can you buy a car and not expect something from it other than just moving from one place to another. With DVD players we are talking about the clarity of the picture and sound in general. Now again I am not asking you to evaluate, but just enjoy the quality that an original, well mastered DVD would give you. Original DVD’s are now very cheap. With Moser Baer and T Series coming up with DVD’s as cheap as 35 rupees this is what you can start with. These DVD’s are any time better that any VCD or even the pirated DVD that you get for 12 rupees anywhere that has 4 to 5 movies stuffed with pathetic picture quality and bad Media to make you DVD players lens life worse.
You might also come up with DVD’s as costly as 600 rupees to 999 rupees. Now do not judge a book by its cover and never judge a DVD by its price. But generally these are imported DVD and a lot of care is taken while mastering the DVD and their picture quality generally is better and these DVD’s are again collector edition DVD’s. (This comment should not be used to judge the picture quality by its price)
Performance
Take for example a decent DVD player priced at 7000 rupees and a reference grade DVD (Finding Nemo Collectors edition for eg) is being played in a DVD player. Now the DVD player has a reputation of displaying awesome images for the price tag it has to offer. But the scenario is the DVD player is connected to the television with composite connections. Now the images are damn clear and the end user is very happy of what he is seeing, but do you know you could have enhanced the picture quality by just changing the connections. In a regular DVD player we see that there are 3 types of connectors namely, Composite (widely used), S Video (rarely used) and Component (used only when component cables are supplied by the OEM). Component connectors are far more superior to S Video and S Video is far more superior to Composite. Composite connection is the one that you see on the back of the DVD player with yellow, white and red connector. S Video is the big round connector that looks like an alien. Component is the one on the back of the DVD player that is symbolized with red, green, blue color. When the DVD player is connected too the TV that has a component in, the pictures are displayed with ultimate clarity as compared to Composite connection. That was on the video part. Now not only connections do make a difference. Component connections are not widely used because it’s seen that manufacturers do not pack the DVD player with a component cable and they expect consumers to buy them separately. No doubt, because still 80% of the televisions do not have a component in, but only have composite, so it makes sense for manufacturers to pack the box with the widely used connector and do some cost saving. DVD as a media also plays an important role in determining the final output. A pirated DVD from the street has a camera print or has a pathetic video transfer done. Now genuine DVD’s have a better video transfer done in the studios and hence the picture quality is better. So the final word is get/ rent a better and a genuine DVD that will also enhance the life of y0ur player and will also get you a better picture quality and sound and you will do your bit in reducing piracy.
Audio
DVD is mastered to give you better audio than VCD’s. DVD’s are authored in Dolby Digital, DTS and others. Now to experience the effect to the fullest you need to have a DVD player that can decode these signals. That’s when you need to look at the front fascia before buying a player. If it says Dolby Digital then that means that when you insert a DVD whose soundtrack is in Dolby Digital then your DVD player will be able to read those signals and send them ahead. To experience Dolby Digital to the fullest you need to have 5 speakers and 1 subwoofer to the minimum and not 2 speakers of the television. Now what if your DVD has its sound track in DTS and your DVD player has a logo that says DTS digital out, then that means that your DVD player will not decode signals but will help you connect the DVD player to an external decoder that has a DTS decoder. Beware this is the common mistake that consumers make thinking that their DVD player can decode DTS bit stream as well. The logo you need to look for is DTS digital surround. Again you need 5 speakers and 1 subwoofer to enjoy it to the fullest and not 2 speakers.
Quality
DVD as a medium uses MPEG 2 compression and the video and Audio is not that compressed as VCD’s and the compression Is better that means that compression with minimum loss as compared with the original. So the more you compress you know what happens to the sound /picture quality, but we still need compression because the raw format is that huge, cannot fit in the media that we use commercially. Take for example MP3 that we were talking about are again compressed medium. See the difference doesn’t the Audio CD always sound better, open, airy as compared to MP3? So as much data is not compressed in a DVD the final output is much better than a VCD for example. Why VCD again for that matter avi files, xvid or anything that you say that is compressed. But again AVI files are pirates favorite. They give you 75% of the thrills of a DVD without much pain but again that is compression and a compromise of quality. With original DVD’s made available so cheap why would anyone go for an AVI print, if I had to believe that?
Again this was written in keeping the general audience in mind so no advanced technology is discussed. I thought of keeping things simple, but at the same time I expected the crowd to at least know a bit of what I am talking or Google it. This is very basic so that in my next post I can explain a DVD player in detail and by that time who had already gone through this will definitely know what I am talking about.