October 30, 2000
So, as I was standing in line at 6:00 a.m., waiting for Big K to open and
deliver me my PS2 booty, the hot topic amongst the fellow first-come-first-servers was
DVD. None of us doubted the PS2 game system would be hot, but for many people DVD playback
was what brought them out to brave hypothermia, and risk social rejection for years to
come. (Hey, camping out for a PS2 is a hell of a lot cooler than doing the same for a
Furbyyou cant even give those things away anymore!) I have to admit I was
skeptical.
Let me qualify that last statement, and this entire article for that matter, by
saying that I am an electronics junkie, and a cinephile, and have been an avid DVD
supporter for some time. Operational menus, wide-screen formatting, Dolby Digital 5.1,
multiple discs with documentaries, storyboards, deleted scenes, and commentary
tracksexcuse me while I tilt my head back and drool like Homer Simpson thinking
about strawberry-sprinkled doughnuts. Anyway, I have pieced together a high-end digital
surround sound system that I am proud of, and I didnt cheap out on my DVD player
either. I have seen those $179 no-name players overload, shut down, and eject their discs
because they couldnt process information fast enough to play a packed DVD and
operate a menu at the same time. So far as I have seen, you pay for what you get, and DVD
being the best format on the market, it is a shame to waste it. Sony was going to have to
work to impress this reviewer.
They impressed me. The short of it is this: the PS2 has all of the DVD hardware
and peripherals you would want, aside from a composite audio/video connection (the
red/green/blue connection). It has all of the basic features that make DVD such an
impressive format, and a couple of extras. And its playback capabilities look good, sound
good, and are comparable to most consumer grade DVD players within about $50-$100 of its
cost (remember, you are paying for the game system as well). The long of it is as follows,
and for those of you arent "in the know" with this stuff (and those of you
I lost long before my Homer Simpson simile), I will try to explain all of the jargon.
Lets start with the hardware itself, and available peripherals. All DVD
players connect to your TV or Amplifier via audio/video cables (those cables with the
yellow, red, and white connections that you are probably used to by now) or an S-video
cable (a better connection that allows separate color and brightness signals to be
transmitted). Any DVD player worth its salt (and many arent) can also connect to an
Amplifier or Digital Decoder via an optical fiber cable, which will allow you to listen to
your DVDs in digital surround sound.
Okay, the PS2 is able to do all of these things. It comes with the audio/video
cables. S-video and optical fiber cables are sold separately. The S-video cables are
highly recommended as they greatly enhance your picture quality, especially around the
edges where shimmering can occur. The optical fiber cable will be useless unless you have
a digital-surround capable Amplifier and/or Decoder. A nice feature of the PS2 is that it
is capable of playing both Dolby Digital 5.1 and DTS audio (both of which allow you to
listen to the soundtrack on 6 discrete channels for front, center, and rear speakers and a
subwoofer, but are formatted differently). Your average Wal Mart special wont do
that. And those composite connections I mentioned earlier? They are just another
connection which is better still than S-video, but only a handful of high-end TVs
and DVD players have them, so odds are you wont miss them. Out of the box, the PS2
uses the game controller to operate the DVD player, and it will suffice, but there are
remote controls available right now that are pretty cheap. The remote eye simply plugs
into the controller slot and it will save some hassle, not to mention look snazzier.
*A note on set-up: if you are short on audio/video connection jacks, i.e.
your TV has only one set of jacks and your VCR is already plugged into it, you cannot run
your PS2, or any DVD player, through the extra set on your VCR. What happens is the VCR
connection sets off the copy coding on the DVD player (just like the copy coding on
sell-through or rental videocassettes) and the system will perform poorly, if at all. If
this is the case, you will have to find a way around it, possibly with an audio/video
splitter.
As far as features go, the PS2 holds its own. DVDs allow you not only to
watch the movie, but to have a "movie experience" as well. Most DVDs are
set up with operational menus where you can select the audio, language, and viewing
features, play the movie, scroll through chapters (like CDs, DVD movies are divided
into selectable tracks, usually individual scenes, that you can select without having to
fast forward or rewind) and view special features. Special features might include
trailers, deleted scenes, blooper reels, documentaries, or directors commentary
tracks that narrate the movie-making process. This is the format at its best. The PS2 has
no problems handling all of this information and has clear, smooth pause, search, and slow
motion features as well. It has a control panel menu with more advanced features. These
features include display setup, screen set up (4:3 letterbox for regular TVs and
16:9 for HDTVs), picture setup (primarily Digital Noise Reduction and Outline
Sharpening, which allow you to "clean up" transfers of older movies but has
little effect on newer movies), audio setup, angle options (some DVDs, especially
concert videos, are recorded with multiple angles so you can view them from whatever angle
you prefer), subtitles, parental control, and a few others. All of these are pretty
standard. Some features that you may miss are a zoom, multi-speed playback, and
frame-by-frame advance, but these are all gravy. The only integral features that they left
out are picture controls such as brightness, contrast, sharpness, and intensity. These
would have done a world of good towards making the PS2 compare to higher-quality,
higher-priced DVD players.
Which brings me to the big test. I didnt want to just take the picture and
sound quality of the PS2 at face value. Yes, it looks and sounds good, especially if you
are used to VHS (for all of you who are new to DVD, your VHS tapes are about to sound as
bad as 8-tracks, trust me), but how does it really compare to other DVD players?
Well, it would be unfair to compare it to my high-end Marantz DVD player; they are not
even in the same league. So, I took my PS2 down to the local electronics store and
compared it side-by-side to component DVD players, primarily Sonys from
$249.99-$349.99 (you can call this the control group), playing the same chapters of the
same DVDs on an A-B flipper. The PS2 held up okay, though it did pale a bit when it
came to picture brightness and rendering flesh tones (both of which could have been
cleared up with the picture control features I mentioned earlier), and occasionally it had
some shimmering edges. However, this is all very picky behavior on my part and both my
friend, who is co-owner of the electronics store, and myself were satisfied with the
PS2s performance.
In other words, if you were looking at your typical department store brand DVD
players (say, in the $179.99-$249.99 range), the PS2 is just as good if not better. If you
are just planning on hooking the PS2 to your TV, it will blow your mind. If you plug it
into your stereo, even better. If you are looking to join it with a high-end system, you
will not be disappointed in what is there, but may find it lacking compared to some of the
fancier stuff that is on the market right now. All in all, your PS2 is one fine DVD
player, and dont let anyone tell you otherwise.
Jeremy
Kauffman |