HVD2085 Responsiveness & Build Quality

It was only a matter of time until a company released a fully "unlocked" player that upconverted DVDs to 1080p. Just think of the marketing angles: "Why wait for high definition DVD when you can have it now!" or "Who needs Blu-ray Disc when you can get 1080p from your home movie collection!" What has people so excited about the NeuNeo player (pronounced "New-Neo") is the fact that it outputs 480p/720p/1080i/ 1080p from its component and HDMI outputs (latest firmware required). How do they do it? Well, I assume they run very quickly from anyone representing the MPAA since this violates the DVD spec. In any case, feel free to get them while they're hot - if 1080p output over component is something you've secretly asked Santa for this year and you don't mind some odd quirks and questionable video performance.

Unpacking & Build Quality

The NeuNeo came in a standard box with styrofoam end caps and wrapped in plastic. It includes a remote control (more on that beauty later), detachable power cord, analogue A/V cables, user manual, and an "HVD" titled "Le Peuple Migrateur" which I believe is French for "Watch me follow these geese around with an HD camera as they migrate south for the winter." It's actually quite excellent footage and it should be - it's an HVD disc which is encoded at native 720p. For a myriad of reasons this disc will not play on a regular DVD player (not even the Denon DVD-5910 does HVD discs). On the NeuNeo it is quite impressive.

The face of the player reminds me of a very inexpensive thin form factor player - it is pretty eclectic in appearance. I think it's the combination of silver, white and black - it's like NeoDigits couldn't make up their minds so they decided to try and make everyone happy. My advice would be to pick a color and go for it (and if the remote was designed to match it would be a first in the industry - hint, hint). The front buttons are not backlit like some other competing players we've reviewed - this is not necessarily a bad thing as there is already too much light on the face of most components. It would have been a nice option to have the ability to dim the front panel display which, though small, is quite bright.

Responsiveness

Popping a disc into the unit is a test of patience. I timed several discs and the average time from Loading the disc to getting to the first disc program item ranged from 17 to just under 23 seconds. I also found that loading a disc by pressing play on the remote resulted in the disc loading and then stopping. Pressing Play on the front of the unit, however, correctly closed the tray, loaded the disc and then played it. When a disc is spinning inside the unit it vibrates enough to generate a steady sound which emanates from the player. It's certainly not loud enough to disturb the listeners in the room, but it's not comforting and makes me thing something is not well balanced. The sound seemed to exist regardless of what disc I placed in the unit. Layer changes took just over a second, garnering an average rating in our DVD Player Comparison Checklist .

Responsiveness was a constant problem with the NeuNeo player. For example, at times, while a disc was playing, the first time I hit the Eject button the player ignored me. Hitting it a second time successfully ejected the disc. This turned out to be intermittent and seemed to be a result of not pressing the'Eject' button firmly enough. Pressing any of the buttons (except for power) either on the remote or the player itself failed to rouse the player out of standby mode, meaning that a workaround for discrete power on/off commands for remote control macros was almost impossible (there are no discrete power on and power off buttons on the remote). I ran my standard'standby mode' test whereby I shut down the unit with the disc tray open. The NeuNeo correctly took the tray back in before entering Standby mode. Chapter skips and basic navigational functions were all a bit sluggish.

Connections

The back panel has all the usual suspects (and then some) as far as outputs are concerned. An HDCP-free HDMI output is joined by component video, coax and optical S/PDIF connections, composite, s-video, and analogue 5.1 audio outputs (great for people who have older receivers without DTS capability). An HD15/RGB output is also provided which supports VGA/SVGA/XGA/SXGA resolutions (up to 1280 x 1024). You can set this output to function in the desired resolution by selecting it in the Display > TV System setup menu. As we mentioned earlier, one of the big attractors of this unit is its ability to digitally upconvert DVDs to up to 1080p output from both the HDMI output as well as the component output.

Internal Components

I was not surprised by the components found in this slim-profile unit. There is only so much you can fit into a chassis this size. Weighing in at just over 5.5 pounds, the HVD2085 is no heavyweight, but its strengths aren't in large power supplies, industrial strength transport mechanisms or expensive and robust video processors. The HVD2085 uses an AMLogic AML3428 chip to handle MPEG-2 decoding as well as deinterlacing and scaling for the component video outputs.