DVD-2910 Viewing Tests
DVD: Dances With Wolves
Dances With Wolves is an early
released DVD with average transfer quality. The image below is very good for evaluating DVD players. I
generally look for jaggies and flashing on the uniform buttons, moiré and image softening on the log
fence and grain and loss of detail in the background. The Denon DVD-2910 did an excellent job of
reproducing the scene. Everything looked crisp, clear and detailed with the 480p component connection.
The 1080i DVI connection looked slightly sharper but there was a hint of flashing along the log
fence.
The next scene from Dances With Wolves is also very good. In this scene there is a lot of
motion, the horsetails are swinging and the leaves on the trees are rustling. There are several
straight lines to observe the rope across the horses and the fences. The background is also very
detailed and in focus. The DVD-2910 did a magnificent job of displaying this scene; there were no
jaggies, no flashing or motion blur, and the image remained crisp, smooth, and
detailed.
DVD: Rush Hour 2
The Next DVD I used for evaluation was Rush Hour 2. This DVD is a good to very good quality transfer
and the scene below is more appealing to me than the one above for obvious reasons.
This is another very good scene for evaluating a DVD player's performance. This scene has a lot of motion. The objects in the background are in full focus and there are contrasting colors black, white, flesh tone, red and gold. The bookcase on the extreme right side has several vertical and horizontal lines with contrasting colors; and there is a very fast pan from right to left The Denon DVD-2910 performed flawlessly with this scene. There was no moiré. The objects in the background remained well defined, there was no flashing around the glasses, and there was no noise evident on the deep red background. The blacks were inky black and the white dress was bright white with no blooming and looked very balanced. Flesh tones also looked natural. I tried several times but failed to note a significant difference between the 480p component connection and the 1080i DVI.
DVD: Gladiator
The next DVD I used was Gladiator. This is a near
reference quality DVD. The opening scene of this movie is a virtual torture test for DVD players. The
heavy smoke, fast moving arrows, fire and dark scenes make it an excellent DVD for
evaluation.
The Denon DVD-2910 proved once again that it was a very capable DVD player. In this particular scene there is a smokey background combined with bright fire and lots of motion. The image was very smooth with a lot of detail. The background remained well defined: there was no obvious flashing or ringing, but I did detect very slight macro blocking. It was brief and very hard to detect and I had to replay the scene several times to confirm it was there. In addition I also detected a hint of mosquito noise in the fog but overall the Denon DVD-2910 displayed this scene very well.
The Denon DVD-2910's video performance was excellent and exceeded my expectations. Coupled this with the fact that you can adjust just about anything you want in the user setup menu and you have a winning combination for any source device. This player would be an excellent choice for rear projection CRT based monitors, high end fixed pixel displays or front projection systems. You simply cannot go wrong with its video performance.
