DVD-3910 Subjective Viewing Tests

After reading the benchmark test results you'll see that the DVD-3910 is an excellent player. While not scoring a perfect 130 points, it does exceptionally well for a player in its price class and passes the majority of tests with flying colors.

DVD: Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back
Viewing evaluations are always subjective, but they are a great opportunity to see the practical demonstration of the above test results. In selecting movies for our demo we chose some reference DVDs as well as some content with less than stellar source material. Because of the nature of 3D animation and the use of motion blur in the rendering process, I tend to shy away from those DVDs, however you may see them pop up from time to time simply to demonstrate color and/or image detail. I chose Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back because it features some excellent film source footage that is both revealing and honest in its presentation. Though Lucas did a lot of work on these films when bringing them to DVD, he did more in terms of restoration and addition of additional scenes, resulting in some pretty pristine film material that serves as excellent test material.

One of the first things I really took notice of was the crisp hair detail in Chewbacca's fur. In the Rebel base on Hoth, Chewbacca leans his head against a support strut as he hears news that Han Solo is to be locked out of the base - trapped in sub-zero temperature until morning. The camera follows the reactions of Princess Leia and C-3P0 and eventually lands on a rare hanging close-up of Chewbacca. The hair detail was consistent even through motion, but during this close-up was almost "graspable" on our reference projector.

The scenes on Degobah varied from blurry fast pans to locked down shots revealing a very detailed scenescape complete with snakes, vine work and clear edge details of the moving swamp water. The colors were more accurate than I remembered, meaning that while not highly saturated, the textures of trees, R2-D2's machined body, and even Yoda's skin looked incredibly realistic. Check out the water lapping up against the shore when Yoda reels in the X-Wing using the force - this is truly a great looking scene.

Finishing out this disc I couldn't resist jumping to the all black set that makes up the final scenes where Han Solo is encased in carbonite and Luke Skywalker engages in a saber battle with Darth Vader. There is some pretty good shadow detail in these scenes if you look for it and the Denon DVD-3910 doesn't miss a thing. Every corner was visible, and nothing appeared to be washed out or missing within these dark scenes. Lighting detail was very revealing and actually quite detailed with smooth blends of bluish light that filled the screen at times. On lesser players you would see banding and a greater amount of noise, however the Denon showed no problems with rendering the scene as intended.

DVD: I, Robot
The next series of shots came from I, Robot which I felt had a myriad of scenes with which you could get an idea of the Denon DVD-3910's ability to handle detail, 2:3 film detection, and black levels. In this scene, foreground elements are exceptionally clear while motion in the background is crisp and detailed throughout the scene. There is also a ton of black level detail noticeable in the corners of this shot. Shadow and texture gradients abound in this movie and I found myself really observing lots of excellent natural detail in each scene.

Here, a close-up of Will Smith shows detail of similar quality to my favorite close-up shot of Bruce Willis in the Superbit version of The Fifth Element . Perspiration and skin texture is exceptionally noted along with a realistic color tone and various shadows which fall across his face without visible gradation lines. Even though there is subtle movement, the details stay in focus and hold their natural edge detail throughout the shot. These closeups are, to me, just excellent scenes in which to see just how clearly your system can reproduce what the original cameras captured on film.

This shot has a lot of vertical and horizontal elements which serves well as a real-world "jaggies" test during this scene as the camera pans across the room. As expected, this test yielded equally-impressive results as did the HQV test DVD. Overall, I found this DVD to contain a good selection of test elements and will be adding it to my reference collection for future display and transport reviews. This movie, aside form being a pleasure to watch, really showed off a lot of the DVD-3910's better qualities, especially its ability to reproduce deep black levels and full-motion detail.