DVD-S97 Player Setup and Operation

Pressing the Setup button on the remote control brings up the menu system for configuring the DVD player. I quite liked the look and feel of the setup menus - there were no obscure and cheesy icons, and the menus were usable even on the small 7" LCD monitor that I use for configuring players.

There are six tabs or setting categories: Disc, Video, Audio, HDMI, Display and Others. In addition, there is also a Quick Setup wizard which allows you to set common settings over a set of dialogs. The Quick Setup menu page is activated if you enter Setup when the player is brand new (or after reinitialization to factory settings).

The Disc tab allows you to set the default language for the audio track, subtitle track, disc menus and parental control rating limit. You can select 'Original' for the default audio track, and 'Automatic' for the subtitle track. If your preferred language is English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Portugese, Swedish or Dutch, you can directly select it from a list, otherwise, you have to type the four digit code associated with the language.

The Video tab allows setting of TV aspect ratio, TV Type, Time Delay, Convert from PAL, Still Mode, NTSC Disc Output and Picture/Video Output. The TV Type setting is interesting in that it allows you to specify the type of video display connected to the player (Standard Direct View TV, CRT Projector, LCD TV/Projector, Projection TV, Plasma TV). Some experimentation revealed that this setting subtly alters brightness, contrast and gamma settings for the video output, so I would recommend leaving this at the 'Standard' setting and instead calibrate your video display based on a calibration disc such as Digital Video Essentials or AVIA. The Time Delay setting allows you to adjust for A/V sync (in increments of 20ms from 0-100ms) - a very useful feature if your AV receiver or processor does not have this setting and you experience sync issues.

The Audio tab governs what sort of formats are allowable on the digital output (PCM 96/192kHz, Dolby Digital, DTS, MPEG) as well as DRC for Dolby Digital. It also allows you to specify whether you want to hear audio whilst in search mode (non 1X playback speed). Interestingly, the player allows output of 192kHz through the digital outputs, which is non-standard (when I enabled it, I received static noise through my Cary Cinema 6 surround processor, even though the Cary also claims to support 192kHz - presumably using an incompatible signaling format).

The 'Speaker' settings allow you to specify speaker presence and size, time alignment, and channel balance. Unfortunately, you have to specify time delay settings in milliseconds rather than distance (therefore it assumes you know the speed of sound and are handy with a calculator 舑 1ms per foot of delay for those of you who want to ballpark it). Also, it assumes the Front Left/Right and Surround Left/Right pairs are equidistant. Furthermore, you cannot adjust the balance between the Front Left/Right speakers, nor can you adjust for time delay for the subwoofer.

The HDMI tab allows you to set the HDMI RGB range ('Standard' vs 'Enhanced'), HDMI Video Mode (On/Off), and HDMI Audio Mode (On/Off).

The Display tab allows you to set the language for player menus, On screen messages (On/Off), and background during play (black/grey).

Finally, the Others tab allows you to set the brightness of the front panel display, Auto Power Off (On/Off), rerun Quick Setup, and reinitialize the player to factory defaults (very sensible, rather than relying on an arcane set of button presses typical of some players).

Player Operation

The player has an 'AV Enhancer' feature that basically is a set of memorized user configuration settings for the following:

• Multi-Remaster - this upsamples 44.1 and 48 kHz audio to 88.2 or 96 kHz (there are three filter settings). Interestingly, you can adjust the 'remaster level' from -6 to +6 dB
• Audio Only - this turns of video and HDMI circuits for cleaner audio playback
• Picture Mode - various picture adjustment presets (Normal, Cinema1, Cinema2, Animation, Dynamic, User)
• Picture Adjustment - Contrast, Brightness, Sharpness, Color, Gamma settings plus three noise reduction settings (Depth Enhancer, MPEG DNR, 3D-NR)

AV Enhancer can be set to Off, Auto (which presumably is the player's idea of what is appropriate depending on the type of disc inserted), or three user settings (User1, User2, User3). Panasonic suggests that you configure these settings so that User1 is optimized for DVD-Video, User2 for audio, and User3 for other video (i.e. DVD-RAM), but you don't have to follow these guidelines.

Some interesting features of the player include:

• Ability to vary DVD-Video playback speed from 0.6-1.4x normal (useful if you want to finish a DVD a bit sooner) - it resamples the audio to preserve sync, but will convert all audio to 2ch 48kHz and disable upsampling/Dolby Pro Logic II.
• Starting playback from a specific DVD-A 'group' or MP3/WMA/JPEG/MPEG4 folder (useful for 2ch audiophiles wishing to navigate to a specific audio track without requiring a video display)
• Position memory - memorizes where playback position for up to 5 discs so you can return to it when you reinsert the disc later
• Zoom - you can zoom by preconfigured settings (Auto, 4:3 Standard, European Vista, 16:9 Standard, American Vista, Cinemascope 1, Cinemascope 2) or manually (between 1.00-1.60 in 0.01 increments, or 1.60-2.00 in 0.02 increments or 2.00-4.00 in 0.05 increments (MPEG4 only).

There is a 'file explorer' type interface for MP3/WMA/JPEG/MPEG4 type content. Interestingly, the player will recognize CD Text but not DVD Text or jacket pictures. Alas, it only displays the CD Text if you have a video display - it would have been nice to display CD Text on the front panel display as well.

Like other Panasonic players, the DVD-S97 has a fairly extensive set of on-screen status information and menus, all accessible when you press the Display key on the remote. Unfortunately, the front panel display is rather austere and does not even show playback elapsed time. Pressing Display a second time shows a bar graph elapsed play time indicator (allowing you to toggle between elapsed play time and remaining time). Pressing Display a third time will cancel the on screen display.

The on screen menus include:

• Program/Group/Title (Current/Total) - in stop mode, you can specify which number to commence playback
• Chapter/Track/Playlist (Current/Total) - in play mode, you can specify which number to jump to
• Time (Elapsed or Remaining) - leads to a submenu for Time Slip (skip forward or backward by a fixed duration) and Time Search (specify start from specific time) functions
• Audio (Current Audio Language, or current bitrate/sampling frequency) - allows you to select audio tracks
• Still Picture - allows you to switch still picture
• Thumbnail - allows you to switch thumbnail images
• Subtitle (Current subtitle track) - allows you to select/enable subtitle tracks
• Marker (VR) - allows you to select DVD-VR markers
• Angle (current viewing angle) - allows you to change viewing angles
• Slideshow - allows you to change slideshow settings

In addition there is an - Additional Settings - menu that items to a submenu including:

• Play Speed (varies DVD-Video playback speed from 0.6-1.4x normal)
• Play Menu (contains repeat and marker settings)
• Picture Menu (Picture Mode and adjustment settings, HDMI output resolution/colour space, progressive scan settings: Auto1/2, Video)
• Audio Menu : Dolby Pro Logic II (Off, Movie, Music), Advanced Surround (SP1, SP2, HP1, HP2, Off), Dialogue Enhancer, Multi Remaster (1, 2, 3, Off), Digital Filter (Normal, Slow), Attenuator (On, Off)
• Display Menu : Information, Subtitle Position (0 to -60), Subtitle Brightness (Auto, 0 to -7), 4:3 Aspect (Normal, Auto, Shrink, Zoom), Just Fit Zoom, Manual Zoom, Bit Rate Display, GUI See Through, GUI Brightness (-3 to +3), HDMI Status
• Other Menu : Sleep (Auto, 30m, 60m, 90m, 120m, Off), AV Enhancer, Setup, Play as DVD-Audio/Video, Play as DVD-VR/HighMAT/Data

I must admit, I was impressed by the configurability of this player. There's no doubt Panasonic has a very powerful DSP which is put to good use, because some of the features (like variable speed playback and onboard audio decoding including Dolby Pro Logic II) require a lot of processing power. This was the first Panasonic player I had encountered with explicit support for handling 0dBFS+ levels (through a digital level attenuator 舑 not the best solution, but far more cost effective than a custom digital filter which Sony employs for their high end players).