DVP-NS999ES First Impressions and Resolution

When Sony revealed their new flagship DVD / SACD Player for $999, audio and videophiles alike began dreaming of owning such a machine. Sony's High End ES line of products continue to display superb quality with reasonable pricing. The new Sony DVP-NS999ES player is no exception as it is one of the foremost DVD Players on the market today in its price range.

First Impressions

Upon unpacking the unit and carefully examining its build quality, I connected it to Audioholic's Reference System 2 , gladly replacing the Panasonic DVD-A310. I decided to begin my visual study of the player's performance with one of my favorite Concert DVD's, Eric Clapton's, " One More Car One More Rider. " Almost immediately into viewing this Masterpiece DVD, I noticed the stunning detail and visual clarity presented by this player. A few minutes into it I started seeing bright flashes that appeared rapidly in certain dark areas of the stage. I watched intently to determine what was the cause. I repeated scenes to see if it was random, or occurring in the same area at the same time. I've watched this DVD dozens of times before on other players, so I figured it couldn't be the DVD. The odd thing is that the flashes occurred in the same areas at the same time during play each time I repeated scenes. Still puzzled, I moved closer to the TV Monitor (57" Sony KP-57WV600) to try and figure out what this was. It was then that I noticed to my utter surprise and amazement, that I was witnessing, for the very first time, reflections from flash photography bouncing off metallic objects on the stage during the concert. This blew me away! I've watched this DVD on multiple players and was unable to recognize this occurrence. It was not until the progressive scan image produced from the Sony DVP-NS999ES, that I even noticed the result of flash photography coming from the audience. From that point, I knew I was in for a real treat when I got to some other high quality videos.

Resolution

Before putting the unit though a number of DVD's, I thought it would be a good idea to use the Avia Guide to Home Theater DVD and check out a few of the digital calibration images. I started with some Resolution images at 100 TVL and 200 TVL such as the one in this picture.

There are a multitude of calibration images found on the Avia DVD which can be used to calibrate a TV Monitor, check the resolution or chroma delay of a DVD Player or compare component video cables. For the purpose of analyzing this DVD player, I used 100 TVL and 200 TVL images and compared the resolution between this player and other players. With the Sony DVP-NS999ES, both vertical and horizontal lines, and circles were solid with no jitter, indicating that the player is fully capable of creating high resolution images up to the maximum limit of 540 lines or 540/80 = 6.75 MHz. Some players, especially interlaced players, have a hard time producing higher resolution lines to this degree. When viewing these images through them, it is easy to notice that the lines near the 480+ mark begin to jitter or move rapidly, making the end look like a clam shell that is opening and closing rapidly. This was not the case with the Sony DVP-NS999ES. The entire calibration lines were solid with no jitters all the way out to the very end which is the theoretical limit for DVD.