Yamaha DVD-S2300 MK2 Setting Up the Player

Setting up the Yamaha DVD-S2300 MK2 was a breeze. Yamaha must have taken a look at their finished product in this player and thought "Hey, we should make our flagship Z9 receiver this easy to use!" The graphical user interface of the DVD-S2300 MK2 was absolutely straightforward and unobtrusive. Across the top, via tabbed folder-like sections, you have access to Audio, Disc, Video, Display and "Others" Settings. Each section is fairly intuitively populated, with the exception of "Display" which really had to do only with the DVD player's On-Screen Display.

The Audio Menu allows you to set Speaker Settings (multi-channel or 2-channel), PCM Down Conversion (down converting high sampling frequency audio signals from non copyright-protected discs), Dolby Digital and DTS Bitstream or PCM output for equipped decoders/processors/receivers, Dynamic Range Compression (for reducing the dynamic range when watching Dolby Digital movies - generally a late-night feature), and Audio During Search. Enabling Audio During Search is something I always appreciate, especially coming from a time where I had to search through stacks of DVDs to find content for various music videos for Planet Hollywood. When looking for a particular phrase or section of a movie that you're not familiar with, this feature has saved me countless hours. Yamaha's implementation of this feature, however, sounds a bit like a woodpecker on a record player (lots of skips and jumps with little if any intelligible dialogue). Sony had an implementation of audio during search that involved playing 2-seconds or so of audio, then skipping ahead 4 seconds and repeating. This way, audio was intelligible, but also kept up with the movie. Most people probably don't use this feature, but a better implementation in the future might result in more people who do.

When setting up the speakers for analogue multi-channel output (for digitally-outputted signals your receiver will control all speaker configuration settings) realize that the icons control whether the speakers are large or small and can be altered by using the up and down arrows on the remote control. You will want to set these first and then utilize the built-in test tone to set the levels for the center, sub and surround. My configuration had the mains set to large and all other speakers set to small. Since I could set the subwoofer level in the DVD player in DVD-A/V mode, this compensated for the lack of independent subwoofer level trims in the Integra DTC-9.4's multi-channel input. One thing I would like to see in the future, however, is the ability to set separate subwoofer levels for SACD and DVD-A/V playback.

Navigating to the Video Menu will expose you to options for TV Aspect Ratio (16:9, 4:3 pan and scan or 4:3 letterbox), Still Mode (if still frames jitter try "Field" or "Frame"), and Black Level Control. The manual gives instructions for component vs. composite/s-video black level settings, but with even a somewhat calibrated monitor, we recommend always setting this to "Darker". The exception would be if you have done your best to calibrate your television and you are still unable to make out shadow detail in darker areas of films. Just about any recent or recently transferred horror or suspense film should allow you to test out your black level performance.