Zenith DVB318 720P/1080I upconverting DVI DVD player

[HD Library]

By Richard Fisher

In the first review analog component video performance was checked. I received a number of emails displeased with the fact that DVI performance was not reviewed. I am pleased to tell you that I am now capable of checking out DVI as well so on with this final chapter.

Component Video Update

Having used this player for a number of months I came across a few scaling artifacts. I continued to see problems associated with the ghost of a previous image being visible on the current image. The most recent example being Oceans 12 and the DVD menu. A white plane object pans a red background and black silhouette leaving darker bands matching the edges of the plane object. I have yet to catch this during a film and it is subtle. Completely black images have a frozen microblocking pattern that is subtle. It was very common to catch this artifact at the beginning of a movie where you start at black awaiting the coming image. There are visible contouring artifacts depending on the image.

In the initial review I neglected to check Y/C delay. Using Avia and the test pattern for this I found blue -.7, red 0 and green -.7. Not great but not bad.

As reported earlier the remote would not always respond upon the first click of a button. That continued to nag me throughout. This is far more of an issue when running tests though rather than everyday use. It seems after a period of time the unit is setup to ignore the first remote command requiring you press the key again to get a response. At times a third keystroke was required to get a response. After awakening the unit would accept remote commands as given.

After months of viewing I returned to my Lumagen VisionHDP scaler and Panasonic DVD player SDI combo. While the Zenith was certainly palatable there is no substitute for proper video signals if you have become used to that level of performance. With that I connected the Zenith to the scaler and made the necessary adjustments for a proper signal level and was greeted with a correct image. Unfortunately using a $1000 scaler to correct the Zenith defeats the whole purpose of owning the Zenith.

All in all not much has changed for the final conclusion. To get correct images via component will require a calibration of your display to this DVD player and that will very likely not match any other player nor any other HD equipment in your arsenal. The only way this can be convenient is if your display has two HD inputs that provides a separate service menu level calibration, quite rare for analog only displays.

Zenith DVI Video

Scaling

Not much to comment upon here. Nothing changes in this aspect via DVI.

Color Decoding

Via 720P or 1080I the color is too hot generating a +10% saturation error for red and green with +15% for blue. Unfortunately the test display does allow me to compensate for this using RGB muting so I confirmed an identical response with filters and turned down the color from 60 to 45 in the customer menu.

Test Patterns 720P

Black level and peak white came out very close requiring changing brightness form 50 to 46. Vertical resolution was great except the final 480 lines had shading artifacts.

Horizontal resolution did not fare as well. In the sweep pattern half the screen has shading artifacts. Extended frequency response shows the typical shading artifact and while the lines were clearly visible they were also down in brightness level.

Test Patterns 1080I

Black level and peak white came out very close requiring changing brightness from 50 to 46. Vertical resolution was great except the final 480 lines had shading artifacts and at 1080I the shading was of a different character.

Horizontal resolution was great via the sweep pattern. The extended frequency response pattern had similar artifacts and response.

Waveforms were checked and the sweep response was identical to the analog response obtained previously clearly showing that this artifact is part of the digital processing and not the D/A conversion process. Black level was not nearly as far off for some odd reason which matches the experience stated earlier for black level.

All in all this is not bad machine having seen worse. If you are not picking nits then this player may be up your alley. I do pick nits and overall found myself wanting something better.

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