Sony G90 manual DVD Performance, LD Performance, Ly, the remote of the DVL-91, like that

ly, the remote of the DVL-91, like that of the

Theta Voyager, has no back lighting. Given the

small size of many of the buttons, it is easy to hit

the wrong one in the dark.

Like all of Pioneer’s recent combi players, the

DVL-91 has a small drawer on the front to pick up

CDs or DVDs and a larger drawer for holding LDs. Fascinated by

the whooshes and whirrs of sliding trays and turning gears (rem-

iniscent of Dark City), I opened up the DVL-91 and found an engi-

neering work of art. I love watching the laser carriage move from

front to back and roll over, which it seems to do whenever the

disc drawers open or shut. (Pioneer should really consider releas-

ing a special edition in a transparent case.) A good part of this

machinery is Pioneer’s famed Epsilon-turn mechanism, which

moves the laser head from side A to side B of an LD in 10 seconds,

about half the time of the CLD-97. Part of the turn mechanism is

housed in a small box protruding from the back of the case.

DVD Performance

Now that DVD players have reached their “third generation”

and 10-bit video DACs have become the standard, video per-

formance looks much the same no matter the brand or model,

certainly in the $1,000-and-up range. The exception are DVD

players such as the Pioneer Elite DV-09, with additional video

signal processing to adjust picture parameters like color satu-

ration, or to provide advanced adaptive detail enhancement

and noise reduction. MPEG artifacts are now rarely seen –

untrue of many first-generation players. The DVL-91 produces a

DVD image that is largely indistinguishable from that of my ref-

erence player, the Sony DVP-S7000 or the newer Sony DVP-

S7700 (on either Y/C or component outputs). On tests from the

Video Essentials DVD [DVDI 0711], it appears to have good fre-

quency response to at least 5 MHz; color bars are solid and

without apparent noise. All of this is reflected in good perfor-

mance on a variety of movies. The DVL-91 can display below-

black levels from a DVD, which not all players can do. This is

important for using test patterns to properly set up black levels

on a video display device.

Two areas in which DVD players still differ in perfor-

mance are (1) quality of downconversion from 16.9 format

DVDs to 4:3 displays and (2) motion control. These are areas

in which the Sony DVP-S7700 sets the standard and in which

the Pioneer DVL-91, like its cousin the Theta Voyager, falls

short. On a variety of 16.9 format DVDs, the DVL-91 produced

aliasing artifacts while downconverting, most prominently

observable in images with closely spaced horizontal lines, par-

ticularly if those images move slowly in a vertical direction. In

the opening scene of Goldeneye [MGM 906035], where an air-

plane flies low over a dam, the top of the dam has two close-

ly-spaced horizontal lines. On the Pioneer and Theta Voyager,

these lines twitter a little but are sharp; on the Sony they are

stable but with a slightly softer focus. This is a common dif-

ference between downconversion algorithms: stability with

softer focus or sharpness with aliasing artifacts. I prefer the

non-aliasing appearance of the Sony; you may disagree. Some-

times the aliasing artifacts can be seen on suit jackets with

fine patterns, as in Contact [Warner 15041] at the beginning of

chapter 5, in Tom Skerrit’s jacket, and at the beginning of

chapter 9, in Jody Foster’s. In both instances, the Pioneer and

Theta produce a slightly sharper detail but with twittering,

whereas the Sony produces a slightly softer focus but with a

steady image.

While the DVL-91 is fine for playing movies, I found it

quite difficult to control many of the special features of DVDs.

Slow motion and still-step must be done via the jog/shuttle

control and use of this is awkward, at best. (Perhaps I would

enjoy it more if the player had a faster response time.) I pre-

fer the simpler button controls of the Pioneer 919, also on the

Theta Voyager, or the even better buttons on the Sony 7000

remote. Homing in on a series of still frames, such as on the

Video Essentials test disc, is not as easy as with the Sony 7000

series. The DVL-91 does not provide smooth slow motion in

reverse, but neither do most other DVD players; Sony still sets

the standard here. The DVL-91 is also noticeably slower than

the Sony to jump to different spots on a disc; there are long

delays when jumping to different parts of feature menus. The

DVL-91 also has a limited ability to function with DVD menus

that have multiple layers. The main place I’ve encountered

this is with test discs such as Video Essentials or AVIA [Ova-

tion Software], so it may not concern those who just want to

watch movies. The presence of a single “menu” button, which

functions for Player Menus, Disc Root Menus, and Disc Title

Menus, may contribute to this awkwardness.

LD Performance

The laserdisc performance of the DVL-91, while acceptable,

like the Theta Voyager does not match Pioneer’s last stand-

alone laserdisc players, the CLD-97 and CLD-99. All of the

Key Features: DVD Players

	Pioneer DV-09	Theta Voyager	Pioneer DVL-91
Progressive Video Output	No	No	No
Component Video Output	YPbPr	YPbPr	YPbPr
Advanced Digital Video Processing	YNR,CNR,H-Detail,V-Detail	None	DNR
	Y/C Delay
Video Calibration Adjustments	S-Video Color, Black Level	None	None
Below-Black Video Output	No	Yes	Yes
96 KHz/24-bit Digital Audio Output	Yes	Yes	Yes
DTS Digital Audio Output	Yes	Yes	Yes
5.1-Channel Audio Priority	No	No	No
Other		Laserdisc Player	Laserdisc Player
Price	$2,200	$6,500	$1,800