DVD Player Guide

Getting Started

Basic DVD players start at around $50 and go up from there. With a basic player, you'll get good picture quality, a remote control, and on-screen controls, which vary in ease of use from manufacturer to manufacturer. You may want to check out the remote-control options in a retail store before you buy, to make sure you're happy with the remote that comes with the unit. (Are the buttons too small or hard to find, for instance?)

Basic players connect to your TV through a simple composite cable (one video cable and left and right audio cables) or with a higher-quality S-video cable. An S-video cable separates color and brightness into two cables, instead of combining them as a composite output does. This improves picture quality because the TV doesn't have to separate the two picture qualities itself.

Basic players now come with everything a high-end model was equipped with two years ago, such as the ability to read multiple formats, including CD audio, MP3 and WMA, CD-R, CD-RW, and Video CD. When you step up the price ladder by about $50 or more, many DVD players, such as Toshiba's $129 SD-3950, can handle DVD-R discs; other players can also handle the hi-fi DVD-Audio format. These DVD players can double as the music center in your home theater system. (DVD-Audio is one of the new music formats fighting to replace the CD. Similar to Dolby Digital 5.1, DVD-Audio takes full advantage of all your home theater's speakers--it uses six channels for playback--but the actual encoding is different. A regular CD is designed for a two-speaker stereo setup.)

An important feature you need to consider is scan type, namely interlace scan and progressive scan. Scan type relates to image quality and how the picture looks on your screen. Progressive scan produces a much sharper picture, and it reduces flicker--it's like the difference in sound between an old cassette tape and a CD.

Here's what's happening behind the scenes: A screen is divided into horizontal lines, and each picture is created by "drawing" the image one line at a time, from left to right, line by line down the screen. A standard analog television sequentially draws the odd-numbered lines and then goes back to the top and sequentially draws the even ones; this is an interlaced scan. Some inexpensive players, such as the $50 Apex AD-1600, offer interlace scan only.

If you bump up to the $100 level, you'll see players offering progressive scan, like the Toshiba SD-3950. This technology fills in the lines--one, two, three, and so on--without skipping lines. Another benefit: Progressive-scan DVD players come with component video outs, which separate the signal into three parts (red, green, and blue) and result in an even better picture than a non-progressive-scan player. (Even if you don't have a progressive-scan-compatible TV, you can still use component cables to connect your player to your TV to get better picture quality.)

But here's a secret behind the hype: You can only take advantage of progressive-scan technology if you hook up your DVD player to a TV that can support the progressive-scan signal. Any digital TV--an LCD TV, an HDTV, and so on--has component inputs that support progressive scan. Older televisions (the cathode ray tube or CRT kind) can't handle the signal, but the newer tube TVs (often flat) probably can, depending on the model. So if you're planning to buy a digital television at some point, you might as well spend a little more to buy a progressive-scan player now, even if you can't take advantage of the technology yet.