DVD vs LD review by Robert L. Cook II 03/22/97.

I was cruising through my favorite Audio/Video store this Saturday, and I spotted the new DVD players. Being an early adopter and gadget freak, I bought one. I purchased a Pioneer DVL-700, a combo Laserdisc and DVD player. The price was $899. (This was $100 less than the local Best-Buy was charging, so I considered it a fair buy).

The DVL-700 plays LDs, CDs, CDVs, and of course, DVDs. It does not play CD-Video, or CD+G disks. It offers "Trick Play" on CAV and CLV LDs (Pausing, single steping, etc), just like my old CLD701.

I purchased a copy of Bladerunner, the Director's Cut to use on my player. I paid $22.50 for my copy. Since the title was not supposed to be available for sale, I have elected to protect my source. I had previously paid $50 for my criterion laser disc.

Ground Rules / Viewing Conditions:
No Flames Please. I was skeptical about DVD before viewing the disc (The Demo disc in the store sucked, but I was told it was an old demo disc), so I was looking carefully for image defects and pixelation during playback. I compared the Director's Cut of Bladerunner on DVD to my Criterion copy of the original version. I did this on my 50" Pioneer rear-projection monitor, model SD-P5043. This monitor is 6 years old, but still displays an excellent picture. I had recently calibrated it with my "A Video Standard" laserdisc. I have a dolby pro-logic receiver with an outboard AC-3 decoder. Not a high-end system, maybe a mide-end system. I used a direct SVHS link from the player to the monitor. (No, it was not a monster cable, and please no E-mail about wire. Wire is wire so long as it is shielded and not corroded)

Executive Summary:
The DVD was superior to LD. (Please no flames, I love LD and have hundreds of them)

Middle Management Summary:
The DVD image had less noise, better detail, and better colors than either LD or VHS. It was very clean. When there was video noise, you could see some pixelation artifacts, but you had to be looking. If you were watching the movie, you would have never seen them. There were no pixelation distractions in the movie, except where there was background noise. This background noise had a worse presentation on LD. If you stopped and single stepped frames, in those scenes where the camera would pan across a larger scene, there were large blocks (3-4 pixels square), but I did not notice them until I single stepped. There were a few places where a sub image in the scene (An actor's face for example) would shift left,right, up, or down, and it seemed unnatural, but again, I was looking for this (See Jitter below).

Gross Details:
The Image was very stable, when compared to VHS. Stable may be the wrong term. What I am talking about here is for instance, when a vertical line is on the screen, on VHS that line will waver a bit. On LD and DVD, it was rock solid.

Jitter is a term I use here to cover a defect type that I noticed while viewing the DVD. It is especially noticible while viewing the credits. While scrolling up the screen, the credits on the DVD would jitter left and right by one pixel or two. As if the location of the credit were on a pixel boundry and in some frames it would be put on the left, and some on the right. The LD image was rock solid and did not have this problem. Also, objects in scenes had this problem as well, sometimes something would jitter left and right. This is the "Unnatural" movement I mentioned above.

The Color on the DVD was better than the LD. There appeared to be less Chroma Noise, and more consistant colors.

Features. The DVD had better Features, offering both widescreen and pan and scan, and 16x9 version on the same disc (albeit on different sides). The LD has supperior fast forward and reverse capabilities. The DVD would not single step in reverse, and the fast forward sucked. I realize that this is only a limitation of the player, and can be fixed by adding more CPU and memory. The DVD had subtitles in 3 languages. This was great, I could turn on the subtitles in situations like when the baby is crying, or when I was on the phone, and not miss the dialog.
Also, there was some info about the actors and the director, and the chapter search had a small icon to jog your memory prior to selecting the chapter.

Sound. The sound on the DVD was as good or better than the LD. On this particular title, I was miffed that the DVD AC-3w as only encoded the front right and front left. The user was expected to take the output and run it through a pro-logic decoder to get surround, which in my opinion defeats the purpose of having AC-3, and is incompatible with the way my system is hooked up. I used the PCM stereo. I don't think the 2 channel AC-3 added anything. Why Bother?

Resolution. The DVD offered resolution equivalent to LD. The small print credits were just as easy to read on LD as DVD.

Detail. The DVD offered superior detail. Features like lips, eyes, etc had more detail, more definition.

Misc. The packaging was poor. I want my DVDs in a Jewel Case, not some disposable cardboard applicator. The AC-3 was dissapointing. It should have been encoded on 5 channels instead of 2. Why bother?. This DVD was glued together. It has two sides, one for Widescreen, one for Pan and Scan. I worry about ROT, but suspect (pray) that they have fixed that.

Ranked Summary of Formats: (1-10, 10 is best)

  Attribute         VHS      LD      DVD          Comments
  Video Noise       5        6       9            DVD Had little Noise       
  Image Stability   5        10      10           DVD and LD had stable images.
  Scene Jitter      8        10      7            LD images are jitter free.
  Color             7        8       9            DVD color resolution superior.
  Features          1        5       8            DVD has lots of features.
  Sound             7        9       9            Sound was same as LD.
  Resoluton         5        8       8            DVD was Very Sharp.
  Detail            4        7       9            Much image detail on DVD.

Conclusion:
I suspect that this format will kill laser-disc, especially if the price remains competitive ($25 or less), the transfers are all this good (I suspect some variations here) , and the features remain high (P/S and WS on the same disc).

I suspect that there will not be significant changes in future generations of players. I suspect that there will be better fast forward and reverse for DVD play, and reverse single step in future models.

Please send me your own opinions about the Bladerunner DVD, or let me know if I missed something significant. My opinion is subject to change.

Regards,
Robert Cook
E-mail: RLC@pobox.com
rcook@gte.net