May 2002 Reviewed by Doug Blackburn	Onkyo DV-S939 DVD Player

Description Model: Onkyo DV-S939 DVD Player Price: $1800 USD Dimensions: 17"W x 15"D x 5"H Weight: 24.3 pounds Warranty: One year parts and labor Features THX Ultra Certified Dolby Digital and DTS decoders built-in Plays DVD-Audio, DVD-Video, Video CD, CD-R, CD-RW, CD	Features (cont'd) Separate transformers for digital and analog circuitry Coaxial and TosLink digital outputs Component video outputs (2) S-video outputs (2) Composite-video outputs (2) 192kHz/24-bit audio DACs 54MHz/10-bit video DAC Direct Digital Path DB-25 and RCA six-channel outputs RS-232 port IEEE 1394 upgradeable Full-function remote control

When a company as well respected as Onkyo sets out to build a flagship DVD player, anyone who is serious about high-quality home theater has got to take notice. Onkyo's DV-S939 is packed to the gills with features galore and build quality rarely seen in DVD players, at any price. Considering ourselves about as serious about home theater as you can get, we were consumed with curiosity. Just how good could it be?

Technical details

Onkyo’s flagship DV-S939 DVD player is loaded with everything you might expect in a leading-edge DVD player and is priced at $1800. There are internal Dolby Digital and DTS 5.1 decoders -- and the DV-S939 is THX Ultra Certified. All disc types except SACD are supported: DVD-Audio/ Video, Video CD, CD-R, CD-RW, and regular CD. Onkyo includes a set of high-quality component video, S-video, stereo audio, DB-25, and digital cables -- not the cheap throwaway types you may be used to getting when you buy a new component, but substantial-looking cables that perform well. An RS-232 port allows software upgrades to be performed by your PC should that become necessary. In addition, an empty slot stands ready for the after-market addition of an IEEE 1394 digital video interface.

Checking under the hood reveals two large EI-core transformers. These are notable for their ability to reject high-frequency interference. The transport mechanism is completely shielded from the rest of the interior. The circuit boards are of distinctively better quality than less-costly DVD players and receivers I’ve seen. The video board reveals the Genesis chip set for progressive-scan logic. Ground planes on the circuit boards minimize RF radiation wherever possible. Impressive innards!

The 24.3-pound DV-S939 is physically much larger than low-cost DVD players, which can weigh as little as five pounds. The weight comes from the heavier chassis, the large transformers, and the additional internal shielding. It’s obvious that this is a serious player.

In use

The DV-S939 responds immediately to commands from the remote control, making less-expensive DVD players seem stuck in the slow lane. This fast response leads to quick changes from menu to menu within DVD movies. Chapter-to-chapter changes are also very quick. This rapid response produces a feeling that you are wielding superior weaponry -- a heady power trip of sorts.

The remote control will learn commands from other remotes, allowing you to control up to seven other components. There are no preprogrammed codes. The learning procedure can take a while, but once complete, the remote is remarkably addictive. It does lack the backlighting available on other similar Onkyo remotes. The four-way menu-navigation rocker-button can be troublesome to use at times -- the only criticism I have of the remote control.

The DV-S939 menus are easy to access and are some of the clearest to read on-screen that I’ve seen to date. For those who want a little something extra, there is a virtual-remote-control mode that gives you a more graphical navigation experience compared to just using the buttons on the remote. I found this snazzy to look at but always reverted to the simple single-button remote-control commands. One menu that is elusive is the video-adjustment menu, where you can set brightness, contrast, color, tint, and a variety of other image-quality parameters. I never found a way to access this menu without having a DVD playing -- something that is not made clear in the manual.

You can select up to three memorized groups of video-control settings for interlaced mode and three more video-control settings for progressive-scan mode. The extensive control over the image produced by the DVD player gives the DV-S939 some big advantages over players without the adjustment capability. For example, the DV-S939 has a true gamma control, something that exists in few video displays. This is a true contrast control and works nothing like the incorrectly named "contrast" control, which actually controls how white the white areas are displayed. The gamma control leaves the monitor’s black point (adjusted using the also incorrectly named "brightness" control) and white point alone. It controls the transition zone between black and white. This allows you to make fine adjustments to shadow detail, for example, while not making the blacks any lighter or darker than they should be. Gamma is a highly useful adjustment and a significant feature that is not very well documented in the DV-S939 owner’s manual. Just remember to have a DVD playing when you look for the image-adjustment menu or you will never find it.

I had a few problems navigating several of the more challenging DVDs like the AVIA Guide to Home Theater disc. Some menus would appear with question-mark icons after the menu text and there would be no cursor visible on the menu screen. I was able to make menu choices, but they were blind. I never knew what was coming up until the screen appeared. This was a problem only in some of the video and audio test menus. Other portions of the disc operated flawlessly. The only movie I experienced movie menu-navigation problems with was the recent Snow White.

Progressive-scan mode is engaged directly from the remote control making on-the-fly comparisons easy. There is a front-panel progressive-scan mode button also. There are two coaxial digital outputs and two TosLink digital outputs. All are active at the same time. This allows the DV-S939 to be connected to an audiophile DAC for music and also to a surround-sound processor or A/V receiver for movies. This was a major feature for me because I use just that setup in order to maximize stereo music performance while still being able to enjoy home theater using the best-sounding connection.

Special features

The Zoom mode allows you to enlarge a portion of the DVD image. This is something that those who study subtle details will love. The Strobe viewer allows sequential stopped-motion frames to be displayed on-screen at the same time. Preview mode lets you see the first frame of each chapter without going to the DVD menu’s scene-selection area. There is also a Capture mode that allows you to save an image during playback and turn it into a background picture. Dynamic Range Compression is available for late-night movies, but only works with Dolby Digital soundtracks. Karaoke Vocal mode allows you to turn the vocal on the DVD-Karaoke disc on and off. That’s not even the complete list of features. You have to wonder what more they could think of.

Movie sound

Most of my listening was done using a digital connection to the receiver/processor. I found the DV-S939 offered a small sonic improvement over "lesser" DVD players when it came to the sense of sparkle and delicacy. The big moments were pretty comparable to any good DVD player, but the DV-S939 puts just a bit more sophistication in the sound. The expansiveness of spaces was more noticeable and women’s voices cut through the sounds of city streets just a bit better. As usual, DTS soundtracks had a small advantage. Titan A.E. produces a lot of detail that really is well presented by the DV-S939. The scene in the ice crystals has lots of highly detailed sound in every channel. The DV-S939 remains my favorite DVD player to date for this soundtrack, and, for that matter, just about any soundtrack. The Skywalker Sound effort on Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace is another example of a superior soundtrack that simply came to life through the DV-S939. Some of the subtle bass detail tends to get lost in the shuffle on less-capable DVD players. The battle scenes offer complex soundfields with numerous near-simultaneous sounds at different levels.

In comparison, Kenwood's $800-less-expensive V-4070 has a bit more of a matter-of-fact presentation and is a little more withdrawn in the higher frequencies. The Onkyo DV-S939 has a sense of transparency and clean, clear sound that gives it an edge over the otherwise good-sounding Kenwood player. The Onkyo’s performance seems more effortless, and while the Kenwood doesn’t make obvious mistakes, it just lacks the sure-footed ease of the DV-S939.

On the other end of the spectrum, the under-$230 Panasonic DV-RP56 is such a budget model that it doesn’t even have a digital coaxial output. Running its TosLink output to the processor/receiver produces a darker, grayer sound that doesn’t share the open sparkle the DV-S939 produces. Give the Panasonic DV-RP56 the benefit of the $700 Assemblage D2D-1 to clean up the digital bitstream before it gets to the receiver/processor and things even up to a startling degree. At that point you are dealing with sound that differs in tiny details, but nobody in their right mind would be able to identify one as distinctly better than the other.

Video

Interlaced images were the best I’ve seen so far from a DVD player, or they were once I tweaked the picture controls to produce an image that was a better match for my Toshiba monitor. The initial factory settings produced an image that appeared over-sharpened and one that benefited from a slight gamma adjustment to keep shadows from blocking up. For dark movies like Batman and Pitch Black, having a gamma control is a real advantage. You can set the gamma control so that shadow detail holds up very well in dark scenes, a common shortcoming in DVD players that lack gamma controls.

Progressive-scan mode was more of a mixed bag. Most of the time, the image quality was stunning. But occasionally the image would soften somewhat when there was no motion present save for a single moving object. This isn't all that noticeable, but I was sensitized to the issue by Faroudja's demonstration of its DCDi progressive-scan decoding chip at CEDIA last year. DVD players with the Faroudja/Sage DCDi chip do not show this problem. If the moving object had hard angled lines, especially red lines, there would be a lot of aliasing (jaggies) along the edge of the lines. There were also some instances of flickering scan lines with certain image content. This happened during the opening parasailing scene in Jurassic Park III. Using progressive-scan mode and interlaced mode, I never detected any mis-synchronization between dialogue and images.

Music concert videos, using progressive-scan mode with a 4:3 aspect ratio, could be stunningly dimensional on the Toshiba HD monitor. James Taylor and Sheryl Crow on DVD, and The Rolling Stones’ Bridges to Babylon in particular, had exceptional images.

Comparisons

The Panasonic DV-RP56 has the Faroudja/Sage DCDi chip and sails through the same scenes that gave the DV-S939 trouble. It doesn’t take much for the Genesis chip to settle down though. Two moving objects in the scene and all is well -- clean, sharp, and pristine video result. Fortunately, the observed defects were short lived, less than one second to perhaps a few seconds at a time, and will not trouble most viewers/owners. The DV-RP56 couldn’t match the gamma-corrected DV-S939 for shadow detail, but other video performance parameters were surprisingly close.

The Kenwood DV-4070 DVD player produced images that seemed slightly over-sharp, much like the factory settings for the DV-S939. The two DVD players were remarkably similar looking. Once the DV-S939 had been tweaked via the video-adjustment menu though, it produced noticeably more film-like images than the Kenwood DV-4070.

Summary

How good can it be? The Onkyo DV-S939 has the appearance, feel, and features that place it among the best DVD players available. Lower-cost DVD players, in my experience, can’t match its features and performance. If you long for components that look and feel substantial and which offer near instantaneous response to commands, the DV-S939 is definitely worth looking into. The "package" includes excellent audio performance, and state-of-the-art video performance (with the exception of my concerns over its progressive-scan performance).

Anyone who appreciates thoughtful attention to the construction details of their components will find the build quality of the DV-S939 very impressive. The DV-S939 reminded me of a high-performance luxury car. You can appreciate and respect it for what it is and what it does, even if it is out of your price range.

Manufacturer contact information:

Onkyo USA
18 Park Way
Upper Saddle River, NJ 07450
Phone: (201) 785-2600
Fax: (201) 785-2650

E-mail: onkyo@onkyousa.com
Website: www.onkyousa.com 

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