At CEDIA 2001, it seemed as though the number of new DVD players with progressive scan equaled or exceeded the number of new models without it. Progressive-scan DVD players now come in all price ranges, even the lowest tier. One of last year’s progressive-scan models is selling at some Internet retailers for as little as $149.

Bear in mind that you can’t get any benefit from a progressive-scan DVD player unless you own a video-display device that can display progressive-scan images. Normal televisions cannot do this. In most cases you will need a DTV (digital television) or a HDTV (high-definition television) product in order to be able to display progressive-scan images. Some analog-projection hardware, especially those adapted from products originally made for computers, can also display progressive-scan images.

You already want to know which DVD players in various price ranges have the best picture and sound quality. You may be interested in knowing which DVD players sound best when playing your stereo music. Now, if you decide to get a progressive-scan DVD player, you need to know what progressive-scan performance you are getting for your money. That is a difficult question to answer for any home-theater publication. Player models change rapidly, being replaced by newer units every time you turn around. You may be shopping at a time when one company’s models have been out for almost a year while another company’s are brand new with no published reviews yet. How do you have half a chance of knowing just what you are getting for your progressive-scan DVD-player dollar?

At the CEDIA show in September 2001, the Home Theater & Sound and SoundStage! crew saw an amazingly good demonstration of the differences between and among three progressive-scan DVD players. The demo easily revealed some of the performance characteristics of different progressive-scan chip sets. Best of all, the demonstration was done using a DVD that you can get for free!

Kenwood demonstrated their Sovereign DVD players that incorporate the Faroudja DCDi progressive-scan chip set. The five-disc Kenwood Sovereign DV-5900 lists for $1200 and the 400-disc DV-5900V lists for $1500. As you might expect in a demo performed by the manufacturer, the Kenwood Sovereign DVD players passed the image torture tests with flying colors compared to two competitive DVD players, which employed the Genesis and DVDO progressive-scan chips. The test sequences consisted of specially composed images, some shot on film or video, some computer generated. The tests deal with the behavior of the progressive-scan chip sets when there are small areas of the image that are different in nature from the rest of the screen. For example, a shot of a tall building with a waving flag in the foreground is used. The stationary background surrounding a moving object caused the other two chip sets to introduce significant levels of jagged edges into the straight lines of the flag. Another one of the computer-generated screens consists of a black field with two sets of stationary horizontal white lines in the top 1/3 of the image -- one set of lines were "even" numbered scan lines while the other set were "odd" numbered scan lines. A stationary "0" character was at the bottom center of the image. A small logo in the lower right corner of the image rotated (the only motion in the image). While the logo is stationary, all three DVD players produced identical images. As soon as the logo was set in motion, the Genesis- and DVDO-equipped DVD players introduced flashing or flickering of the horizontal lines (as the chips were confused by the small area of motion when nothing else in the image was moving).

You can get the Kenwood Sovereign demo DVD by going to the Kenwood USA Website at kenwoodusa.com. When you are at the site locate the "Kenwood Sovereign" logo (as shown right). Click on that and you’ll go to the page where the disc can be ordered. It’s always great to be able to tell readers about tools that provide real-world assistance in helping answer practical questions. Thanks to Kenwood Sovereign for making the demo DVD available. It’s a tool that many will find extremely useful for evaluating one of the more difficult-to-get-a-handle-on performance characteristics of the new wave of DVD players.