Home Theater Review

Without this publication. as a reference, it's easy to see how the public can be confused when buying new consumer electronic gear. There are plenty of new products on store shelves with only a salesperson or printed description to show the way to a good buy. That's why so many people become brand loyal when they find a good product; or at least they seek out a name they know.

One of the most recognizable names in the electronics industry is Yamaha. Since building their first Hi-Fi player in 1954, Yamaha has earned an excellent reputation as one of the world's leading manufacturers of audio and home cinema systems, not to mention everything else they produce--like musical instruments, motorcycles and even bathtubs.

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Unique Features - The Yamaha DVD-S530 comes in an attractive silver finish case that is very stylish. A black finish is available in some areas if silver isn't to your liking or doesn't match other equipment. The design of the front panel is both handsome and functional, with a power button to the left and five functional controls to the right of a center mounted disc tray. An orange colored LED display is located below the disc tray and is brightly lit for easy reading up close. From across the room, however, the thin orange numbers are often tough to view even when using eyeglasses or the proverbial squint method. The display has a three mode presentation of CD text for showing a CD title, the artist's name and title of the track.

This player has the versatility to play a multitude of discs. People longing to burn their own music or video discs can use a computer to make 12 hour long CDs with MP3 music files or home wedding videos on DVD+R discs to view from the comforts of a sofa. Video and audio playback is enhanced by a number of technologies not always included in DVD players in this price range. For instance, the DVD-S530 reads a disc using a 10-bit video D/A converter and a 96 kHz, 24-bit audio D/A converter for improved quality picture and sound. Another technology Yamaha included in the DVD-S530 is Chroma Upsampling Error Correction. Simply stated, when a DVD player decodes an MPEG bitstream, often horizontal streaks or jagged edges appear in the video output from an affliction known as the chroma bug. Yamaha has greatly reduced this undesirable characteristic that affects brightly colored objects. The end result is a clean looking picture, thanks to a better process of decoding MPEG information. The casual movie viewer may not recognize a chroma error but, once pointed out, it's an annoyance better eliminated.

The video quality from a disc is affected by many variables. Production standards, the manufacturing process and even room lighting can turn a theatrical affair into a boring feature. The DVD-S530's Picture Fine Tuning can compensate for levels of saturation, brightness and contrast for optimal viewing. What's more, a screen saver is built into the player that is activated when in pause mode. Once paused, the screen dims by 75% to protect the display.

An onscreen menu bar using a graphical user interface (GUI) helps control the operations using icons for adjustments. From the onscreen menu button on the remote, a menu bar overlay appears on the screen with a teal blue background. Three separate menu bars can be toggled to control general operations. The first menu bar controls preferences, subtitle settings and color & sound modes. A second menu manages video playback such as slow motion, frame advance and camera angles. The final menu bar displays title, track and time search roles. The result of the Yamaha version of on-screen menus is a quick and user-friendly system of tackling convenience features with a pleasant looking, easy to read display.

Click to Page 2 for Installation, Evaluation, and the Final Take.