Noriko DVD-390K DVD Player

What's In The Box

    According to the distributors of this player, Megapower, the player will be bundled with a selection of two DVDs and three Video CDs from the following lists, available at purchase;

DVD - Discipline (R-Rated), The Rear Arrangers (R-Rated), Sleaze (R-Rated), Desert Moon (R-Rated), Naked Scandal 1 (R-Rated), Lessons In Love (R-Rated), The Supreme Winner, 1997 Hong Kong Centennial.

Video CD - Armed For Action, Black Forest, Capital Punishment, Passage To Hell, Fire Back, Fighting Spirit, Commando Invasion, Blood Chase, Top Target, Brave Girl.

Front Panel

    The model that I received for evaluation was in basic black, and was a very attractive looking player. It had Karaoke functions, which was reflected in the contents of the front panel.

    The left side of the front panel carries the power on-off switch as well as the level controls and microphone inputs for the Karaoke function.

    The center of the front panel carries the disc tray and the fluorescent display. The disc tray does not fully eject when the tray is opened, and remains partially inside the player. It would be easy to scratch DVDs whilst attempting to insert them, as they need to be very carefully inserted in order to avoid contact with the player's case or the tray. I would consider this a minor design fault of the player.

    The right side of the front panel has the tray open/close button, and the most basic DVD navigation buttons; chapter skip forwards and backwards, play, pause/step and stop. Also present on this side of the front panel are pitch adjustments for the Karaoke function. I was hoping that these would allow for the adjustment of the 4% speed-up in audio on PAL DVDs, but these controls only affect the analogue output from Karaoke DVDs and VCDs.

Rear Panel

    The rear panel of this player continues the relatively spartan approach of the front panel. All essential connectors are there, however.

    Video output consists of both an S-Video connector and a composite video connector. There is no component nor RGB output.

    Digital audio output consists of both a coaxial digital audio output and an optical digital audio output.

    Rounding off the rear panel connectors are a left and right analogue audio output.

Remote Control

    I found that this remote control was relatively fussy about the angle at which it would operate, but its operating range and angle was certainly still quite acceptable. The remote is ergonomically-shaped, and fitted into the palm of my hand comfortably. The buttons themselves are a little hard to push, but they are easy to get used to.

    There were two minor annoyances in regards to operating the remote control. Firstly, the arrow keys and the menu key are marked in dark red - completely impossible to see in the near-darkness of the typical home theatre environment. Secondly, the only key that the player would respond to from stand-by mode was the Power key. A much more sensible approach would have been to allow the Open/Close and the Play keys to also activate the player.

Video Playback

    So, how did it perform on the actual playback of DVDs? Surprisingly well, actually. This player is no slouch in the video output department at all. I watched several movies from my reference collection on this player via both the S-Video and the composite video connectors, and found it to be the video equal of my Pioneer DV-505. There were subtle differences in the picture quality - the Noriko player had ever-so-slightly more colour saturation apparent - but these would certainly not be apparent on anything but the closest of inspections.

    The manual and the player itself are marked as Zone 4, however I had no problems playing back various Zone 1 and Zone 4 DVDs.

    The fast foward and fast reverse functions are quite smooth, and both x2 and x4 speeds are available in either direction.

    A nice touch is the implementation of the reverse chapter skip function, which will skip to the chapter before the current one rather than to the start of the current chapter, as some other DVD players do.

    I tried the player's performance on several RSDL discs, and was surprised to find that many of them showed no pause whatsoever at the layer change - a remarkable feat considering the fact that many other DVD players will show at least a split-second pause at the layer change.

    The manual expressly warns against using CD-Rs in this DVD player, so I did not test this. Neither did I test its compatibility with Video CD, though the manual did state that the player is compatible with this format.

    The player is not capable of performing any standards conversion between NTSC and PAL, so PAL discs must be watched on a PAL-compatible display device and NTSC discs must be watched on an NTSC-compatible display device.

On Screen Display

Audio Playback

    I found that a significant amount of the time my Denon AVD-2000 Dolby Digital processor would not immediately lock on to the signal coming from the coaxial digital output of the Noriko DVD player, and I would have to change the input channel of the processor away from the DVD player and then back again to get the Dolby Digital signal to be recognized, after which time there was no audio problem.

    DTS output is not supported by this DVD player.

Disc Compatibility Tests

Pros

• The price is right!
• Auto multi-zone out of the box.
• Plays all discs in audio sync.
• Very smooth RSDL layer changes.

Cons

• No DTS audio output.
• No component or RGB video output.
• The disc tray is likely to cause some scratches to DVDs.
• The remote is a little clunky in operation and feel.
• Minor menu glitches on Village Roadshow DVDs.
• The Digital Audio stream was not always recognized by my Dolby Digital processor.
• Won't play CD-Rs.
• Won't convert NTSC to PAL or vice versa.

Overall

Performance
Build Quality
Compatibility
Value For Money

© Michael Demtschyna
22nd October 1999
Amended 19th November 1999
Amended 19th February 2000