Modelled after the 535 and 636, the DV-S737 is the first mid-range Pioneer machine that outputs progressive NTSC and interlaced PAL/NTSC video using the new 10-bit 54Mhz video D/A. The audio specifications, GUI menu system, functionality, and outward styling are all similar to earlier models, while the revamped remote control is one of the best in the field. Sadly I could not secure a European player that output RGB video via SCART, but the quality of the component video signal on my TV is only a smidgen under the mark
The front panel layout retains the Pioneer DVD player standard. On the left is a hard power button, together with an LED that glows green for ‘On’ and red for ‘Stand-by’. Typically I keep the player ‘Off’ rather than in ‘Stand-by’, unless I know I'll be using the player within the next day or two. Another four LEDs indicate progressive scan activation, noise reduction activation, digital audio data off status, and whether the fluorescent display has been turned off. As usual, the loading tray (above) and display panel (below) are located in the middle of the façade. Just to the right of the tray is a purple LED that shows whether a DVD disc has been loaded. Directly below this LED is the Open/Close/Stop button, followed by the small skip buttons, a pause button, and a large, rectangular Play button on the far end.
My player and remote control are an attractive champagne gold colour. Their finish happens to match the aluminium woofer cones in my ALR/Jordan floor-standing speakers, creating a delightful aesthetic continuity. The player and remote control also come in black.
The dominating feature of the remote is the thumbstick and jog-shuttle assembly, or "Multi-Dial" as it's called, which is located one third of the way down the unit. Using the thumbstick for menu navigation is a breeze. It is highly responsive to slight pushes in four directions, while pressing the finger pad like a button invokes the Enter function with a positive, audible click. Sony's new players (e.g. the 9000ES) use a similar device, replacing the flat four-way Enter button. This Pioneer thumb-stick is easier to control than the stiff Panasonic joystick I had on my first player. If you are thick-fingered it could be difficult to use.
Surrounding the thumbstick like a doughnut is the jog-shuttle dial, a feature I rarely used except in jog mode for scanning backwards and forwards frame-by-frame. It was exceedingly handy when looking for people wearing wrist watches in Gladiator, for instance. Not surprisingly, the shuttle functions differ from those employed by Sony remote controls:
Audio is mute while scanning. One glitch I discovered was the continued absence of audio if the shuttle dial was used to slow a fast scan down to play speed. Pressing the Play button restores the sound. I guess that the sound is meant to stay off in case you have not finished scanning. I don't remember if the manual stated this, but it may well have.
Two rows down from the jog-shuttle dial are the Stop, Play and Pause buttons. As on Pioneer's other DVD and laserdisc remote controls (I have a Pioneer 927 LD player), the Play button is large enough to find easily, making it an ideal ‘home’ position: something that any well-designed remote control should have. These buttons, and the four special function buttons above it, can be back-lit with a red glow which is activated by a tab on the left side of the remote. Ironically, because of the excellent button layout, the back-light feature is virtually redundant.
The Audio and Subtitle buttons are along the top of the remote in the middle. On the left of this row is the Display button, which is just below the Power button. I have never mistakenly turned the player off, but that is a risk. The Open/Close button is in the top right corner, and Set Up is below Display.
Although some memory recall is needed to count buttons to find Audio and Subtitle (a pet hate of mine), the remaining functions are easy to locate on this extremely intuitive remote control. The cheapness of the build, making look and feel like a Star Trek prop, is more than compensated by its user-friendliness and functionality.
Powering up the player without the remote is difficult. In Stand By, you must press Play to power up, then press the Stop/Eject button twice to open the tray. Ideally pressing Eject once should power up the unit and open the tray.
The fluorescent display can be dimmed in three steps or turned off with the remote control.
This player has been modified to play all zones automatically, with an option to manually set the zone with the remote control. Macrovision has been disabled, too, which is good news for projector users.
Audio: The standard variables are provided. This unit only allows for 96Khz Linear PCM Audio, not 192Khz. Dynamic Range Compression has three settings.
Video: Again the options are standard apart from the progressive/interlace video toggle.
General: This menu allows you to set up the screen saver, background colours, parental locking, menu modes, and so on.
S-Video looked exceedingly good. Sharpness and detail was evident in the demo DVD I ran through the player during this brief test. As expected, the THX test pattern on Fight Club showed minor colour shift between the bars. With movie software, s-video looked quite stunning, with better colour depth than the Marantz player and matching the Sony DVP-S7700.
Component video looked better again, although the improvement was minimal given that my TV converts both RGB and component signals from the SCART input socket to S-Video. As with RGB, the colour bar test pattern on Fight Club showed perfectly distinct blocks of colour, with marginally better saturation and sharp, noise-free transitions. The $15 Encel-made 1.5 metre RCA to SCART lead was connected to the AV3 SCART - the so-called DVD SCART - which has a priority for RGB and component signals. Component sync was via the composite video pin. I noticed no difference in image quality between a sync on Y, requiring just the three RCA connections, and a sync on composite, requiring a fourth RCA connection to a composite output on the Pioneer. I will compare them with Video Essentials one day.
With movie material, the component image was a notch cleaner than S-Video. The Pioneer gave a more detailed picture than the two-year-old Sony DVP-S7700 via component, and close to the Marantz RGB image. Jerry Maguire yielded more background detail, as did all other DVDs I tested. You can see for a mile down the streets of LA as Vincent and Jules discuss Amsterdam in Pulp Fiction. The costumes in Shakespeare in Love, with their infinitely detailed and multi-coloured textures, were breathtaking. Vanishing point details were also evident in The Fifth Element and The Matrix, and you could see right into the dark alleys of Blade Runner's congested cityscape. The Region 1 release of Lost in Space provided more depth and minutiae in the opening CGI action sequence, as well as the fly-by of the Proteus later on. A Bug's Life in PAL and Toy Story 1 & 2 in NTSC were both absolutely stunning. Older movies such as Fiddler on the Roof also gave up more detail behind the main subjects, although the returns were on a lower scale. The Game is stubborn about giving up shadow details. Here it looked as good as it could on a CRT device, lacking the grubbiness I noticed on an old Sony 715 I tested last year.
I spotted two component video artefacts. The first concerns a loss of detail on bright surfaces on some transfers, for example Pleasantville. S-Video suffered a similar problem on earlier players I tested, e.g. the Marantz. This might be due to being more observant now than before, but I don't remember seeing as many instances of blazing white patches in RGB. I am planning to run an RGB player to see if the problem is with the player or the TV, and the way it handles component. This difficulty was more common with material sourced from video, not film.
The second problem is the ragged appearance of some gradual tone transitions caused by headlights, sunrises, torches, etc. The dawn in Fiddler on the Roof suffers this problem. It happens on PAL and NTSC. I remember seeing it on some Sony Wega TVs playing A Bug's Life, though they are much less evident on my set up, and they do not appear on s-video. At this point I cannot determine whether this artefact appears because component is too good as resolving such gradations, or whether it's not good enough - that is, lacking colour or luminance bandwidth. I suspect the latter. I never saw it with RGB, and it happened with the Sony S7700 as well. Again, it is probably related to the way my TV handles component video, which mixes things up unevenly compared to RGB.
I would have preferred a European 737 with RGB via SCART, but Pioneer Australia are not importing them. Very frustrating. I wouldn't care if component was as good as RGB, but with my TV chassis (Q2400), which admittedly represents Loewe's first attempt at component decoding, that is not the case. The frequency of either problem occurring is rare enough to be acceptable, but I shall keep looking for answers.
Having said all that, the image resolving capabilities of this player are exemplary, thanks to the 54Mhz video D/A.
Presets: These are pre-configured for various display devices:
plasma, projector, CRT, LCD: I use the customized settings.
Pure Cinema: Engages special image processing for progressive
source material only. As far as I can tell this would only applies in progressive
mode. The options are Auto, On, Off.
White Level: Contrast.
Black Level: Brightness. This is always useful for making fine
adjustments that your TV cannot achieve.
Chroma Level: Colour saturation.
MNR: Mosquito noise reduction. From Pioneer: "Adjusts the amount
of noise reduction applied to the mosquito noise (video artifacts on the
edge of the image resulting from MPEG compression. Mosquito noise is a
distortion characterized by moving artefacts around edges. They are visible
as the fluctuations of luminance and chrominance levels especially in smooth-textured
regions. Mosquito Noise Reduction cuts the noise out to present you a consistently
smooth image." Can be turned off.
YNR: Luminance noise reduction. Can be turned off.
BRN: MPEG-2 block noise reduction. Pioneer says: "Block noise
is a visible annoyance caused by image compression. It is noticeable as
discontinuities of intensity between adjacent blocks, especially in low
detail areas of the image. New Block Noise Reduction simply makes the noise
invisible." Can be turned off.
Hue: red-green NTSC tint control.
IRE: Can be set to 0.0 or 7.5 to correct "floating black colour".
This is related to passing an absolute black level. I have it set to zero.
Mid Frequency Detail: Sharpness of "less detailed" background
elements, i.e. objects in soft focus.
High Frequency Details: Sharpness of "finely detailed" foreground
elements, i.e. objects in sharp focus.
Detail: Overall sharpness level. I have it on the minimum setting
to reduce the effect of edge enhancement.
Progressive Motion: Progressive mode only. This parameter must
engage algorithms that make pans smoother, as my 100Hz TV does, and also
affects still frame quality.
Chroma Delay: This parameter corrects any timing problems between
luminance and colour, which apparently "removes blurriness and colour smears."
I have not noticed a difference when changing this setting, but I plan
on conducting a few tests when time permits.
All of the video equalization settings are subtle, and it's good that the noise reduction settings can be disabled, which I do in the hope that fewer video circuits and processes interrupt the video signal path. This is also essential for reviewing DVDs. Annoyingly, the manual avoids explaining the effects of these controls in depth. For example, I have the Mid Frequency detail set lower than the High Frequency to retain the natural illusion of depth. Three memory spots are available for storing custom presets. The player can also remember custom presets for up to 15 DVDs.
As a CD player the Pioneer performed solidly. My Arcam 8 CD player sounded more natural, however. I also found the Sony DVP-S7700 synthetic and lifeless as a CD player, despite its excellent 24-bit resolution. Your ears my well have a different opinion.
I could not test DTS software. Linear PCM content sounded gutsy.
The Sony 9000ES is a beautiful machine, with a 12-bit 54Mhz Genesis video D/A, SACD processing (left-right outputs only, not multi-channel), and a massive 18 kg chassis. But it only outputs 96Khz DVD-A, not 192Khz, spits out NTSC progressive only, cannot have macrovision turned off, cannot have manual region selection (as far as I know), and is double the price of the Pioneer 737. For a high-level machine I'd recommend the Toshiba 900e, assuming it can handle RCE, since it also decodes DTS, Dolby Digital, and HDCD, as well as having a SCART socket for RGB output. It only has a 10-bit 54Mhz video chip, but the 10-bit / 12-bit difference is bound to be minor - but that does not stop me from wondering about how much!
Before too long, the 54Mhz video chips will replace the 27Mhz chips as the standard in low-end players.
Video options |
|
Video Digital to Analogue converters |
|
Audio |
|
Disk Compatibility | DVD, CD, VCD, CD-R, CD-RW |
Performance | |
Build Quality | |
In Operation | |
Compatibility | |
Value For Money |
Product Type: | DVD-Video, Video CD and Audio CD player |
Region: | Marked as a Zone 3 player but modified to play all regions |
Signal System: | PAL / NTSC |
Serial Number Of Unit Tested: | ULYD003162LL |
MPEG Decoder: | |
Audio Frequency Response: | 4Hz - 44kHz (DVD fs: 96Khz) |
Signal to Noise Ratio: | 115dB |
Dynamic Range: | 109dB |
Total Harmonic Distortion: | 0.001% |
Dimensions: | 420 (w) x 370 (d) x 128 (h) |
Weight: | 6.9kg |
Price: | About $1800 retail. I've seen it for $1550 and $2000 modified. |
Distributor: | Pioneer Australia |
Website: | http://www.pioneeraus.com.au |
© Rod Williams
24th March 2001
(Note that this review quotes material from the S737 manual and from
Pioneer's website.)