Digital Trends

Samsung DVD-HD960 June 18th, 2007 | by Justin Whitaker

Out of the Box Setup

Out of the box setup of the HD960 is extremely simple and should only take a maximum of 5 minutes to get it up and running. With the included HDMI cable, connecting the player to your TV is completed with only one cable connection. The player also includes component video output, S-Video, and RCA (red, white and yellow) connection options if your TV does not have an HDMI or DVI input. The HD960 also has all of the standard digital audio options covered with optical and coaxial audio outputs included. I chose to use the HDMI output for the video connection to my TV and the optical audio output for connection to my AV receiver. After getting the cables connected, I skipped all of the usual setup screens by inserting a DVD and immediately pressing “Play.” The EZView and HDMI SEL buttons on the remote allowed me to quickly find the optimal resolution and aspect ratio for my TV: 1080i with progressive scan enabled and 16:9 Screen Fit aspect ratio. This method of trial-and-error setup makes it simple to find the right settings for viewing DVDs, and the HD960 gets a big “thumbs up” in the ease-of-use department.

Performance Testing

To test how the DVD-HD960 performed, I carefully viewed a half dozen movies ranging from the old stand-by’s for action and drama — Lord of the Rings: Twin Towers and The Matrix: Reloaded — to a couple of romantic comedies: Along Came Polly and Fever Pitch. The action movies served as a thorough test of the video processing limits of the DVD player, and the romantic comedies served only to gain approval for the DVD player from my significant other (because, let's face it, unless you tend to watch DVDs with only a male audience, the DVD player you choose will most definitely see its fair share of comedic and touching moments built around the trials and tribulations of on-screen character relationships). Since the image quality differences from one romantic comedy movie to the next are inconsequential, the action movies formed the foundation for my performance testing. 

Starting off with the initial battle scene in The Matrix: Reloaded, in which the character Trinity is fighting for her life and plunges off a high-rise building, the detail level produced by the HD960 was impressive. Each bullet fired from Trinity's gun had clear detail; the images had no jagged lines, and even the outline of the bullets traveling through the air was clearly visible. As the movie unfolded and Neo and the crew were battling the machines during the highway chase scene, the video processing power of the player was once again evident as the special effects looked absolutely stunning in upconverted 1080i resolution. I saw no uneven lining around the images even during the fastest moving scenes, and the DCDi Faroudja chip provided outstanding picture quality.

Diving right into the massive scale battle scenes in Lord of the Rings: Two Towers provided an equally impressive experience. The color saturation was not up to par with true HD content, but the result was a big improvement over the regular DVD 480p resolution. There were a few fight sequences where the images had a slight graininess and the difference between true 720p or 1080i content and the upconverted DVD content was readily visible, but the average viewer will notice this only if he or she has watched a movie multiple times and is specifically looking for these types of picture quality differences. I was pleasantly surprised to find that as the arrows flew and troops advanced, I saw no ghosting issues or artifacts as a result of the upconversion. Overall, the upconverted picture quality of the HD960 player was outstanding in all of the movies viewed during the testing.

A few additional features of the HD960 (and one drawback) are also noteworthy. One of the subtle and not overly apparent features is its quiet operation. The noise level while playing DVDs is imperceptible, and home theater buffs will appreciate the lack of disc spin startup noise or other irritating audible noises during playback. A not-so-impressive feature is the relatively slow load time — it took at least 6-7 seconds longer to load a DVD than other DVD players I have tested. However, the auto play feature, which automatically loads and plays a DVD once the disc tray is closed, helped to alleviate any frustration caused by the sluggish load time.