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Digital Drive Upsamplers, DACs, jitter, shakes and analogue withdrawals, this is it. |
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Digital Drive Upsamplers, DACs, jitter, shakes and analogue withdrawals, this is it. |
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In Reply to: My apologies... 'twas not my intention... posted by DevillEars on April 9, 2007 at 01:14:23:
Not sure about that UX-1 Mk2. I eventually dug up the following, apparently unbiased, review at "Secrets of Home Theatre" which casts some doubt on the video ability (which everyone raves about on the much less expensive Denon) but makes only passing reference to the audio. However it appears to be describing the Mk1, not the Mk2. I quote (without permission):The Teac Esoteric UX-1 Universal DVD player represents the most expensive player we’ve tested to date. I am generally not very fond of boutique players (definition: made in small quantities, sophisticated appearance, very expensive). Some consist of a rebadged mid-line player with a spruced up audio section and a pretty packaging but really nothing special in terms of performance. I was almost afraid of what I might find with this player in those regards, but thankfully, I was pleasantly surprised.
The UX-1 is an original player from the ground up. If I were to compare it to anything else design wise, it has some striking similarities to the rare Samsung HD-1000, but these are loose similarities. The player is a work of art and without a doubt the nicest looking and best built player I’ve ever seen. The entire outer shell is made of brushed aluminum, and even the tray is made of the same material. The connectors on back are enormous and as solid as anything I’ve ever used. Even the buttons on the front face plate and their backlighting would make most players envious.
But for the Benchmark, those things don’t mean much. At the end of the day, it is about video performance, and this is where boutique players very rarely, if ever, fair well. The UX-1 may be the new exception to that rule.
The UX-1 uses a Mitsubishi MPEG decoder coupled with a Genesis FLI-2310 video processing chip. Just to get the bad news out on the table; the player does suffer from the macroblocking problem commonly associated with this chip. In fact, it is probably one of the worst with the issue so far and probably only second to the previously mentioned Samsung HD-1000. Using my reference scene from A Bug’s Life, the artifacts were clearly visible and quite distracting. If you are considering this player be sure to test it out first on your display if possible, as the problem only manifests itself with certain displays and may not affect yours.
The player features component progressive outputs, via BNC connectors, and via DVI with support for 480p, 720p, and 1080i with HDCP compliant displays. It also has full support for PAL playback in these modes and another bonus, full PAL to NTSC conversion. It is very rare that a manufacturer actually tells you that they support this feature but Teac included the option in its setup menus.
Attention to detail does not stop there either. When playing back via DVI there are some nice features for set-up, including selection of RGB mode. Here you can select either PC RGB levels or Studio RGB levels. The problem is, the Studio RGB levels are set incorrectly. The engineers at Teac set the black and white levels to digital 16 and 235 appropriately, but unfortunately they cut out the head and toe room that allow for below-black and above-white content. I am working with their engineers now to resolve this issue, and they have been very responsive on trying to get the problems worked out. This is extremely rare for a high line outfit in my experience, and I applaud them on their wiliness to support their product to the utmost degree.
The Faroudja implementation is extremely good here with only one small caveat. There is no support for 2-2 processing with NTSC material. The player does however support 2-2 processing with a PAL output, which is completely appropriate. But there is a lot of 2-2 based video material authored in the NTSC format so I hope that they will add this with a future firmware.
On the core side the player is good, but not perfect. There are no signs at all of Y/C delay, and the video frequency response is superb. Via the component outputs, the white level is spot on at 100 IRE, but again the player has issues with below-black information. There is also has some pixel cropping on the left and right side of the image that is a little excessive. I am working with their engineers to get this solved.
The player has no chroma issues at all, and the chroma filters and cross color suppressor settings of the Faroudja chip all seem to be set appropriately.
Overall this is by far the best boutique player I’ve had the opportunity to test, but at this price point I wouldn’t expect anything else. It still has its shortcomings which I hope Teac works out, but its performance was far better then I expected. Stay tuned for our review on the audio performance, which is excellent.
John
Do not criticise the idiots in this world - we need them as they make the rest of us look so much better :-)
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Follow Ups
- No need to apologise - John C. - Aussie 14:59:18 04/09/07 (2)
- I'd suggest a bit more research or just buy the Denon... - DevillEars 23:12:50 04/09/07 (1)
- Good advice thanks - John C. - Aussie 20:57:19 04/10/07 (0)
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