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Brand recognition
Yamaha's newest DVD player
By Tony Davey
July 2002
The Yamaha S520 DVD player. $799
Yamaha is a brand immediately recognisable in the home theatre world. They are renowned for producing quality home theatre amplifiers and receivers.
It is no surprise that when Yamaha brought out a DVD player, that the quality of the player would match the rest of their product range, both in quality of performance and appearance. This statement does however have a “but” to it though; the S520 has been built on the chassis of Phillips although to say that this is a “rebadged” Phillips player is unfair.
The front is black plastic, and would readily sit comfortably along side any Yamaha amplifier. There is a limited number of buttons on the front and a dimly lit display (I applaud Yamaha for this, my Philips is far too bright during movie playback, and can be distracting). The tray mechanism has a feeling of solidity to it, opening and closing with authority and smoothness.
The Phillips mechanics becomes apparent in several of the functions of the S520. The player utilises Phillips “two tier” on screen display menu and the remote commands are the same (which meant my Phillips DVD955 remote operated the Yamaha S520).
The S520 has all the connections you come to expect from any modern day DVD player. Video is passed by S-Video, Component video and composite video connections (I would certainly recommend using at least the S-Video connection f possible). Audio is passed by coaxial and optical connections for digital output or via line out stereo connections for analogue.
Video performance
Playing virtually anything on my projector is an easy way to determine
the quality of a component, or source material. The 2.1m horizontal screen
size magnifies weaknesses. What may look passable on a direct view television
suddenly looks disastrous.
First impressions count, and the S520 certainly left me with very good impression.
I played a mix of good and bad source material, from recent blockbusters such as A Knights Tale and Star Wars TPM, to some truly testing discs (Gladiator, renowned for its outstanding picture quality, also has an excellent mix of dark scenes and Titanic, a disc not renowned for its quality picture, but a good example of getting good from bad).
The pictures showed an immense amount of detail, with the picture virtually leaping off the screen. With A Kinghts Tale colours were solid with no evidence of colour bleed and the edges on the picture were as sharp as I had seen.
Even discs with a less than perfect picture (Titanic and Star Wars TPM) had a near film-like look to the picture (well, for Titanic, as near film-like as a non anamorphic disc can).
Gladiator is a great disc for testing shadow detail on a player. Lesser players will simply show black areas in many of the scenes in Gladiator. The first time Maximus enters the arena is an excellent example of the shadow detail portrayed from the S520. When the camera pans across the Gladiators waiting to go up the tunnel, the picture can have a mix of “black heads”. The S520 showed through the actual faces, and you could see the anxiety.
Audio performance
Using the player to play CD’s on left me initially confused. On first
listening, I interpreted the sound as somewhat harsh. Further listening
revealed not harshness, just simply more life and detail than what I was
used to.
Certainly this is no audiophile CD player, it’s not intended to be however, if you main interest rests in movies, then the time spent listening to CD’s with this player shouldn’t disappoint.
For surround sound, again the player performed admirably.
Sounds were exactly where they should be and had real dynamic extension.
Neil Finn’s Seven Worlds Collide concert DVD is a fantastic
example of surround sound. The music and vocals from concert is spread
across the front sound stage, with surrounds used for crowd ambience.
The S520 was open and had tremendous presence to the surround sound. It
gave me the impression I was actually at the St James.
Summary
The S520 has everything you could want in its price bracket. Audio playback
is good, with bright and detailed sound, video playback is good, portraying
a sharp image with excellent colour definition and shadow detail.
The S520 is multi-zoned and did not present any difficulties with R1 and R2 discs. The S520 also has a NTSC/Pal converter built it, so those who wish to watch NTSC discs on their PAL TV are catered for here.
If you find yourself looking in the sub $1000 bracket for a DVD player, give the Yamaha S520 a run, you wont be disappointed.
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