Yamaha DVD-S657 and Pioneer DV-686

Universally yours

By Michael Wong

October 2005

Yamaha DVD-S657, $499. Pioneer DV-686, $299.

This month we continue our odyssey amongst universal disc players and look at the other end of the market; the new Yamaha DVD-S657 and Pioneer’s successor to the very popular DV-676, the DV-686. Both products reside in the “very affordable” category. The Yamaha is $499, a far cry from the heady $2499 DVD-S2300 reviewed in 2004. The Pioneer is an astounding $299 for a machine that has all the features (and, one hopes, performance) of the old 676 for $100 less.

Attempts were made to obtain a third player, Samsung’s latest HDMI equipped universal but the local importers proved to be less than enthusiastic to requests for a review sample.

Slim, fashionable, full featured

The Yamaha is the larger of the two, nicely finished in traditional black. The (relatively) sturdy disc tray is positioned on the left, on the right we have an easily read display panel and indicator lights showing the type of disc being played. Controls are limited to power on/off, tray open/close, play, pause and stop.

The rear has RCA outputs for stereo and the on-board 5.1 decoders, composite/S-Video/component video output, coaxial and optical digital outputs, all neatly grouped according to function.

The Pioneer is flashier looking in silver with an angled front panel featuring a blacked out section where the central disc tray hides behind a folding door. Front controls are more comprehensive than the Yamaha with main transport (including track access) buttons and buttons to enable navigation of on-screen disc menus without the remote. The display panel is a bare-bones time display only, with no format indicator, the only clue is a quick flash of disc type during initial disc reading. The rear carries the same connections as the Yamaha with the connectors all lumped in one group with the exception of the digital outputs, which reside next to the detachable power cord.

Both machines playback all the popular small silver disc audio and video formats; audio CD, CD-R, CD-RW, Picture CD, VCD, DVD in all it’s varieties (except DVD-RAM) including DVD-Audio, SACD plus computer orientated files like DiVX, MP3, WMA and JPEG. Additionally, the Yamaha and Pioneer both have on-board Dolby/DTS decoders with analog 5.1 audio outputs. The Yamaha also has switchable 24 bit/96 kHz audio upsampling. On the video side both are fully multi-zoned for DVD-Video and also allow the user to manually set the player to output PAL/NTSC or leave the player to it’s own devices and output the video in it’s native colour format. Both also have the option of progressive scan video output.

Neither has a digital video output.

Painless to setup…

Initial setup was easily done via simple onscreen menus, largely without recourse to the instruction manuals. The usual universal player setup proviso applies; these units must be connected to a video monitor so you can follow the on-screen menus. Once you have established your preferences, the players can be used without a monitor.

…quirky ergonomics

Firing each player up revealed foibles unique to each player.

Popping a disc into the Yamaha was usually a straight forward case of pushing the tray open button on the player as there is no open/close button on the remote. Initial loading of the disc is about as slow as you can get. Once the disc is up and spinning (silently), selecting tracks by the remote turned into a hit and miss affair. Sometimes it worked, half the time it didn’t. The same 50/50 hit rate applied to getting discs out of the machine, sometimes a single push, and sometimes multiple stabs at the open/close button.

Other remote functions were met with instant response. Perhaps this is a consequence of Yamaha basing the 657 on a Philips chassis, complete with iffy Philips operating software? The Yamaha’s onscreen menu system is exactly the same (except for the obvious change from Philips to Yamaha logo) as the Philips DVP720SA.

The Pioneer’s operation was quirk-free. Disc loading was not as quick as a dedicated CDP but much quicker than the Yamaha, the only annoyance being that the transport is quite noisy, more so than the 676. This time the remote worked as it should with instant responses but accompanied by audible mechanical noise.

Music first

Music comes first in my household so it was off to my listening room where the Yamaha and Pioneer were installed in my Krell/Magnepan music system. Connections were via the players’ dedicated stereo outputs.

The Yamaha was instantly listenable with a warm, mellifluous sound that made music inviting and enjoyable. From bottom to top we get nicely rounded bass, with good drive and definition if not ultimate extension, a transparent and smooth midrange, topped by gently rolled off highs. Soundstaging was a little smaller than life but with good dimensionality and slightly foreshortened depth. Dynamics were good.

Switching to DVD-Audio and SACD brought modest but clearly discernable improvements. DVD-Audio discs highlighted precise imaging and greater dynamics, SACD a greater sense of air and ease to playback.

The above was with the upsampling off. Turning it on reduced overall sound quality. While the highs improved in extension and quality, the midrange body and bass was emasculated, leaving a taut, skeletal representation.

The 686 shares the 676’s lively, upbeat, natural performance. Tonally there isn’t quite the well-rounded sound of the 676 or the richness of the Yamaha. Highs were good and kept under control most of the time, mids were clean, bass was taut and rhythmic.
Spatially the soundfield was wide but with a two-dimensional flavour not heard on the 676. Moving to high resolution discs improved things slightly but the underlying character didn’t change much. Ultimately the new 686 wasn’t quite as outstanding as the earlier 676.

Dim the lights, heat up the popcorn

Being primarily DVD players, some time was spent with the Yamaha and Pioneer in a home theatre system. Both players can output progressive scan video but the best results were obtained by feeding interlaced component video to my Pioneer plasma and letting the plasma’s box of tricks work it’s magic.

Biggest surprise (or maybe not?) was that the 686’s picture does not look quite as good as the 676. The 676 was sharp and detailed with good colour saturation. The 686 is pretty close but introduces a very small amount of video grain and noise with slightly muted colour levels. Movie sound via digital coax was good and clearly showed the quality losses in compressed audio formats like Dolby Digital and DTS.

As with the audio playback, the Yamaha showed similar video performance gains over the Pioneer. Sharp, noiseless, high quality pictures that makes every DVD a pleasure to watch.

Both are excellent value…

And both are as versatile as a modern universal player should be.

The Yamaha is an excellent performer, well built but hampered by operational idiosyncrasies. The Pioneer while not quite as capable in performance or aesthetics was the nicer machine to use and comes at a price that is impossible to ignore. However it seems maintaining the 676’s fine performance at a much reduced price was too big an ask. The 676 remains the king of budget universal disc players.