You know, I've never been a fan of SONY, let alone SONY DVD Players, or SONY CD Players. However, SONY's ES (Elevated Standard) series isn't your ordinary SONY shitbox stuff...

The SONY ES stuff is really well built and although it was a huge leap of faith, I've added the Sony DVP-NC555ES 5 Disc DVD Changer to the Futurelooks Reference Audio System. This player will allow me to test the benefit of both AUDIO and VIDEO products. This player supports Sony's SACD (Super Audio CD) format, regular Redbook CD's, and most DVD formats. Special circuity inside the unit also allows the unit to go from DVD player, to completely CD by shutting off the VIDEO PORTION of the unit, and the display, thus allowing the true audio quality to shine through.

Retail of this unit is: $599.99 US, or around $999.99 CDN

I get it next week... Can't wait! :D

Look for a review of this unit, including an article covering the whole Futurelooks Reference Audio System coming shortly!

Oh, and if anyone is interested, I've got a Panasonic CV52 5 Disc DVD Changer for sale ;)

Tee hee... DVD Changer is sold! :D

Now on with the Sony ES goodness!

Did you import from the States? Or buy locally? I can't find anyone in my area that sells these. Not even sure if they're in Canada yet.

Kev

You're right. It isn't. I had to go through US channels. If you're wondering if it is worth it, wait till I get mine, and I will find out for us both ;)

Firewire,

Just wondering if you've had a chance to review your new Sony DVP-NC555ES yet? I'm considering buying this model, and would be very interested in feedback on it.

Also, since information on this model is still pretty sparse, others interested can read Sony's documentation at:

* Technical information on the ES line of DVD players (1.42MB, 53pp, PDF):
http://www.docs.sony.com/release/DVPNC555ES_TWP.pdf

* Manual for the DVP-NC555ES (1.73MB, 88pp, PDF):
http://www.docs.sony.com/release/DVPNC555ES.pdf

James Aylard

Here's a bit...

I was very wary of getting a player that combined Video and Audio functions because traditionally, DVD players sound like crap when playing audio. I was not disappointed with this unit.

The unit is extremely well built, and very heavy. I also liked the fact that all VIDEO functions can be shut completely off as not to affect the AUDIO performance. Even the LCD screen, which sometimes can cause noise in the audio output, was able to be turned off.

I am happy with my choice so far, and you'll hear a bit about it when I use it to test out the Parasound HALO 2 channel system I'm reviewing.

Parasound HALO P3 Pre Amp and A 23 Power Amp for thsoe audio folks out there:

http://www.futurelooks.com/display.php?i=218&p=1

Sorry. Didn't talk much about the DVP-NC555ES. I'll try to get around to reviewing it shortly.

Sorry. Didn't talk much about the DVP-NC555ES. I'll try to get around to reviewing it shortly.

Firewire,

Do you still plan to offer a more detailed review of the NC555ES? Local stores don't seem to demo this unit, so I'd like as much information as you are willing to offer.

Thanks.

Did you have any specific questions? Maybe I can try to answer them here for you. I do plan on reviewing it, but not until I finish reviewing all the other stuff that is ahead of it. Since I bought it for me, then pretty much EVERYTHING is ahead of it unfortunately :(

But fire away, any questions you might have ;)

Firewire,

Understood: duty before pleasure. But since you asked, I do have a few questions about it:

1) Do you know whether it displays the chroma upsampling error? And, if so, how obvious is the error?

2) Aside from the chroma bug, how would you rate the picture quality? Would you be willing to compare its PQ to a comparable unit that has the Faroudja DCDi chip?

3) Are there any usability quirks or annoyances?

4) What do you like most about the unit? And what do you like least?

I'm going to answer number one for you, but tune in later for other answers as I have a chance to think about them.

I tossed in my copy of "Monsters Inc." and forwarded to the scene where Mike and Sully are on their way to work together and they pass Mike's car. For an Interlaced Picture (sorry, no money for progressive scan yet) I had no problem telling that there was no bug there. There was no streaking of the red and no strange jagginess that I could spot out of the ordinary on an interlaced display.

It was smooth as can be based on examples I've been given where the chroma bug did exist. So if it is there, I squinted hard, played it slow mo back and forth, and couldn't spot it. Hope that helps.

I'll answer some more later...

Firewire,

My understanding of the chroma bug is that it is much more likely to be visible in progressive scan mode, especially on a large screen (of course!). Hopefully the guys at hometheaterhifi.com will soon be able to give one of the new Sony ES models a thorough chroma bug workover for a definitive answer, but that you saw no trace of a problem in interlaced mode is reassuring.

I look forward to hearing more of your answers. Thanks for the feedback.

Yeah, I'm sorry I don't have a progressive scan projector to test it on, cuz that sure would be sweet. However, from what I have observed, the picture is extremely good compared to other DVD players I've seen from other manufacturers. I find the picture very stable.

I think the Panasonic RP62 had the Farouda DCDi chipset and though I haven't seen that machine in action in a while, I just get a feeling that the Sony has a much more stable and sharp picture. I'd have to look at both again back to back I guess to really know. Sorry.

From a user perspective, I notice that there are a huge number of options for tweaking settings in SONY ES style. This will either appease you or annoy you I guess. If you like to tweak things out, this is definitely the machine. It even has an option to disable the video circuitry when playing CD's which I find very audiophile and very cool indeed.

I guess if you're one of those people that just want to throw in the disc and play it, then this might be a bit of overkill in the features department, but if you like to tweak, then yeah, this machine is way cool.

Since I have other people using it in the house, I haven't had to answer any questions about using it, so I guess regular folks will find it as easy to use as I do, as long as they aren't funking with the setup menus. Hope that gives you a good snapshot of the machine. I really like it myself, and the audio quality is definitely good for an all in one machine. It sounds a lot better than my standalone 5 disc SACD player (775 was the model number I believe), and definitely looks better than the Panasonic CV52 (which doesn't have the chroma bug either, confirmed) that I owned.

Firewire,

Thanks for the additional feedback. From the Secrets review, it appears that the NC555ES only has a chroma bug in very limited circumstances (Chroma, 3-2 Alt. Flags and Chroma, 4:2:0 ICP). Overall, the NC555ES fielded a relatively modest score of 70 -- the best ever for a Sony DVD player, but somewhat weak compared to, say, the 87 earned by the Denon DVM-2815. Of course, the Secrets review is highly technical and does not account for build quality, usability, features, and so forth.

One question that I have for you, after reading the Secrets review, is about the lag in layer switching. The Secrets site clocked a 4-second lag, which would be absolutely agonizing (although that figure is the result of some kind of torture test that is not typical of the average DVD title). What has your experience been with layer-change lag and the NC555ES?

James Aylard

4 seconds? That's insane. I'd like to know what test they are throwing at it for that to happen. Let me know maybe which title they are using and I'll try to rent it and see if it exhibits the same behaviour.

As far as lag during playback, I have noticed the odd occasional disc to hang for a second before switching chapters. I think this happened in Pirates of the Caribbean in one single chapter that I don't remember. It was long enough for me to notice, but not long enough for me to think there was something wrong and make note of where it was.

The test is described as a "worst-case layer change" on the Secrets web site (http://www.hometheaterhifi.com/volume_10_1/dvd-benchmark-guide-to-progressive-scan-shootout-1-2003.html). The details:

"Using the Microsoft WHQL test disc, high bit rate title roll.

"Notes: This is by design a worst-case layer change, involving a long seek across the disc. The layer change also occurs at the maximum bitrate. However, we find that it correlates well with the speed of all kinds of layer changes.
To get to this test on WHQL:

[list=1]
From the Main Menu, Choose Decode
From the Decode menu, choose High Bit Rate
From the High Bit Rate menu, choose Highest
From the Highest menu, choose Title Roll
[/list=1]

"The layer change will occur when you see "Warner Brothers" reach the center of the screen."

Truly a "torture test".

James Aylard

Hmm... WHQL Test disc. I don't think I have one of those kicking around. We'll have to try something else.

I had a chance to drop by the local Good Guys! store this evening and demo the DVP-CX777ES, Sony's 400-disc mega-changer and beefy big brother of the NC555ES. Both units share most of their critical electronics in common, and theoretically should handle DVDs comparably.

Viewing The Lion King SE DVD, I found the picture quality of the CX777ES remarkable. Even on a very large Sony rear-projection LCD display, the picture was nicely detailed and diagonal lines were gently smoothed (of course, it's possible that the monitor added its own enhancement to the picture).

My primary point of concern was how smoothly the CX777ES would perform the layer change, which occurred in chapter 3 of the film. And I have to admit that I was disappointed: I tested the layer change twice, and both times the picture hung for a second or more, and when it began playing the second layer the audio stuttered slightly.

Since my old DVD player is now dead (the reason I am in the market for a new player), I couldn't readily compare the performance of the CX777ES with my old familiar unit. However, I did compare its performance with a couple of software DVD players that I have installed on my PC (the InterActual player and InterVideo WinDVD). Both of these players -- which presumably take advantage of the PC's RAM and possibly a hard drive cache to minimize the impact of the layer change -- switched layers so smoothly with my copy of The Lion Kind SE that I hardly noticed anything had happened. Perhaps not a fair comparison (my disc vs. the store's, DVD player vs. PC player), but shouldn't an $800 DVD player, having DVD performance as its sole purpose, handle the layer change at least as effortlessly?

One more caveat that may be in the favor of the CX777ES (or may be against it, depending on how one interprets the matter): earlier in chapter 3, the player hit a portion of the disc that it apparently could not read, forcing it to skip several seconds of the film. The disc belonged to the store, and my presumption is that it was either dirty or scratched. Perhaps there was a smudge or a scratch at the point of layer change, as well -- or perhaps the player has a hard time handling discs with mild flaws.

Hopefully I'll have another chance to demo the CX777ES (or the NC555ES) with some discs of my own. But I am curious to know whether others who own or have demoed either of these two players have had similar experiences. My experience has placed a likely purchase back into the questionable column.

Let me play around with that. I WAS going to go for the 777, but I felt it too clunky and in the past, when I've listened to jukebox style changers, audio quality was compromised a bit. Didn't sound right to me. That's why I went for the 5 disc. It DOES sound better than my 775 SACD 5 Disc changer though and usually DVD players sound pretty crumby compared to their Audio Only cousins.

We'll have to try with another disc. I didn't get Lion King SE, but I DO have Finding Nemo. Let me know if you can check it with that and I'll try to see if I can replicate the results with my unit.

This morning I had the opportunity to visit a different electronics store, Anderson's (http://www.andersonstv.com/), a small electronics chain in the San Francisco Bay Area, to further test the Sony DVP-CX777ES DVD mega-changer.

First, as an aside, I received about the worst customer treatment at Anderson's that I have ever received anywhere. When I asked to demo the CX777ES with a few of my own discs (I had called just minutes before and had been told that would be fine), a pained and quizzical look darkened the salesman's face -- about the look I would expect if I had just asked to urinate on the showroom carpet. “You want to do what? Why?” he questioned. I repeated my request, and he repeated his pained expression. “This isn’t a good day for that,” he protested, predicting that the nearly empty store would soon be a hive of activity.

Against his better judgment, it seemed, he walked me over to the cabinet where the CX777ES was housed. He continued to question why I wanted to demo the unit, asking about my current television, and arguing that it wouldn’t compare to the widescreen Trinitrons that flanked the player. When I said that I hadn’t realized that my request was that unusual, he muttered something under his breath. When I asked him to repeat it, he said he thought that my request was “pretty weird”. Okay.

All of that, and I never did ask to urinate on the carpet. I didn’t even ask to soil the sofa. Needless to say, Anderson’s will not be getting my business, regardless of which DVD player I ultimately choose.

But, as I said, I did get to demo the CX777ES for a second time – and, as at Good Guys!, without the unit’s remote, which made the demo very difficult. Again, I tested The Lion King SE DVD (my own copy this time, of course). And again, I found the picture fabulous, but the layer change inexplicably abrupt. I also tested the widescreen version of Finding Nemo, but it appears that the entire movie is encoded on a single layer of the disc, with the extras (curiously including things like the FBI Warning and the THX intro) on the other layer. So that didn’t help. And when I opened up The Fellowship of the Ring Extended Edition, I found that I had never put the discs back in the case from when I had moved them to my disk-keeper awhile back. I recall a slight pause on disc 2 with my old player, so I would have had something to compare the CX777ES to when I tested it. Oh, well.

All-in-all, the demo was only minimally helpful, but it again underscored the layer-change sluggishness of the unit. Interestingly, in the detailed “white paper” Sony has produced on its ES DVD player line (http://www.docs.sony.com/release/DVPCX777ES_TWP.pdf) makes no mention of any technology implemented to smooth the layer change (some players, such as the Denons, use either a 2, 4, or 8MB memory cache to buffer the data stream during layer transition). So it may be that the Sony players have none, which would be an inexplicable oversight, in my opinion.

I would still be interested in feedback from Firewire or others who have, or have demo’d, either the NC555ES or the CX777ES to get a broader sense for the layer-change lag exhibited by these units. But since the NC555ES failed the Secrets layer-change test with the worst score of any of the units just tested, I am not very hopeful.

While I may be a graduate student, electrical engineer, and natural gadget freak, I am very new to the high-end home theater stuff, so I don't have the tools and terminology down as well as you guys...

But I do have a 555ES at home, and I love it. I had bought a sub-$100 progressive scan Sony player when I got my system. I was trying to save a few bucks on the DVD player. I couldn't stand the picture quality, so I upgraded to the 555ES. The picture quality is absolutely superb, and although I have no basis of comparison for SACD playback, the sound is amazing. It has a level of detail I've never heard before. My only dislike is the volumes of advanced settings it has, which aren't documented in the user manual, not that I've ever seen a good manual. I love knobs to turn, but it makes it very hard to tune a TV and the DVD at the same time when there's knobs on both ends.

So I can help answer some questions for you, as long as they're not too deeply technical (like I have no idea what the chroma bug is -- I'm sure I could learn it quickly enough but I'm new to this stuff).

As far as the layer change, it is the only thing I have found to complain about. It's very noticable. On most discs, I have probably a 1-1.5 second delay. It's very noticable, and I found myself frequently checking the counter on the player to make sure it wasn't a skip. But speaking of skips, I have had very good luck with this player and crappy rented discs. It handled some real mangled ones without any problems, while my old player needed the disc buffed and shined every time.

Even with the layer change, I love the image and sound quality, and I have no regrets about the unit.

kcamera,

Thanks for your feedback, which confirms my sense of both the NC555ES and the CX777ES: they are top-notch for picture quality, sound quality, and build quality, but they exhibit a disappointingly obvious layer change.

BTW, I'm a newbie to all of this, as well, and am learning as I go. It's good to see next-door neighbor chiming in.

Have to agree with the overabundant amount of features. Someone can get totally lost in tweaking it out.

As far as the layer change goes, I've had a chance to play a few more discs. There is a definite pause of 1 - 2 seconds on some discs during changes. Pirates of the Carribean had a bit of this. Seabiscuit too.

Overall though, Picture quality and sound quality are definitely stellar. I've been watching a lot more movies lately and have finally found time to listen to the audio quality more. On my two channel Parasound powered system, it definitely puts my 775 SACD player to shame.

And welcome to Futurelooks Kcamera! ;)

Sony ES model products are very good.

Thanks for the welcome... good to be here ;)

I guess this would be a good thread to keep alive with some more discussions about the player. I am wondering what settings other folks are using if they've taken some time to tweak.

The ones I have the most questions about are "black level" in the settings menu and the Precision Cinema Progressive setting on the second page of the display menu (the one with standard, dynamic, and cinema options). I am pretty sure the black level setting is for choosing whether or not to use "blacker than black" luminance, and depends on whether or not your display supports it. I have changed this setting, and it makes no difference whatsoever when I am in progressive mode, but in interlaced mode I definitely need it.

As far as the PCP setting, right now I have it on Cinema 1. When I switch it, I can clearly see some kind of difference in the picture levels (not sure what it would affect: black level, white level, gamma, etc.). But I don't know what is "optimal" or if it really makes no difference because the TV adjustments could compensate for it.

I have an Avia disc, so I guess I could try each of the PCP settings and see if I get better resolution or gamma.

YEs. LEts keep this thread alive so that we can log what we learn so that others may also learn from our experiences :thumb:

Discussion of High Quality Audio formats (SACD / DVD-A) has been moved here:

http://www.futurelooks.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=8560

Looks like we are the number one spot for discussion on this machine according to Google:

DVP-NC555ES - Google Search

Wow, number one on Google for the DVP-NC555ES. That's great for everyone with a DVP-NC555ES who wants to learn more about the DVP-NC555ES, or for people who don't have a DVP-NC555ES to see if they want to buy a DVP-NC555ES. I know when I was looking for info on my DVP-NC555ES, this was one of the first places I found on the DVP-NC555ES. The only thing about the DVP-NC555ES I'd still like to find out is what people with a DVP-NC555ES know about the picture settings (dynamic, cinema, and all the advanced memory options).

That should help stay on top of Google for a while ;)

did someone compare with yamaha cx1

Since everyone seems to worship "Secrets of Home Theater and High Fidelity" I thought you'd want to see this...

Hello gang, I just discovered this great site while googling for the 555ES.

I'm just wondering why people attach so much attention to the infamous chroma bug. I currently own a 7700ES which has the bug, and I have VPL-10HT projector with a 9' screen and the bug never bottered me. I never even knew it was there until I read about it and went looking for it. Secrets' benchmark puts a lot of emphasis on this to the point where it skewes the score inappropriately. For example, they rate the 999ES quite low, yet that DVD player has received countless praise and awards from the major magazines who call it "a steal", "a reference", "superb film-like picutre", etc. Most people can't even see the bug, yet many will not buy a player that is known to have it!

Same goes for the layer-switch delay. My 7700 has it and it is slightly annoying. But to me, the quality of the picture and sound for the other 210 minutes of Lord of The Rings is a heck of a lot more important than that annoying 1.5 sec "burp".

I was thinking of buying a 999ES, but everybody seems to agree that this more affordable player has superb build quality and sound and an amazing picture. At less than $600 CDN on eBay, I'm going to order one right now and the heck with the chroma bug! I'm just going to enjoy the music and the movies, and not spend one second looking for that bug.

As an aside, this reminds me of my "esoteric audio" phase in the late 70s and early 80s. I got so wrapped up in the equipment and the expensive tweaks that I forgot to listen to the music! I would even listen to crappy music just because it was well recorded and showcased my system. My musician friends couldn't care less about the equipment...

Welcome to Futurelooks!

Yeah, it does look great, but the layer change IS annoying. I wonder if there is a firmware fix for it.

Sound quality is superb. It is a great choice. :thumb:

Thanks for the welcome!

I doubt that a firmware change could fix this. It is probably an "architecture" issue, in that Sony doesn't seem to use large buffers that can bridge the gap caused by the layer change. A firmware fix might be able to make the layer switch faster, but it won't get rid of the gap entirely.

Sylvain

Sony ES model products are very good.


harryleung,
+1 on that.

It was THIS thread that caused me to join this forum. I have posted my SONY HT here in this particular forum for your review.

No, I'm NOT a Sony snob, but I do know GREAT equipment when I see and or hear it.