Escient PowerPlay

Escient PowerPlay

Massive DVD Changer

By Markkus Rovito

Soon after CDs became the audio medium of choice, large CD changers—or jukeboxes—became a fairly common device for keeping discs always at the ready. Now that it seems certain DVDs will eventually replace VHS tapes, perhaps mammoth DVD changers are the next contraption waiting to go mainstream.

For now at least, the DVD jukebox is a rarity. And like most rare desireables, it will be enjoyed primarily by the upper crust. The Escient PowerPlay does things few, if any, other products can do, but it doesn’t come cheap. Not only a DVD changer, the PowerPlay is also an archival system for all of the information pertaining to each movie. When discs are loaded, the PowerPlay connects to the Gracenote CDDB Music Recognition Service (CDDB for short) through a phone line using a toll-free number. From CDDB, it downloads information about a DVD including title, year of release, names of stars, plot summary, etc. It also retrieves the cover art for the disc so that users can then easily choose the movie they want to see by selecting the cover from a menu of covers on the TV screen. There is no monthly charge attached to the CDDB service.

The system consists of two main components: a 200-disc DVD/CD changer and the PowerPlay Controller. The two pieces connect with an IEEE 1394 FireWire cable. The changer has a few buttons and a small LCD display necessary for loading and ejecting discs, while the controller contains the modem and all the connections, including phone jack, composite A/V, S-Video out, component out, optical and coaxial audio out, two USB and two FireWire ports. You could actually chain up to six changers together with FireWire cables for a maximum capacity of 1200 discs. The controller also has a single-disc DVD drive for quickly playing back discs that don’t need to be archived, such as rentals.

Two remote controls, a small handheld with a few navigational controls and a full-size wireless QWERTY keyboard complete the system. The keyboard also has a directional mouse and buttons for Play, Stop, Pause, etc. With the keyboard you type in things such as registration information and any additional details or notes you’d like to store for a particular DVD. For example, you can add names of actors, producers, or any notes you’d like to include that were not downloaded from CDDB and save them as part of a disc’s information. Later, you can search for a movie based on an actor’s name or any other word or phrase in the DVD’s notes. This inputting of information may be most useful for CD-R/RWs or home-recorded DVDs (the PowerPlay played back both DVD-R and DVD+R discs) that will not show up in the CDDB. When discs are not found on CDDB, a general DVD or CD icon appears instead of a cover. A user can connect a PC-compatible scanner to the USB ports and scan in an image to use for a disc’s cover in the PowerPlay menu. For example, a few fairly obscure CDs I loaded into the PowerPlay had text information in CDDB, but no cover image. I could scan in the actual CD cover, or any other image if I so chose.

The comprehensiveness of CDDB was quite impressive. We get a lot of pretty wacky, off-the-wall DVDs at the office, and I listen to a lot of small independent label music, but CDDB recognized almost everything I threw at it. For instance, it picked up the covers and info for the thrilling, unforgettable sequels Prime Suspect 2, Demons 2 and The Substitute 2: School’s Out! I had to dig pretty deep to stump CDDB. It did not recognize the Indian blockbuster Sholay or the old Jackie Chan movie, Young Master. On the music side, CDDB had the goods on New York DJ Scott Hardkiss’s new mix CD, but faltered on Canadian DJ John Aquaviva’s latest. You get the idea. CDDB picks up just about everything, and should have the info for all major releases within a few days of their debuts. The database is also constantly updated, so if if does not pick up your new copy of Episode 1: The Phantom Menace the night you wait in line at Tower to buy it at midnight, you can run the PowerPlay’s AutoBuild function a few days later and it should be fine.

AutoBuild is the name of the function that connects to the online database and identifies discs. This and all other major functions of the PowerPlay are accessible from the extensive onscreen menu. Here you can choose to view the selection of movies by their covers or alphabetically by title. There is a Library Management section where you may choose discs to eject, and a System Settings section where, for example, you can choose which movie ratings will require a password to play back. Navigating the menu with the handheld remote or keyboard mouse can be slow, which is why Escient makes an optional touch-panel LCD screen to complement the PowerPlay. The ETP-1000 is a 12-inch TFT-LCD panel available for $2,000. It will display the entire menu for faster touch screen navigation, and will also show the DVD video. However, the resolution is only 640 x 480, and it has no speakers, so you’re better off not using it as your main movie display.

The DVD playback is good for an interlaced player, but I can’t help thinking that for this price point, a progressive scan player would be nice. If you’re in the market for a PowerPlay, you should think about using it with a DTV that has an excellent line doubler and onboard 3:2 pulldown. Several manufacturers such as Sony, Philips, Hitachi and Samsung are building 3:2 pulldown for film-based material into their new HDTVs. If you’re going to invest this much in a DVD playback system, you might as well try to get the best picture possible.

For all its considerable size and price, the PowerPlay is very easy to use. The always present onscreen menu lays out all the available options clearly without the need for a huge remote control filled with cryptic buttons. When a DVD is playing, a touch on the LCD screen or the enter keys of the remote controls will take you back to the menu, while the DVD continues to play in shrunken size in the middle of the screen. The system takes a fairly long time to boot up, so a low-power Standby option is available as an alternative to fully powering down. It also takes a while for the changer to switch discs, which makes the online identification process a somewhat lengthy affair if there are a lot of new discs in the system. For example, once the PowerPlay was connected to CDDB, it took 22 minutes to identify 48 discs. Also, every once in a while connection failed for whatever reason. Usually after waiting a couple minutes after failure a second try was successful.

As with many high-end electronics, price may not be too much of a barrier to potential buyers, in which case it all comes down to whether you have a strong desire for the unique services the PowerPlay provides. CD changers may have never become the best-selling type of CD player, but they have been successful among a niche of music lovers. Now DVD enthusiasts can decide whether they think change is good.