Marantz DV7100 DVD Player

Makes DVDs Behave Like They Should

by Grant Clauser

DVD players are performing all sorts of tricks these days. Some play video games, some connect to the Internet, many play MP3 files and a growing number are compatible with the new multi-channel music formats, DVD-A and SACD. What some of those new tricky DVD players seem to have forgotten, however, is that they are first meant to be video players before anything else.

Marantz has not forgotten that DVD is about picture. You can see that especially in the DV7100 player. Though known for years as a high-end audio manufacturer, Marantz offers an impressive assortment of digital video products including HDTVs and plasma displays.

The DV7100 player is a progressive scan player. When connected to the digital component inputs of an HDTV or HD-ready set, the player produces a progressive image. The picture from a standard interlaced DVD player on a standard TV displays the disc’s 480 lines of resolution half at a time on the screen. A progressive scan player and capable TV displays all the picture resolution in one sweep, rather than interlacing two fields to create a picture frame. The result is a cleaner, smoother picture.

This particular player is attractive and sturdy-looking. Marantz placed the disc door off to the side rather than in the middle as most other players do. The front buttons and displays are sufficient for daily use but not cluttered or distracting.

Setting up the DV7100 took about two minutes. First, I connected the component outputs to the high pass component inputs on the TV, a 38-inch RCA HDTV. In order to use the component outputs you first have to flip a switch on the back of the player from S-Video to component. For this reason, you can’t run the video to a second TV through the S-Video while using the component outputs—a minor, but unfortunate hang-up if you hoped to use the component outputs for your main TV then run a long S-Video cable to a TV in another part of the house. It won’t work.

Audio jacks include one each optical and digital coaxial for Dolby Digital or DTS. There are also two sets of stereo outputs. I opted to use the digital coaxial output.

The remote is smaller than I’d come to expect on more advanced DVD players such as this one, but its champagne finish and smooth angles made it look attractive and comfortable. There is an abundance of very small buttons on this remote, but they’re differentiated by size and color and are mostly easy to find. My one hang-up with the remote was that the enter button, the one you’ll use the most to get around disc menus, was not centered in the four navigation buttons. Rather it was off to the side where you wouldn’t expect it. There’s a handy dimmer button to dim the front panel display lights in case they’re too bright for your tastes or your viewing room.

The setup menus were very easy to work through. Once I configured the DVD player for my 16:9 TV and the digital audio out, I tossed in a DVD and started experimenting with the other settings. Under the video menu there’s the option to select interlaced, progressive or auto progressive signal output. I set it for progressive, as progressive performance was what I was most interested in testing. If you don’t have a TV capable of displaying a 480 progressive signal, then you’ll want to choose the interlaced option. The auto progressive option switches the output to progressive when it senses a 16:9 widescreen DVD and interlaced when a standard 4:3 DVD is the source. That’s a nice feature since many HDTVs lock into widescreen mode when sent a progressive signal, but this can greatly distort 4:3 DVD pictures. There was also an option for selecting the level of digital video noise reduction. I set this to off, as I could detect no noticeable improvement with any other settings. The most interesting of the video menus was the picture quality menu. In it, you can choose from three settings: Cinema, Animation and Standard. Cinema, it turned out, improved black levels providing better detail in dark scenes. I’ve seen a few other DVD players with this option, and some seem to sacrifice picture detail to get deeper blacks. Not so with the DV7100.

Finally, I set about to testing the player out. With the machine set to Cinema I was able to properly adjust the TV with a PLUGE test pattern from Avia DVD. On another test pattern resolution poured off the chart. A few more test patterns including one of diagonal lines and moving circles showed not a hint of any color problems and revealed very fine line detail.

After giving the player a chance to warm up a bit, I tried out a few sample movie scenes. First, I ran the opening scene from Star Trek: Insurrection. This chapter reveals a lot about progressive DVD players, particularly those that lack the 3:2 pulldown circuitry that resolves the frame rate difference between film-based material and NTSC video. While the DV7100 doesn’t do 3:2 pulldown, something I expected in a $900 player, it still handles the diagonal lines of rooftops and bridges in the Star Trek chapter with less problems than many DVD players I’ve used, and scan lines were non-existent. Problem areas were not as perfectly clean as I’ve seen in other progressive scan players that do 3:2 adjustment, but unless you were really looking for it, you wouldn’t know the difference. Other movies I watched, some better encoded and some just less challenging, looked fantastic with lots of depth, detail and vibrant, accurate colors.

The DV7100 features a better-than-average variety of advanced controls, such as slow playback down to 1/16 normal speed forward or reverse, frame-by-frame advance, smooth forward and reverse scanning and an easy chapter search. Under the hood, it’s got 27MHz/10-bit video digital-to-analog converters and 24-bit audio DACs. Also built in are High Definition Amplifier Modules, which are discrete copper-shielded output stages that offer wide dynamic range and low noise. Another much appreciated feature is the ability to play back CD-R and CD-RW discs, both of which this player did without hesitation.

 While some companies are placing all their eggs in players that do strange tricks or support formats that most people will never use, Marantz has delivered a player that will do your movies justice. At this price I would have expected 3:2 pulldown, as it’s a feature available on some less expensive models, but the video performance hardly suffers from the lack.