Hotel Hell
 You can now enjoy Fawlty Towers: The Complete Series on DVD. Containing all 12 episodes of the classic BBC comedy plus an interview with John Cleese, you can enjoy watching the manic Basil Fawlty cope with disaster after disaster. But whatever you do, don't mention the war!

User Interface

DVD players come in single-play formats, five-disc changers, and soon the much anticipated recordable players. Regardless of price and format, a DVD player should be almost effortless to use. The panel controls should be clearly labelled and neatly presented. The remote should be ergonomically pleasing; the buttons should be well-marked and easy to distinguish in the dark. The better remote controls should also be backlit. More expensive players will offer "jog/shuttle" controls on their remotes, which let you move around the disc more easily. Player set-up and configuration using the on-screen display should be easy to figure out. You should also note how quickly and easily the player navigates the menus and features programmed on discs. The manufacturer's manual should be provided in plain language, free of jargon and stilted translations.

Video Performance

When examining a DVD player's performance, it's important to look at the overall picture quality and pertinent features. While only the most expensive first-generation players offered 10-bit video processing--for better picture quality during action or other high-motion sequences--today, even modestly priced DVD players offer it. Picture-quality differences tend to be subtle on all but the largest screens, but players do show variations in colour balance, brightness, portrayal of black level, colour saturation, and other visual parameters. Finally, there's the subjective emotional reaction to the overall visual presentation.

You should also examine a player's searching features; note how well it's able to rapidly fast-forward and reverse-scan while providing a glitch-free picture. Some players offer special visual effects such as zoom, which allows you to examine elements of a scene in greater detail
Sony STR-DE475 Dolby Digital Receiver

Video Connections

The state-of-the-art video connection at this point is component video. In this system, the video signal is divided into three separate bands: luminance, or "Y"; a modified red (minus the Y component); and a modified blue (minus the Y component). This method of video transmission, which requires a TV or monitor with component-video inputs, is about as good as it gets. If you have a TV or projection system with component-video inputs, look for a DVD player with component-video outs; only a few DVD players and televisions currently offer this system. The most common system you'll see in UK DVD players is via SCART, which is in-line with the connections available on most UK TVs. When connecting via SCART, it's worth noting that there are usually two options within the on-screen menus to configure SCART to either use a composite signal, or RGB. Where possible you should use the RGB option as it provides a sharper and better defined picture. Some players have dual SCART sockets which is useful when connecting both TV and VCR along with your DVD, if the other units only have single SCART sockets. S-Video transmission offers high quality transmission, though it is less common to see this connection option available on UK TVs. However, if necessary, you can buy connection adapters that will enable you to hook up an S-Video connection on a DVD player to a SCART socket TV. Composite transmission is the next notch down on the quality scale. Most DVD players have both composite and SCART outputs. Even if you have to use the composite transmission format, you'll still see a huge improvement in picture quality over VHS and even laserdisc--just not quite the same quality as with component, SCART or S-Video transmission.

Widescreen Playback

Many DVDs come "widescreen-enhanced" or "anamorphically squeezed," which means the actual picture is squeezed into a horizontally narrower frame (making the image taller and thinner than normal). A special widescreen television with a 16:9 aspect ratio can un-squeeze the picture so it fills the screen. While being able to view anamorphically squeezed DVD video on a widescreen TV provides the ultimate in DVD picture quality, most people still have conventional 4:3 aspect-ratio (square) televisions, in which case the DVD player itself has to do the un-squeezing and create a letterboxed version to fit the screen. Some DVD players do a better job of un-squeezing anamorphically squeezed video. Most DVD players also provide options to view widescreen DVDs as letterbox (with the black stripes top and bottom), or to use "pan and scan" to pick the key area of the image and show this on a 4:3 screen, so you lose the left and right extremities of the image, but have an image that fills your screen. Another point to be aware of with widescreen on discs, is that there are a variety of different formats, ranging from 16:9 (which is the common TV widescreen format) right up to 2.35:1 which is more commonly seen in cinemas. If your disc is a widescreen disc at 2.35:1, then it will still have stripes at the top and bottom, even on a widescreen TV

Surround Sound

One of the biggest advantages to the DVD format is that it can play back surround-sound audio. A surround-sound format like Dolby Digital 5.1 consists of five discrete, full-frequency-range channels plus a restricted-range, low-frequency "effects" channel. Some DVD players have "virtual" surround built in, which synthesizes a surround sound effect using only two speakers. To take advantage of the surround sound capabilities of your DVD player, you will need an appropriate AV amplifier/decoder and set of 5 speakers, plus sub-woofer.

For the very best in surround audio, it's best to have your Dolby Digital decoder built into your home theater surround receiver. But if you only have a "Dolby Digital-ready" receiver--which might not decode the digital signal but does offer six-channel analog inputs-you should look for DVD players that have built-in Dolby Digital decoding and six-channel analog outputs.

Many discs are now available with DTS (Digital Theater Sound) surround sound as well; DTS is another 5.1-channel format that uses lower compression rates than Dolby Digital (and thus tends to sound a little better) but uses more disc space for audio. DTS is currently the only format on which you'll find surround mixes of mainstream musical releases. If you're interested in exploring DTS surround sound you'll need a player that passes the DTS bitstream.

Audio Connections

All DVD players offer some form of digital output for Dolby Digital, DTS, or conventional 2-channel PCM sound. Some players have both optical and coaxial digital outs; others may use one or the other. If you've already purchased an AV receiver, check to see whether it has optical or digital inputs and plan on buying a DVD player that uses that output format.

CD-quality Audio and Beyond

One of the other benefits of DVD technology is higher-than-CD-resolution audio playback. While CDs are recorded using a sampling frequency of 44.1 kHz and 16-bit words, the DVD-Video allows for 96 kHz recording at 24 bits, offering the potential for wider frequency response and higher dynamic range, respectively. Some players down-sample the 96-k/24-bit signal to 48-k/16-bit prior to both analog and digital output.

All DVD players can play CDs as well. Some also have the ability to play CD-R/CD-RW discs and some even play CD-Rs containing MP3 files. Depending on the quality of audio equipment you are used to using, you usually won't be compromising much if your DVD player is going to be doing double duty as a CD player. In fact, depending on the DVD player, you may find that your CDs have never sounded better. Our reviews will examine how each player sounds with CDs.

Construction

The quality of a DVD player's construction is also important. Some players are built better than others and simply feel more substantial. Usually, the more you spend, the better the build quality will be--but not always. Our reviews make special note of which players rise above the average.