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| DVD-HD850 and DVD-HD950 (top)
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Here at AVReview, while we sit impatiently twiddling our thumbs waiting for high-definition television to land on our shores, one niggling issue continues to bother us. Namely, what's the point of breaking the bank for an HDTV if most of those hours in front of the box are spent ploughing through that mountainous standard definition DVD collection? None of these DVDs have been converted to high definition so surely it's not going to make one jot of difference if you watch them on an HDTV? Well, this is where Samsung comes in...
The manufacturer's latest DVD players, the DVD-HD850 and DVD-HD950 both feature 'hi-def conversion' technology, whereby standard DVD video performance is claimed to be up-scaled to give HD-level picture quality. To put this in perspective, a normal DVD player outputs 480i (interlaced) video, Progressive Scan DVD players can roughly double that resolution by outputting 480p video, whereas these players are said to increase the resolution again, up-converting the image to HD levels of 720p or 1080i depending on what your HDTV can handle.
Both are HDMI-equipped, with the more expensive HD950 offering SACD, DVD-Audio and JPEG playback too. With the HD850 costing about £100 and the HD950 £130, we think that they're potentially great value, but as we haven't tested these models yet we can't vouch for how well this up-scaling technology works. But if you have, then we'd be very interested to know how you're getting on with them. Just start a forum thread below.
More information: www.samsung.com
DVD-HD850
Up-Conversion (720p/1080i)
HDMI Output, 1 Cable (HDMI-HDMI) Supplied
Plays DVD-Video/-R/-RW/+R/+RW/CD-Audio/VCD/SVCD
Video DAC 54MHz/10Bit
Audio DAC 192 KHz/24Bit
2ch AC3 Decoder
DVD-HD950
Up-Conversion (720p/1080i)
HDMI Output, 1 Cable (HDMI-HDMI) Supplied
Plays DVD-Video/DVD-Audio/SACD/-R/-RW/+R/+RW/CD-Audio/VCD/SVCD
Video DAC 54MHz/10Bit
Audio DAC 192 KHz/24Bit
6ch AC3 Decoder
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