Samsung DVD-P401 DVD Player
January 2001Samsung DVD-P401 DVD Player
By Grant Clauser
It's always a pleasure to witness the steady improvement of technology, especially when that technology is as entertaining as DVDs and comes at a price that makes it available to nearly anyone with a taste for it. Such is the case with the new DVD-P401 DVD player from Samsung.
This product doesn't break any new ground, but does do two important things. It delivers progressive scan video output with 3:2 pulldown, and it plays back audio files from CD-R discs. These two qualities place it among a small but growing number of DVD players. What makes it stand out is that it does these things for a list price of $250.
One of the main themes of this product obviously is its user-friendly attitude. Even people who have never seen a DVD player before could set this up properly in a minute, and the printed user guide was written for the uninitiated .
Tandem with the trim price, the P401 is a pretty trim player, with a sparse front panel and only the bare essential jacks on the back. Next to the component video jacks (Y,Pb,Br) is a switch for toggling between interlaced or progressive mode. I prefer players that let you do this through the user menu from the remote, especially remotes that have a dedicated button for this purpose because there are times when you don't want the player to be in progressive mode.
There's nothing really surprising or disappointing about the remote with everything you need easily accessible. One button unique to Samsung is S.Fit, which stands for screen fit. This feature expands letterboxed images to better fill 4:3 TVs without the usual picture degradation associated with the picture zoom. While videophiles may turn pale at the very notion, most people object to the black bars that appear on the top and bottom of their TV screens.
Aside from the screen fit, the P401 includes both chapter skip and forward and reverse scan plus a zoom that allows you to move a cursor about the screen to zoom on the part of the image you select, rather than just zooming the entire picture. The forward scan goes up to the blinding speed of 128X. These are not cutting-edge features, but are nice options for a product priced at this level.
Of course the two most important parts of this player are its ability to play DVDs in progressive scan mode and home burned CD-Rs.
In progressive mode, test patterns revealed all the sharpness and detail required to make the most of movies. When playing movies I was impressed with the three-dimensionality and film-like performance while hooked up to an RCA 38-inch HDTV. The P401 does not cut corners when playing movies.
The inclusion of 3:2 pulldown eliminates artifacts you often get when film-based material gets converted to NTSC video. We've recently seen many pricier DVD players without this feature.
Standard CD-R copies of audio CDs played back without problem, but a CD-RW would not play back.
For people looking to add progressive scan DVD to the HDTV they already own or who want to plan ahead for the one they may get later, this player represents a super value, both for its video performance and its CD-R abilities. At a street price of $199, it's surely worth a look.
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