Philips DVP9000S

Manufacturer:	Philips
Target Price:	£400
Verdict:	Arguably the best sub-£500 upscaling DVD deck yet.

While we wait with bated breath for true high definition DVD to arrive,the next best thing is a DVD player equipped with upscaling processing.Able to upconvert a standard DVD picture to 720p or 1080i and squirt the resulting high resolution image out via digital video jacks,

Design

Philips appears to have made no obvious sacrifices with the DVP9000S’s build quality. It weighs a ton,and wears a seriously robust metal chassis that should keep external and internal electrical disturbances to a minimum.

We also rather like the way the deck looks.Two bold circular effects to either side of the fascia – one a manual control pad, the other a fancy round LED – create a feeling of striking symmetry,while the burnished metal finish looks good enough to eat your lunch off.

Features

Connections are headed up by a HDMI digital video output.But this is ably backed up by,among other things,component video outputs for analogue progressive scan,an RGB Scart,composite and S-Video options,electrical and optical digital audio outputs,and a series of six audio line outs,which are there to support the deck’s onboard Dolby Digital and SACD decoding. It would have been nice to have also found DVD-Audio support – especially when decks from Denon, Marantz and others now handle both next-gen music formats.

Performance

The DVP9000S’s pictures prove very accomplished and solid with exceptionally profound black responses.Also contributing to the picture’s solidity are tightly rendered but noiseless edges,the almost complete removal of ghosting around harshly contrasting contours,and impressively little MPEG blocking noise or twitching.

Then there’s some terrific fine detailing,which lays bare textures in the 720p and 1080i modes that you just won’t see through any standard definition delivery.

Sure,the Philips model isn’t quite as accomplished as Marantz’s £600 DV7600,but unless you want it to drive an extremely high end hi-fi system and projector,the differences aren’t as important as the £200 price difference would suggest