Benchmark This!

Audio Precision and Tektronix instrumentation were employed to gather extremely accurate data. The information you will see here is much more extensive than you will ever find in any other A/V magazine, on or off the web.

DVD was, at the time, the highest-quality consumer video format. It was also one of the most complex and sometimes confusing formats. We received numerous questions from our readers about our Benchmark standards.

So what is our DVD Benchmark? We tested the audio and video quality of many players with objective measurements, and we did our best to explain how each measurement relates to the audio and video quality. Benchmark is a series of six Benchmark articles that describe the technology we tested and the types of tests we performed. Part 1 discusses the video quality of the DVD players. Part 2 covers the audio side of the DVD players. Part 3 covers the functionality of the DVD players. Part 4 illustrates the usability study that was conducted on the DVD players. Part 5 deals with progressive DVD players. And finally, Part 6 covers DVD Audio and MLP (Main Listening Position). You can refer back to Parts 1 through 6 to see exactly what the test results mean.