DVD Benchmark

DVD Benchmark - Product Review - Panasonic LD-10 Portable DVD Player - December, 2000

Staff

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Background

This was the very first portable DVD player available. It requires a very large battery to operate it. The battery life is about 2 hours. The original price of this player was very high, but you were paying for portability. The overall quality can not justify the high price, but when you are on an airplane, the quality is only one concern in the equation. Enjoyment ranks high here.

Anyway, here are our test results:

Video

The video quality on this DVD player is ok.

This is a portable player, and it only has YC (S-Video) and Composite outputs.

Black and White Levels

Format	Black	White	Comments
YC	7.0	99.4	The black level is only 0.5 IRE low. White is just a hair low. We found something interesting with this player, and we don�t really know why it is happening. Aside from not being able to pass the blacker than black strip on VE, it also cannot pass the black stripe on the Avia black level pattern. This is the only player we have found that does not have a way to set up the brightness control on your TV.

Color Bars

The Y portion of the YC signal is just slightly lower than SMPTE 170M.

The Chroma Level of the YC output is little high. Chroma Phase is just about perfect. It looks like yellow and blue are just slightly lower.

Composite/YC Data

Video Frequency Response

We were unable to measure the frequency response of this player. The VM700 could not lock onto the signal. We took a quick peek at video jitter, and it was through the roof compared to the other players. We did not record the jitter numbers for all players so we won't list them for this one, but they were baaaaaaaaaad.

Pixel Cropping

Location	Pixels	Comments
Top	0	Excellent
Bottom	1	Excellent
Left	4	Very Good
Right	3	Very Good

Signal-To-Noise Ratio

Format	Output	SNR (dB)	Comments
YC	C-AM	-62.1	Good
YC	C-PM	-55.9	OK to Poor

Audio

Audio Frequency Response

The audio frequency response was on the good side of fair. The top-end rolled off more than the other Panasonic players for some reason, and the bottom was down just a bit at 20 Hz, but not excessively, and the high end roll off was still smooth and controlled.

Frequency Response

Harmonic Distortion + Noise FFT

The harmonic distortion of the player wasn�t high in absolute terms, but neither was it particularly low, as the 2nd harmonic was sitting around �78 dB from full scale. It was 12 dB higher than the Marantz DV-7000, for comparison. The spectrum of the distortion products did have the desirable shape of descending with an increase in frequency, as opposed to the other Panasonic players, which tended to have more higher order distortion, but the distortion spectrum still held out above the noise floor far into the higher harmonics.

Distortion Spectrum

Wide-Band noise spectrum FFT (Wall AC)

The LD10 was both higher in absolute amplitude in terms of noise spectrum than the other Panasonic players, but not unreasonably so. The highest peaks were at 60 Hz and near 60 kHz, at �100 dB and � 97 dB respectively. Not too bad, but the spikes in the noise floor were also a bit messier than the other Panasonic players, as well as other players in general.

Noise Floor (Wall)

Wide-Band noise spectrum FFT (Lab grade AC)

Improving the quality of the AC power supply helped the LD-10 substantially, pulling the 60 Hz peak down from �100 dB to �115 dB, and the 60 kHz peak from �97 dB to �107 dB. It also cleaned up the powerline harmonic spikes.

Noise Floor (Lab)

Low-Level DAC Linearity

Low-level DAC linearity was, like the other Panasonic players, among the best. We would not be surprised if Panasonic is using a single-bit DAC and their MASH processing.

DAC Linearity

Dynamic Range

96.6 dB. Dynamic enough.

Inter-Modulation Distortion

-114.3 dB, which is very good by SMPTE IMD standards.

Functionality

Note: A green check in the boxes below means that feature worked OK. A red X means it is unsatisfactory.

Avia

Test	Results	Comments
Subpicture
Slide Show

Video Essentials

Test	Results	Comments
Blacker-Than-Black
Stress Test

WHQL

Subpicture Palette (DCS)

Test	Results	Comments
Still
Bob
Weave

Default Palette Color Index

Test	Results	Comments
Still
Bob
Weave

Custom Palette Color Index

Test	Results	Comments
Still
Bob
Weave

Branching

Test	Results	Comments
Seamless Branching		This player is better than average. It can branch in one clock sweep.
Multiple Angles		This player is dog slow when it comes to changing angles. It takes about 3 seconds.

Test	Results	Comments
Loops
Ends

Field/Frame Freeze

Test	Results	Comments
Weave		Can't Pause
Bob		Can't Pause

16x9 Menu

Test	Results	Comments
Letterbox
Widescreen

Cropping

Test	Results	Comments
352x240
720x480
704x480
352x480

Layer Break

Just like changing angles, this player is very slow at changes layers. It takes about 3 seconds to change layers.

Test (DVD)	Results	Comments
"Cruel Intentions"
"Ghostbusters"
"Friend" VCD
"Saving Private Ryan" (DTS)	N/A	This player does not support DTS
"The Abyss"
Chesky Super Audio 96/24

Physical Response

This player was the second slowest player of the bunch. We gave it a 3 for overall response time.

Test	Results	Comments
Setup
Transcode
CD-R

Error Correction/Concealment

Pierre Vareny

This player was one of two that had the best error correction on CD. It was able to read up to and including track 35, which has a gap of 2.40mm. Since this is a portable player, we are making the assumption that is uses a RAM buffer for stability. This may be what is helping it out.

Scratch the Dog

This player pixilated at chapter 1 and died at chapter 2.

Usability

We did not perform a usability study on this DVD player.

- Staff -