I purchased one of these about two weeks ago, and just sent it back. Here is the basic information and my impressions.
It's based on a Zoran Vaddis 778 MPEG decoder, a Genesis FLI-2310 deinterlacer, and an Analog Devices ADV7320 video DAC. The Zoran is commonly found in Samsungs and Toshibas around the $150.00 mark. It is disliked by the DVD Benchmark folks. The video DAC is essentially the same one used in the Denon 2910, except with support for 1080p. The player uses a good quality Cirrus 4382 audio DAC, the same one found in the previous Yamaha DVD-S1500. It is spec for spec the equivalent of the highly regarded Burr-Brown 1791 used in Denon products.
The DVD-S1700 is well built. The mechanism is quiet, and load times are much improved over the last generation of Yamaha players, about 8.5 seconds for a CD or uncomplicated DVD, to about 12 seconds for DVDs with more elaborate directories. Audio was very nice. I'm tempted to think I actually heard a bit of an improvement over my previous players, but with out a proper listening test, I ain't sayin'. DVD-A and SACD playback presented no problems, but I can say nothing about the multichannel capabilities since I'm a two-channel listener.
The picture quality was excellent on a Sony XBR970. Color balance and saturation looked quite nice, and the host of adjustments, including gamma and two separate sharpness settings, allows for much customization. However, the Zoran performed exactly as described in Benchmarks, giving noticeable subtitle sync problems. In general, detail was very high, and the deinterlacer worked quite well. I found only one scene in one movie that showed some combing artifacts, involving a slow pan in front of trees in the background. Blacks and shadow were rendered nicely. The image was maybe a little hot on the white level just judging by eye. I saw no macroblocking, even in the darkest of scenes. However, this is, of course, highly display dependent.
HDMI worked as advertised, but I cannot comment on the audio portion since I use an integrated amp instead of an A/V receiver. The color and grayscale quality of the upscaled HDMI picture was identical to the one over component on my display.
The design of the interface is very good. The implementation sucks. I've never used a player that has such slow menu and overall input response. I timed that I could not press buttons any faster than about 750 milliseconds apart without the unit missing the second press. This is probably great for your average unfrozen caveman but any contemporary human is going to be accustomed to buttons that can be pressed at twice that rate. Also, there is no button scrolling, so each move through a menu requires a separate press. The remote was pretty chintzy, but that's common these days.
I found the behavior of the forward-reverse scan/search to be really lousy. When searching through a movie at the highest speed (they go from 1 to 6), I consistently overshot the desired scene by more than a full minute when I resumed playback (i.e. I'd scan to the scene I wanted, press "Play", then the thing would begin playback either a minute ahead or behind depending on scan direction). This is because the displayed image lags the actual read point of the disc, which is given by the time index on the display. So, in reality, the player will stop where the the data is being read, but the scene of interest will already have passed by quite a large margin. Every other player I've used, and I've owned 7 other models, has always started playback very close to the point where I pressed the play button, usually overshooting the scene that I want by no more than a few seconds.
The interface sluggishness and scan/search issues were the deal breaker for me. This behavior is most likely related to the Vaddis 778 itself, so I doubt there's much that can be done other than a hardware revision. It's a shame, since overall I think this is a good player (I liked it better than a comparably priced Denon 1920 I bought about a year ago).
Now for the sweet part: I thought a good replacement would be a Denon 2910, and I was prepared to fork over the full $699.00 to get one of the few remaining new ones from the same online dealer who sold me the 1700. Just for the hell of it I decided to call a local Magnolia A/V just to see if they might have a new unit lying around. I end up with an absolutely pristine 2910 floor model for just over 50% off retail, with full warranty and 30 days to return. On comparing the two, I found that the Denon did have a touch of the notorious green push, but this was easily fixed within the service menu of my Sony. The result gave a slight edge in picture quality to the Denon. Still, the Yamaha was no slouch. In one or two scenes in one movie the Yamaha had a very slight advantage in shadow detail, but the Denon was consistently better in fine bright image detail and in color saturation and balance. The Denon seemed also ever so slightly clearer in reproducing higher frequency sounds on certain songs, which I tested by taking sound loops from various songs and burning them onto to two CDs for simultaneous play on the two units, and A/B-ing them. However, this was not a level matched test, and it certainly wasn't blind, so YMMV.
If you can live with the sluggish interface response and the bizarre forward/reverse search/scan behavior, the Yamaha is actually a pretty nice player.
It's based on a Zoran Vaddis 778 MPEG decoder, a Genesis FLI-2310 deinterlacer, and an Analog Devices ADV7320 video DAC. The Zoran is commonly found in Samsungs and Toshibas around the $150.00 mark. It is disliked by the DVD Benchmark folks. The video DAC is essentially the same one used in the Denon 2910, except with support for 1080p. The player uses a good quality Cirrus 4382 audio DAC, the same one found in the previous Yamaha DVD-S1500. It is spec for spec the equivalent of the highly regarded Burr-Brown 1791 used in Denon products.
The DVD-S1700 is well built. The mechanism is quiet, and load times are much improved over the last generation of Yamaha players, about 8.5 seconds for a CD or uncomplicated DVD, to about 12 seconds for DVDs with more elaborate directories. Audio was very nice. I'm tempted to think I actually heard a bit of an improvement over my previous players, but with out a proper listening test, I ain't sayin'. DVD-A and SACD playback presented no problems, but I can say nothing about the multichannel capabilities since I'm a two-channel listener.
The picture quality was excellent on a Sony XBR970. Color balance and saturation looked quite nice, and the host of adjustments, including gamma and two separate sharpness settings, allows for much customization. However, the Zoran performed exactly as described in Benchmarks, giving noticeable subtitle sync problems. In general, detail was very high, and the deinterlacer worked quite well. I found only one scene in one movie that showed some combing artifacts, involving a slow pan in front of trees in the background. Blacks and shadow were rendered nicely. The image was maybe a little hot on the white level just judging by eye. I saw no macroblocking, even in the darkest of scenes. However, this is, of course, highly display dependent.
HDMI worked as advertised, but I cannot comment on the audio portion since I use an integrated amp instead of an A/V receiver. The color and grayscale quality of the upscaled HDMI picture was identical to the one over component on my display.
The design of the interface is very good. The implementation sucks. I've never used a player that has such slow menu and overall input response. I timed that I could not press buttons any faster than about 750 milliseconds apart without the unit missing the second press. This is probably great for your average unfrozen caveman but any contemporary human is going to be accustomed to buttons that can be pressed at twice that rate. Also, there is no button scrolling, so each move through a menu requires a separate press. The remote was pretty chintzy, but that's common these days.
I found the behavior of the forward-reverse scan/search to be really lousy. When searching through a movie at the highest speed (they go from 1 to 6), I consistently overshot the desired scene by more than a full minute when I resumed playback (i.e. I'd scan to the scene I wanted, press "Play", then the thing would begin playback either a minute ahead or behind depending on scan direction). This is because the displayed image lags the actual read point of the disc, which is given by the time index on the display. So, in reality, the player will stop where the the data is being read, but the scene of interest will already have passed by quite a large margin. Every other player I've used, and I've owned 7 other models, has always started playback very close to the point where I pressed the play button, usually overshooting the scene that I want by no more than a few seconds.
The interface sluggishness and scan/search issues were the deal breaker for me. This behavior is most likely related to the Vaddis 778 itself, so I doubt there's much that can be done other than a hardware revision. It's a shame, since overall I think this is a good player (I liked it better than a comparably priced Denon 1920 I bought about a year ago).
Now for the sweet part: I thought a good replacement would be a Denon 2910, and I was prepared to fork over the full $699.00 to get one of the few remaining new ones from the same online dealer who sold me the 1700. Just for the hell of it I decided to call a local Magnolia A/V just to see if they might have a new unit lying around. I end up with an absolutely pristine 2910 floor model for just over 50% off retail, with full warranty and 30 days to return. On comparing the two, I found that the Denon did have a touch of the notorious green push, but this was easily fixed within the service menu of my Sony. The result gave a slight edge in picture quality to the Denon. Still, the Yamaha was no slouch. In one or two scenes in one movie the Yamaha had a very slight advantage in shadow detail, but the Denon was consistently better in fine bright image detail and in color saturation and balance. The Denon seemed also ever so slightly clearer in reproducing higher frequency sounds on certain songs, which I tested by taking sound loops from various songs and burning them onto to two CDs for simultaneous play on the two units, and A/B-ing them. However, this was not a level matched test, and it certainly wasn't blind, so YMMV.
If you can live with the sluggish interface response and the bizarre forward/reverse search/scan behavior, the Yamaha is actually a pretty nice player.
