Best Player? No. Better Than Others? Yes !!!. Review on Mitashi 9999

Performance Review Of Mitashi DHD 911

I was on the hunt for a DVD Player for quite some time. A visit to Croma revealed their Independence Day offers.There both 32S3B & DHD 911 came for Rs.1999. The inability to play a scratched DVD made me drop the idea of buying the latest 32S3B model. So I picked up the DHD 911 model after thorough testing of a demo piece.

But, my initial experience with an unopened piece of DHD 911 - NOT GOOD! It refused to detect a DVD and I could hear some noises @ home while playing a DVD! So had to carry it back all the way along to Croma. There it read the same damn DVD. After convincing the reluctant yet polite Croma guys, I had it replaced for another unit of same model. Here we go with my review of the 2nd Unit:

C O N s: .The cons first. When a red image(eg: a red color logo) is reproduced, we observe that the color crosses its borders. It's known as Y/C delay.(However, this can be reduced by selecting a mode named "PAL60", other than PAL, NTSC, AUTO provided by this model). Mitashi has to work on the Menu's Look and Feel. The menu looks sick with a cheap blue background and fickering white text. And no dts-out, WMA support.(Thats okay - it has Dolby 5.1 Digital).One more hassle - we can't play MP3 songs in Random Mode - we need to program to play the tracks in the desired order. And it has an unattractive remote control unit.

P R O s: Here come the PROs:

I tested some discs and a USB drive.

Details:

Discs Tested: DVDs, DivX videos, MP3 Audio.

Display n Sound Unit: PanasonicTC-21T200 CRT Television.

Video -TV Interface: Composite Input.

Audio -TV Interface: Stereo(Surround).

Results:The results were very very good as follows.

VIDEO: Upon playing original and pirated DVDs and DivX videos, all the images(irrespective of whether it was the 1963's Goldfinger or The Spy Loved Me of 1977 or latest STAR WARS I(what's better?) or Torque DVD) were flicker free and sharp. Eyes glued to screen during title track of Spy Who Loved Me due to the clarity. Colors n Images are produced with stunning contrast depth - one could make out the difference in the DVD Title Menu itself as it's better off than my Neighbor's Onida DVD Model. And DHD 911 produces very "dark" black colors - on my TV the Cinemascope movies' top n bottom frames are wonderfully reproduced in contrast to an adjacent red/blue/green. Other colors viz White, Metallic, Green, Blue and Red are also decently reproduced - all came out very well(in Composite mode without Progressive Scan- can ya beat it?). Performance more than expected for this price! And no screeching sounds are produced while playing scratched DVDs - if it can't play, then it skips the unreadable sectors of the disc and moves on to the good ones!

*Rating: 4.5 / 5.

JPEG Playback:** Tried playing some JPEG images(shot by Digicam and downloaded from the net) from DVDs, CDs and Thumb-Drive. Wow Wow Wow! What a sharpness! It simply blew away its competitors! I haven't seen images with such razor sharpness andColor depth even on PC Monitors(LCD/CRTs). I observed that initially the "Low Resolution Images" are displayed with actual low resolution. But later they are slowly "upscaled" by Mitashi rendering a great degree of sharpness.it's simply a Mind Blowing feature!

*Rating: 5/5

SOUND:** The sound felt good when I interfaced the two channel out to a Stereo Amp. The Sub-100 Hz frequencies were subdued and only 100 Hz bass was boosted - so I felt it lacked the punch in Bass. But when interfaced with my TV, the surround sound feature stood out! The "spaciality" could be felt in all DVDs/MP3s. The Bass/Treble Reproduction were great . Yes -it can be altered using the Equaliser option in Menu and so can the "Surround" be using 3D Option!

*Rating: 4.5 / 5.

Others: The model looks better than average with USB, Mem Card Ports. It has a HDMI interface at the rear with scanning capacity of upto 1080p(not tested)! A Blue LED glorifies the player's transparent Disc-tray. The Remote(with AAA Batteries) unlike as I read in a review, works from quite far too. Other than the Cons mentioned, I haven't noticed any other flaws as such. Had Mitashi researched and eliminated the Y/C Delay problem, DHD 911would have smashed its competitors!

Features Not Tested: HDMI, Component Output Video, 1080p/i, XviD, Mem Card.

Overall: With good audio-video processing Semiconductors and good features bundled in one piece, this model is definitely "Bang For The Buck". But it's not an apt model for those who are brand centric or those who need a "killer in looks" Player. Croma is a good place to buy this piece owing to ongoing Independence Day Offers till 17th Aug. If this unit lasts long, one fact is this brand will emerge as a great competitor to Philips, Samsung and Sony. **Way To Go Mitashi!

Updated:

*Sorry for the wrong info - WMA Supported! Added advantage.