Helios H2000 Upscaling DVD Player Conclusion

Out of the Box Setup

Out of the box setup of the H2000 is extremely simple and only takes a few minutes to get it up and running. With the included HDMI cable, connecting the DVD player to your TV is completed with only one cable connection. The player also includes a RCA (red, white and yellow) cable if your TV does not have an HDMI or DVI input.

The H2000 also has all of the standard digital audio options covered with optical and coaxial audio outputs included. I chose to first use the HDMI output for the video connection to my TV, and then to use the component output for the video connection. For audio, I exclusively used the optical audio output for connection to my AV receiver.

After getting the cables connected, I jumped directly to the Setup screen. Available setup options include General, Audio, Video, and Parental settings. In the audio section, I only double checked that the audio output was set to Dolby Digital 5.1 as instructed by the user manual for 5.1 sound systems. I skipped all of the other usual setup screens with the exception of selecting the 1080i (60Hz) video setting to insure that the upconversion was set to the highest resolution possible with my TV. Alternatively, you can also let the player output an unprocessed 480i/576i video signal to allow your TV or external video scaler do the work of upscaling.

Performance

To test how the H2000 player performed, I carefully viewed my standard test suite of 4 DVDs ranging from the old stand-by’s for action and drama — Lord of the Rings: Twin Towers and The Matrix: Reloaded — to a couple of romantic comedies: Along Came Polly and Fever Pitch. Additionally, I viewed a DivX format movie I had burned from my DVD copy of Braveheart. The action movies served as a thorough test of the video processing limits of the DVD player, and the romantic comedies served only to gain approval for the DVD player from my significant other (because, let's face it, unless you tend to watch DVDs with only a male audience, the DVD player you choose will most definitely see its fair share of comedic and touching moments built around the trials and tribulations of on-screen character relationships). Since the image quality differences from one romantic comedy movie to the next are inconsequential, the action movies formed the foundation for my performance testing.

Starting off with the initial battle scene in The Matrix: Reloaded, in which the character Trinity finds herself fighting for her life and ends up plunging off a high-rise building, the detail level produced by the H2000 was impressive. Each bullet fired from Trinity's gun had clear detail; the images had no jagged lines, and even the outline of the bullets traveling through the air was clearly visible. As the movie unfolded and Neo and the crew were battling the machines during the highway chase scene, the video processing power of the player was once again evident as the special effects looked absolutely stunning in upscaled 1080i resolution. I saw no uneven lining around the images even during the fastest moving scenes, and the upscaling chip in the H2000 performed admirably.

Diving right into the massive scale battle scenes in Lord of the Rings: Two Towers provided an equally impressive experience. The color saturation was not up to par with true HD content, but the result was a big improvement over the regular DVD 480p resolution. There were a few fight sequences where the images had a slight graininess and the difference between true 720p or 1080i content and the upconverted DVD content was readily visible, but the average viewer will notice this only if he or she has watched a movie multiple times and is specifically looking for these types of picture quality differences. I was pleasantly surprised to find that as the arrows flew and troops advanced, I saw no ghosting issues or artifacts as a result of the upconversion. Overall, the upconverted DVD picture quality of the H2000 player was outstanding in all of the movies viewed during the testing.

Viewing the DivX version of Braveheart on the H2000 revealed some inconsistencies in sharpness and black level reproduction. Most of the battle scenes contained at least one fast moving object that caused jagged lines to appear momentarily, and the low-light scenes demonstrated less than stellar black level reproduction. The black colored objects occasionally appeared as darkish gray and did not match the true blacks found when watching well mastered DVD movies. Each of these display irregularities could be attributed to the content source – I know that my DivX copy of the Braveheart movie was not flawless to begin with. Despite the visible artifacts, the DivX movie did not skip or drop frames at any point during playback.

Another interesting feature provided by this player is the fact that it provides support for the VobSub subtitle format, which is something you don't see in many other DVD players. I did not have any movies to test this, but it is a nice feature for extra support of any VCD, SVCD or DivX movies containing subtitles.

Helios Labs H2000 Upscaling DVD Player

Despite a few drawbacks, at $99 USD the Helios H2000 Upscaling DVD player is an excellent choice if you are not quite ready to invest hundreds of dollars in a HD-DVD or Blu-ray player, and you want something better than your plain old 480p DVD player. The image quality improvement with this upconverting DVD player is a huge step up from a traditional 480p DVD player, and only very discerning viewers will notice any artifacts due to the upconversion.

Adding to the setup and operation are a multitude of playback options of DivX, VCD, SVCD and more. The H2000 provides a huge amount of flexibility in the types of content it can play in upconverted resolution, and the bonus is that all of the types of content will be much better looking over your old standard DVD player.

Pros:
• Very good image quality with DVD upconversion
• Low $99 price Region free
• Easy operation
• Includes HDMI cable
• Playback support for multiple formats

Cons:
• No support for 1080p upconversion
• Less than stellar build quality

Rating: 4.5 out of 5

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