Although I fear that Outlaw Audio will not release a universal player until the industry agrees on a hi-resolution digital audio output (and the inevitable copy protection), I do feel that it is possible to improve upon the current offerings.

Here are some of the features I would like to see:

1. Comprehensive digital domain bass management and time alignment for both DVD-Audio and SACD.

2. Optional 4x upsampling of CDs, DADs and PCM DVD soundstracks.

3. HDCD decoding.

4. High quality headphone output with optional Dolby Headphone processing.

5. No chroma bug.

6. High quality line doubler with inputs for external video sources (one composite, one S-VHS and one component).

Right now there isn't a product on the market that has all, or even most, of the features described above.

add a really good DAC.

I'm in!!!!!!!
Where do I sign up!!!

How about a tank-like player that can pass all of the Secrets of Home Theater and High Fidelity benchmark tests with flying colors?

There is no reason why these players cannot pass basic, necessary performance tests, but time after time since 1997 most usually don't.

How about a very large frame buffer so there are NO layer change pauses at all? Denon's top players have sufficient memory (64 Megabytes) to eliminate most pauses.

No Y/C delay.

No Chroma Bug.

No flickering.

Copper shielded chassis. Balanced, center load mechanism.

Separate, ultra low noise power supplies for video, digital, and analog circuitry.

DVI-D video output.

Pure progressive de-interlacing where the output of the MPEG-2 decoder is left intact. As of right now, if a disc has progressive video frames encoded it's changed into interlaced video and then run through the de-interlacer (if progressive output is selected). That middle conversion step is completely unnecessary, and further degrades the video signal integrity.

Proper scaling of non-anamorphic 4:3 letterboxed video to 16x9 anamorphic output. The Faroudja DCDi 23xx chip has this feature, but it has not been implemented correctly in many instances (see discussions on the new Philips SACD/DVD player for more details). With picture shift controls for subtitles that might otherwise get cropped off the bottom of the screen.

DSD decoding and full DSP/bass management/time delay processing that stays DSD all the way through. Sony has come out with new second (and may be working on third) generation DSD chips that start to deal with this issue.

High resolution DAC's that can process both DSD and PCM bitstreams separately so that both formats are converted at the maximum quality attainable by each. Burr-Brown has started to make such DSD/PCM DAC's, so that's a start.

Full digital DSD/PCM master clock for anti-jitter control. Apogee is a good source for master bitstream clocks. Something that is overlooked in most players.

Full servo laser tracking and top-drawer error correction.

Open ended Firewire connection for all audio bitstreams w/ full software upgradeability. If a protocal is agreed upon, a software upgrade would allow it to be programmed to work within whatever rules govern this new digital audio interface.

User CD-ROM upgradeable. Image files would be made available on-line for customers to download and then burn onto their own CD-ROMs to flash the player's chips.

All current disc formats would be supported. Even high speed copied DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD+R, DVD+RW, and CD-R's.

Dan

Wow...that's quite a list there Dan. I would have to agree with it although I don't think a player like that could happen anytime soon due to unknown standards on the audio side. I'm also curious at what price a player like that would be sold for. The Apogee clock itself would make it cost a pretty penny.

All that said, I wouldn't mind owning a player like that.

Dan: Just checked out your website. Very sweet!! That's quite a collection of discs you got going on. Enjoy!

[This message has been edited by Jason J (edited April 24, 2003).]

Jason J:

Thanks for the compliment! I'm slowly working on the web page in my spare time. Now all I need are pictures!

Dan