Show 'n' Tell
The DVDMaster 8000 Pro is a bit more complicated to set up than your average DVD player—the dizzying array of possible configurations can paralyze all but the most intrepid tweaker. A scan through the DVDMaster's instructions offers little in the way of guidance. Sure, there's an introductory congratulatory page suggesting the XLR audio and Adagio video outputs for highest quality, but the instructions offer precious little technical information about either. It also provides only limited information about the player's bass-management modes. I'm told a new manual is in the making; it's sorely needed. Only technical geniuses and idiots savants can successfully navigate the current pamphlet.

Once I'd figured out how to find them, the internal setup menus were simple to use. The most important buttons on the DVDMaster's remote control glow nicely when you push the power button, but the mysteriously named Action button (a carryover from the Panasonic chassis), which gets you into the setup menus, isn't one of them. But once in Setup Land, it took me less than five minutes to designate speaker sizes, delay settings, volume levels, and display-device preferences via cute pictographs and multiple-choice options.

I set up the 8000 Pro using the tried and true mine-detector method: plug something in and see if it blows up. I settled on the XLR analog audio, coaxial digital audio, and Adagio component outputs. I also experimented with running my CRT projector directly from the DVDMaster, sans the outboard video processors (scalers) I normally use. Nothing exploded, and the result was revelatory.

Sound 'n' Fury
To get the best from the DVDMaster 8000 Pro, forget about the Genesis video and standard 5.1 analog outputs, which are the hardware equivalent of a human's vestigial tail: easier to leave in place than to surgically remove. I tried both, but the superiority of EAD's proprietary outputs was immediately obvious. The Adagio video board, despite its extremely limited adjustments, produced the cleanest, most noise-free, most transparent images I've ever seen from a 480p source in my system. On the audio side, the 8000 Pro's XLR audio outputs produced sound that rivaled the best standalone high-end audio processors.

The 8000 Pro's video was good enough to shine on the toughest test material I've collected over the years. Forget about most test-disc material—that's kindergarten stuff. Try reproducing the microphone mesh on The Best of Sessions at West 54th without rainbows, motion artifacts, and extraneous video noise. Remarkably, the 8000 Pro accomplished that and more. On Rickie Lee Jones' "Road Kill," there's a rotating black-and-white-spiral disc resting on the DJ's table that usually gives DVD players fits. Not only does it create a nasty blur through most machines, but a rainbow of colors emanate from its monochrome spirals. There was no hint of such visual consternation through the 8000 Pro. The moving spiral was sharp right down to its center, motion artifacts were nonexistent, and the disc's color was pure black and white. DVDs created from video sources looked much better through the 8000 Pro than through any other player I've seen.

The 8000 Pro also rendered film sources with stunning fidelity. The bombing run over Tokyo on disc 2 of Pearl Harbor was virtually devoid of motion artifacts and video noise. Jaggies on the airplanes' wings as they slice through blue sky were also nonexistent. Differences between sharpness in various scenes in the same movie were blatant through the 8000 Pro. Every close-up of Jennifer Love Hewitt in Can't Hardly Wait was much softer than those of Ethan Embry. The out-of-focus areas, also known as missed focus spots, that regularly punctuate this film were also painfully obvious.

I can think of only two downsides to the Adagio board. First, its limited adjustability may be a problem with some displays. Many CRT projectors, like my Sèleco Millennium 800, offer almost no image adjustments besides Brightness and Contrast. Color intensity can vary widely between DVDs, so the ability to adjust saturation is very useful. The Genesis board permits extensive individual tweaking of images, but if you use the Adagio output, you can't fine-tune image saturation. Some discs looked a bit on the pastel side through the Adagio; if your display can't adjust the saturation, pastels are what you'll have to live with.

The second shortcoming of the Adagio board is that it puts out only 480p. If you want 480i, you'll have to plug into the Genesis component outputs. The Adagio also lacks any upsampling capabilities. For anyone used to a high-end scaler with the ability to do 720p or 1080i, 480p may look a bit lo-rez. Still, the 8000 Pro's 480p looked substantially better than the 480p I'm used to seeing from my Toshiba SD-9200 and SD-6200, and the Adagio board had greater sharpness, higher resolution, less noise, better control of motion artifacts, and far more stable black level and sync signal. When done right, 480p looks great, but it's still only 480p.

But its great-looking picture was only half of the DVD Master 8000 Pro's performance package. Its audio capabilities reminded me of EAD's DSP-9000 2-channel D/A processor. Just as the DSP-9000 made it possible to assemble a state-of-the-art 2-channel digital system without a preamp, the 8000 Pro lets you build a multichannel system without an A/V processor. The results, with the right ancillary components, could be absolutely first-rate. If the limited crossover options and bass-management capabilities work well for your system, the 8000 Pro's analog outputs should produce Dolby Digital sound on a par with such A/V processors as the Meridian 568 and the Lexicon MC-12.

Please note that I specify "Dolby Digital." The 8000 Pro lacks the Lexicon's and Meridian's sophisticated derived surround choices. If most of your music listening is to CDs that require some sort of derived surround sound for multichannel output, the 8000 Pro will not make you quite as happy as the Lexicon MC-12 or Meridian 568, and both of those permit far more system optimization. And with only two speaker crossover choices (full-range or 100Hz rolloff), the 8000 Pro doesn't begin to offer the kind of precise crossover specifications that many speakers need to sound their best. Bass between 150Hz and 50Hz was tidier through the Lexicon and Meridian processors compared with when the DVDMaster drove my system directly.