Knife edge spin I had

Knife edge spin

I had previously done this, but did a quick run-through on the player to confirm my settings. I next put in a Blu-ray that is a torture test for black levels, Underworld: Evolution Sony Pictures Home Entertainment and was truly impressed by the level of detail in the gradations of blacks in this film. I had slightly tweaked my contrast and brightness when I ran the DVE, so I went back and compared the Lexicon to both my Denon DVD2500BTCI and Sony BDP-S3 Neither came close to revealing the detail in the blacks as the Lexicon. I watched the opening scene on each player and there was no contest which was better: it was the Lexicon by far. I next cued up X-Men: The Last Stand Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment to see how it would handle the colors of Xavier University, and was again pleased. While my other players seemed to strain to produce the color palette, the Lexicon did it with an ease and naturalness that was just right. Flowers werent overly bright, and the lushness of the greens looked perfect. When I went back and did the comparisons again, the Lexicon came out on top. The Lexicon was also one of the fastest on load times for Blu-rays and was DVD player-quick on DVDs. I am sure people will attack this player as a rebadged Oppo, so I went out and bought an Oppo BD-83 SE in order to fairly compare the two. First off, there is no comparison between the build quality of the two players. The Oppo is lighter and the buttons have a far less solid feel to them. The Lexicon is a taller, much heftier unit. Black levels were close, but the Lexicon had a more natural knife edge spin and color palette than the Oppo. More importantly, the Lexicon was nearly totally silent when loading discs and changing tracks. Those familiar with the Oppo know it is a rather noisy player when loading discs, switching tracks and scanning, even sometimes for no apparent reason. The drive is in the Oppo is noisy enough to catch my attention during quiet passages in movies, while the Lexicon is inaudible during use at all times. DVD scaling was excellent, thanks to Anchor Bays Reference Series VRS technology. When I watched the seriously twisted John Waters film A Dirty Shame New Line Home Video, the rendering was great. The wildness of Tracy Ullmans hair was resolute, while Johnny Knoxvilles pimp-like Ray-Ray character came across bright and bold, as you might expect from such a snappy dresser. Though not as good as native 1080p, it was certainly a step forward from when I turned the scaling off and let my display do the scaling. Sure, the Lexicon can do excellent video, but it is after all a universal player, so I spun up the SACD release of Miles Davis Kind of Blue Columbia. From the start of the horns on So What to the subtle bass lines of Freddie Freeloader, everything was presented in a smooth and detailed fashion, with good air around the various instruments, and made for great listening. I used Neil Youngs Harvest Reprise on DVD-Audio to further test the multi-channel analog outputs and was pleased with what I heard. While this is not the best recording, the music is timeless and the Lexicon brought these aged tracks to life. A Man Needs a Maid is one of my favorite songs on this album and I was treated to an open and lush rendering of knife edge spin track.