- Unpacking

NeoDigits sent us their retail package for the HVD2085 which contained

• the DVD player itself
• a remote control
• one pair of analog Video/Audio cables
• a printed manual
• and finally the power cord

According to the NeoDigits.com website, the player is listed with a retail price of US$199. While our retail package didn't included two AAA batteries and a 5ft HDMI cable, Neodigits assured us that other retail packages do.

The player is very sleek and well designed. The front panel is made of brushed stainless steel, while its light weight (3.5kg) will be appreciated by travelers. On the back, you will find the numerous connections, including:

- Video i/o: Component, S-Video, VGA, HDMI and Composite
- Audio i/o: Optical, Coaxial S/PDIF and RCA output.

We couldn't possibly have complaints here. There's all the interfaces to cater for all users (click to enlarge).

On the front, there's a small LED display that shows the basic operations of the player, the CD/DVD loader and finally, four buttons for basic functions (open/close, play/pause, FF/RF). The buttons are not backlit and we didn't found the CD/DVD loader tray much able to handle heavy use...

Looking at the inside, we see that the board design is rather simple. In the middle, there's the CD/DVD loader (unknown brand), which is connected to main board by a custom cable, meaning that you cannot easily modify your player and install a different CD/DVD drive.

The main chipset used for Mpeg2 decoding, de-interlacing and scaling for the component video outputs comes from AMLogic and is the AML3428.

Looking at the specs, we find that the chipset is powerful enough to decode Mpeg2 streams up to 1080p! Moreover, it supports the newly announced HVD format, China's answer to HD TV content (lets call this an extra bonus). You won't find many chipsets claiming to have an "On-Chip CSS descrambler", a needed feature to view your DVDs up to 1080p format :-)

The remote control is nothing fancy. If anything, it's a little large and we found it inconvenient that it has the standard joypad buttons near the top and not in the middle or bottom. The buttons are big and have a positive action. Something that bothered us though is that the player doesn't always respond to the on/standby function on the remote (tip: double press the red button quickly). It would be nice to have a better remote control, but we can also live with the current one (click to enlarge).