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BY MARSHAL ROSENTHAL • PHOTOGRAPHY BY CORDERO STUDIOS
DUELLING DOMAINS
Can Adcom’s GFR-700HD receiver handle video as well as it does audio?
F
or an audio receiver to be worth its salt
today, it must be able to handle the intri-
cacies of video with the same precision
as it does audio. So rather than waxing poetic
on how nicely the GFR-700HD’s controls
blend into its industrial-tech black and silver
fi nish, I’ll start instead with the integral video
scaler. It accepts video signals from legacy
sources such as VCRs and DVD players, con-
verts them into whatever resolution your vid-
eo display prefers, then outputs the video to
your display through an HDMI digital video
jack. The downside to this scaler is that it only
works on 480i standard-defi nition signals; video
at resolutions of 480p or greater is ignored and
output as-is. (A planned video board upgrade
won’t have this limitation.) But 480i signals are
the ones that need the most work.
There are many options for controlling the
picture, such as deciding upon the aspect ratio
and fi ne-tuning vertical/horizontal positioning
of the image. Scaler settings for each input are
stored, so they will change automatically when
you switch from your VCR to your DVD play-
er. And while upscaling a VCR to the 1080p
resolution of my Samsung LED rear-projection
display might seem crazy, the image from the
videocassette of My Fair Lady, upscaled through
the GFR-700HD’s National Semiconductor
video processing chip, looks smooth.
I then switch to my Oppo DV-981HD
DVD player (set to 480i and using compo-
nent output), and try Enter the Dragon and the
more recent Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s
Chest. Dragon looks steady and smooth despite
its gritty fi lm grain; Bruce Lee’s ruddy skin
tones appear realistic to the eye. Pirates’ many
panoramic vistas actually seem more detailed
than they would on a standard-defi nition dis-
play. (Of course, neither looks as good here as
the Blu-ray versions of these movies do.) Us-
ing the HQV Benchmark DVD—a much more
demanding trial than normal program material
would be—I find Adcom’s upconversion