AdrianW1503559681
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Posts posted by AdrianW1503559681
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I guess some people could do with the girl next door but I want the super model!
Well, I'd settle for Elisha Cuthbert
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...I realise a new model is comming out in a week or 2 but it seems that the new one is not to good with PAL...
And apparently the 686 is worse than the 676 - is this a trend with Pioneer's "upgrades"?
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I have an 880 - but if I was buying again I think I'd go for the 520.
The button layout looks so much better on the 520, all the transport buttons on the 880 are too small and much too close together.
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...But I am confused....does the TV already upscale DVD 576p to 1080i?
All TV's scale the image (either up or down) to the native resolution of the screen. The question is - which device has the better scaler, a cheap DVD player or a multi-thousand dollar TV?
I guess one advantage of the upscaling players, is that usually you'll be using an HDMI digital interface, which "should" provide a better image than component regardless of any upscaling.
IMO, you should wait for either HD-DVD or Blu-ray (both of which will upscale standard DVD anyway).
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Location is not so important for me ( apart from the extra postage and handling costs) as I would most likely be buying from a website..
It's basically illegal for Australian stores to sell US DVDs. And anyway, the aussie stores that do sell them, are way over priced.
You need to look at the US and Canadian stores. DeepDiscountDVD are currently having a 20% off everything sale (until late Saturday). Check them out.
Other stores worth checking are: DVD Planet, DVD Box Office & Amazon
This site: DVD Price Search is excellent for comparing prices at US stores (go to preferences first to set your country to Australia, so it takes into account the correct shipping costs).
Make sure you totally avoid DVDSoon.
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I know there were some black 30 series fuji's here for awhile so you might be lucky with someone importing the newer ones.
ps.from memory i think that they were about 500 more than the silver ones that were out at the time.
I'm pretty sure those black 30's were just silver 30's that the local fuji had painted black.
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Well, I removed the four analogue pins - but then it turned out the wide pin in the centre was a little too wide. I managed to cut & file that down to size.
And now the cable works perfectly.
Why are DVDI-D cables so stupidly expensive (around $50 for the "cheap" ones). When I can get a DVI-I cable for $14.95 which actually has MORE functionality, more pins and more wire (ie the analogue connection). So the DVD-D cable should be cheaper (like $12.50 or something).
The prices being charged for digital cables are just ripping people off.
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Not the best idea
I'll have a little search around but i'm they have an adapter for situations like that...i would say there is almost an adapter for every cable connection.
I found this adapter online (DVI-I to DVI-D adapter) - but that's US$39. They have to be kidding, I'm going to cut the pins off my AU$14.95 cable - I can't see why it won't work.
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Be interested to know if anyone has got one of these new docks that apparently solve the problem.
I'm on my second replacement 880 dock. The last one is much better than the first two. The problem is that the remote would disconnect/reconnect by itself and go in & out of charging mode.
With the new dock, it is much easier to make sure it connects properly. Usually just putting the remote on the dock is enough, but sometimes you have to jiggle it a bit to make it connect. It's obvious when it has connected properly because the screen changes to a screen saver, this then cycles a couple of times and then the back light goes out.
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I've just checked my plasma, and the female DVI connector will only take a DVI-D plug.
Looks like I'll have to snap off the four analog pins on one end of the cable to make it fit - is that a good idea? (I did find one web site suggesting this).
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Thanks guys.
I'll give the cable a go and see what happens.
Also, thanks for the google (site:name) tip.
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It's very difficult search for short acronyms in the forums - so sorry for what is probably just a bunch of repeat questions.
Anyway, I want to connect my PC's DVI port (on the video card) to my plasma's DVI port just it try it out (playing movies & maybe games).
I'd totally fogotten that there's more than one type of DVI cable, so I just bought the cheapest (a DVI-I cable).
So, if I use this DVI-I cable, will it work? will it cause problems? And do I really need to buy a DVI-D instead?
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Looks like they've altered the text, it now reads:
...and provides content mastered in 1080i High-Definition -
Thanks for the reply ajm.
An HTPC is a bit out of my price range ATM. But, it does seem the best way to go.
I'll have to try hooking up my existing PC (via DVI) to my plasma, to see what the quality is like playing some HR avi's I have. If it looks good, I might just have to start saving.
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Currently I have a Pioneer 676 DVD player. This can play DivX and XviD avi files.
Quite a lot of content these days is starting to use features that my player can't cope with (QPel, GMC, packed bitstream, mp4, mkv, etc) or with resolutions higher than SD. Most of the time I can manage to re-encode using XviD with most of the fancier new options turned off. This is obviously time consuming and the video quality will usually suffer. And resizing down to SD just so my player can cope is really annoying.
I'd like something that can play all these files (and hopefully HD content as well - like DivX HD or WMV HD) and preferably from a burnt DVD.
If the device also had an HD tuner with PVR functionality, that would be great.
Does anyone have any recommendations of what I should consider (and price points).
I have built a few (regularly sized) PCs before - so an HTPC is a possibility, but I would like something that boots quickly and is easy to use by the rest of the family.
Is a modded XBox a reasonably way to go (and are they HD?).
Note: I do have a home LAN (with wireless) so streaming from a PC is also a possibility.
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I've only seen DVD+R as double layered in the stores.
In fact I recently bought one for my PC and the DVD+R was a Verbatim from JB HiFi.
Not bad and saves me from having another disc for PC recovery.
The main problem with DVD+R DL discs is that they cost a lot more than 2 single-layer discs, so (IMO) for a write-once medium they're just too expensive.
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I have a Pioneer 676, and have never seen a layer change, even when I specifically look for it(michaeldvd gives info about where the layer change is, so I knew exactly where to look). It is well known for having a totally seamless layer change. Was only $169 too. I'm pretty sure its replacement(686) would be the same.
I agree - I've never seen a layer change on my 676 either. My old Toshiba 2109 (same as the OP) was atrocious at layer changes (and pretty bad at playing a range of different titles properly at all).
I'd suggest that any of the current Pioneer's would be a good choice.
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I have Energy speakers (mine are called Take-5, but they've been superceded a couple of times). They are quite small (about twice the size of those bose cube things). They do have two drivers each and sound fantastic considering their size.
Take a look at their range here: http://www.energy-speakers.com/v2/products/product-lines.php
They don't seem to have the same types that I have anymore - but the current "act" & "take" series do include some smaller sized speakers.
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Are you sure the NTSC widescreen movies that you have are anamorphic - maybe they're just letterboxed non-anamorphic movies.
If the DVD is NOT 16:9 enchanced (and quite a few older R1 releases aren't 16:9 enchanced) - then you would have to use one of the zoom settings to get the correct aspect.
Try running the disc on your PC using WinDVD or PowerDVD, make the movie appear in a window - do you get a 16:9 shape window with narrow black bars? or do you get a 4:3 shape window with wider black bars?
Which movies are they? What are their bar-codes?
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The Toshiba HD-DVD player does upconvert DVD: see this page: http://www.tacp.toshiba.com/dvd/product.asp?model=HD-A1
Don't know about blu-ray, but I certainly would expect them to upconvert.
I think what is more important is "will they play DivX-HD and WMV-HD?"
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It's probably due to Fox being very low data rate & overly compressed. I don't think you'll get Fox to look good on anything larger than a 78cm CRT.
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I'd say you're pretty safe with widescreens movies > 1.78:1 (eg. 2.35:1) as the black top & bottom are only going to be there for a couple of hours.
IMO The main problem is 4:3 DVDs (ie. TV Shows) You're more likely to watch a lot of these all in a row (eg. a Seinfeld or Simpsons marathon) or in my case a whole season of an anime show. My plasma (fujitsu) has noticibly brighter left & right edges when viewing 16:9 content. I think the affect is reducing somewhat over time, but it can be pretty annoying.
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Prison Break is also a recap episode.
AFAIK the US never had a Prison Break recap episode. But, episode 16 is a flash-back episode, but you actually get to find out stuff that happened before episode 1. It's a really good episode, even though it didn't move the story forward at all, it did flesh out quite a few of the characters.
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What happened to Monday night's episode. Has it just been delayed for some reason or has the show been axed.
The ratings weren't that good in the US. They'd transmitted the first 12 episodes by the end of January and it's been on hold since then. Episode 13 is scheduled for this Thursday.
Xvid/Divx/DVD Players
in General AV Discussion
Posted
I have a Pioneer player and it is good at playing XviD & DivX - but as jok11n says, it can't play anything with GMC or QPel properly and files with "packed bitstream" will stutter and probably give you a headache.
It is very easy to fix the "packed bitstream" problem with a program called MPEG4Modifier, but files with GMC or QPel need to be re-encoded (using something like VirtualDubMod).