[andyp]

I’ve finally decided to upgrade/replace my Sony DVP-725 DVD player possibly for a DVP-NS900V.

I specifically want a multi-region player (my 725 is R2 only), but am a tad concerned about the quality of the many companies that offer them. Some offer multi-region only, whereas others offer RCE too, eg Sevenoaks (and include a 2 year warranty). Any recommendations as to companies to stay clear of? (except Techtronics!). I also notice that Sevenoaks offer a slightly more expensive model with “Component (supporting progressive scan)” - what’s this all about? Worth the extra cash?

Also, anyone know whether a new range is in the pipeline soon, as this player has been around for a while now I think?

Andy P.

[swarrans]

I'd recommend LEConcepts as they seem to know what they're talking about and have about the best prices too -- £400 for a multi region NS900V.
You're probably aware of the RGB/widescreen mode switching issue this player suffered from -- LEConcepts were well aware of the issue, and (because Sony can't confirm which players suffer from the problem) LEC are checked all the machines before they send them out. I'm hoping to get mine this Thursday!

Simon

[SILVERBACK]

let us know how you get on with your new sony player mate thats the one i had my eye on untill i heard about the problems with it.i also have had no problems with leconcepts an consider them to be the best out of most retailers.

I've had my NS900 since early Dec and think it's a great player (once I'd got the RGB switching problem fixed!).

I got mine from electrocentre in B'ham (www.electrocentre.com). They're a major sony reseller and offered a great price and good after sales service in my experience.

Andy.

[swarrans]

Originally posted by SILVERBACK
let us know how you get on with your new sony player mate thats the one i had my eye on untill i heard about the problems with it.i also have had no problems with leconcepts an consider them to be the best out of most retailers.

Well, after a long wait for my Sony NS900V (whilst LEConcepts were apparently waiting for "fixed" machines from Sony and then a further wait while they tested them themselves to make sure they were OK) I got mine yesterday.
You can imagine how thrilled I was to find that it does indeed exhibit the RGB switching problem anyway (I find it happens repeatedly on Sony's own setup menus - anyone else?) To say I'm ****ed off would be an understatement!

However, even though I'd read people's comments about how dark the RGB output was I wasn't prepared for the reality of it -- in my opinion RGB output on this player is completely unwatchable and bettered by own (old) cheap Samsung player! Has anyone tried playing with the numerous chroma/colour tweaks to see if it can be improved?

Therefore, there almost doesn't seem much point in trying to get the switching issue fixed, so I immediately changed to S video and it doesn't appear to do the switching thing and looks OK.
I'm still not exactly happy, as it seems the design is compromised, and presumeably the picture would have been even better if RGB worked properly.

On another note, it is also apparent that I've got a grey import as it's got a UK flimsy plug converter and a naff photocopy of the Sony instructions -- I take back all the nice things I've ever said about LEConcepts where I bought it! I guess I'm not, in principle, against grey imports, but the quality of the instructions and plug don't fit a £400 investment IMHO.

In addition I've been unable to make the 2 SACDs that came with it play in glorious 6 speaker mode - I'm fairly sure I've connected it up correctly with 6 phono leads to the 6 exterior in on my Denon amp and selected "Ext In" but all I get is 2 channel stereo, despite the player saying it's playing in "multi" mode. It may be I'm doing something obvious wrong, but I'm too cross to find it!

At the moment, I'm finding it hard to be objective enough to make a reasonable assessment of the players' S video output quality to know whether to recommend it or not, I would say that if there's a difference to my old Samsung, it's not that much (looks much nicer though!)

Simon

Simon

Sorry to hear of your woes with this player and LE Concepts. I eventually got a reply to my questions from them only after faxing them with, but they still didn’t answer my query of whether the RGB switching problem had been fixed…… obviously not then!!!

To pick up on one of your points, the “UK flimsy plug converter”, do you mean a flat grey European two pin plug (like a shaver plug) with a black square UK 13amp plug ‘wrapped’ around it? If so, this appears to be standard on all Sony products within the last couple of years. I am a bit of a Sony addict (!) and several of my products have these.

Keep us posted on how you get on with LEC.

Andy P.

Sorry to hear about your woes. I got the sony last week and it is performing great. The picture using RGB on my Hitachi 36" is clear and not suffering the darkness mentioned in other posts.

The sacd's that came with it sound fantastic, better than I expected after reading posts about this medium. It is linked to a dennon 3802 with phonos, there is some stuff to set up on the sony to do with audio as the player controls this when using the sacd.( check that only 5 songs are displayed on disc 1 when multi selected) I have no switching problems either. You may just of got a Friday afternoon special.

I was a little concerned about his player after reading all the posts, but after using one would not hesitate to recommend it.

[swarrans]

Originally posted by andy-p
To pick up on one of your points, the “UK flimsy plug converter”, do you mean a flat grey European two pin plug (like a shaver plug) with a black square UK 13amp plug ‘wrapped’ around it? If so, this appears to be standard on all Sony products within the last couple of years. I am a bit of a Sony addict (!) and several of my products have these.
Andy P.

Yes, Andy, that's the plug set I'm talking about (although my 2 pin "shaver plug" is black not grey!). I believe (may be wrong) that this is an indication that they're grey imports because the Sony products I've bought from places in the UK like Comet have moulded on 13amp plugs and Sony's instructions actually say UK products will have moulded on plugs.
However, as I say, I won't get hung up about that!

Stevemj, I'm genuinely pleased that your player is good, and I want to be happy with mine too. I wonder if the dark RGB output is a function of the TV (mine's a Sony KVA32FX60) and I've read that other people have had the same problem. Have you tried your player outputting s video? If you find RGB considerably better, I may be more inclined to carry on trying to get the player fixed, but if S video is just as good I may just live with it (sounds like a cop-out but I'm not sure I can stand the agro of shipping it back to LEConcepts etc)..

Not sure why I'm not getting SACD to work - I'd already done/noted the things you mentioned and the display shows it's playing a SACD in multi mode when appropriate. I'll keep playing. I guess you've confirmed that all you need to do at the amp end is to select "ext in" on the Denon.

[SILVERBACK]

how long have you had the player for because i would send it back with a plug like that.also maybe the reason for them having grey imports is the amount of probs they have had with the uk ones.they should have said that though when you placed your order though.

Hi ‘swarrans’

Just thought I’d try and convince you (well - to the best of my knowledge and experience) that the “UK flimsy plug converter” is not an issue or indication that your player is a grey import.

I have the following Sony UK products which all have this plug:-

4:3 TV purchased from ‘Powerhouse’ about 4 years ago
Nicam VCR purchased from my local Sony Centre about 2-3 years ago
DVP-725D DVD player purchased from my local Sony Centre about 2-3 years ago
DB940 AV amplifier purchased from my local Sony Centre about 1 year ago
DVP-NS900V DVD player purchased from my Sony Centre 2 days ago!

I also asked the salesman about them when I purchased the NS900V DVD player, and he stated that all Sony products have this plug, his opinion was they fit them for cost cutting reasons.

Hope this helps.

Andy P.

I've had the 2-pin converter on both my NS900's, bought from Empire Direct and Sevenoaks Hifi. I do not think it is an indication of grey market imports.

Swarrans,

We have the same TV and the same player. I know next to nothing about all this video conneciton stuff (more into audio than video) but I could not get the S-Video connection to work at all. whatever I did on the TV the image was always black and white.

In the end I chose RGB - thinking it was a lesser format than S-Video (confused it with composite - told you this is not my area!)and it worked imediately.

It is not overly dark - in fact the quality of the picture is breath-taking - and it doesn't seem to exhibit this switching thing at all - even watching 4:3 movies on auto-wide or smart modes.

The only thing I am suspicious of is that mine is a region 2 only player and that maybe the conversion to multi-region causes this to happen.

I should add that this was the 2nd unit I've had. I bought the original and had to take it back within a day because it kept telling me there was either no disk or a dirty disk in the player. the new one has had no such problems (after 2 months of owenrship).

[swarrans]

Hopefully, I'll be able to join the contented 900V owneing gang tomorrow when (I hope) I get my replacement machine!
Max, mine is a multi region (chipped) player so maybe there's something in you theory...
I can well understand why Sony would change to a stand 2 pin plug with an adaptor for the UK, and I don't really care - but the Sony Service centre telephone "technical help" told me last week that it should have a moulded on 13amp plug if it's a "genuine" UK model!! Anyway, I really don't care if the rest of the machine is the same, so I'll drop it!

Fingers crossed for tomorrow!....

Simon

I've had two NS900's, the first was R2 unmodified and was dark on RGB - after an aborted attempt to fix the switching problem I received a refund.

My second player, which is region/RCE free, is similarly dark on RGB and continued to exhibit the switching problem (on RGB only). A competent engineer second time around corrected the problem by applying the SONY fix and although RGB remains somewhat darker than composite or S-Video (though not to the point of making it unwatcheable) it is no longer switching.

Did a comparison between rgb & s-video last night, could not see any difference in the contrast of the pictures (or the quality of the images) to tell you the truth. Have left it on rgb with my sky using the loop through.

I have watched a lot of movies using the player as I have just got my set up, Really am impressed with it and the sacd is a bonus. My player is multiregioned using a firmare change not any hardware mods.

Since the original RGB switching problem only affected owners of Sony/Philips TV's, and this was due to voltages out of spec with regard to the SCART specification I wonder if the RGB darkness is following a similar pattern? As an owner of a Philips TV I see RGB significantly darker than other video formats, as do owners of Sony TV's, yet owners of at least one Hitachi TV can't tell the difference! Any non-Philips/Sony owners witnessing dark RGB??

Admittedly IMHO this is less of an issue than than the continual switching, at least I can live with RGB as it is, but is it right? Probably not - this is a £400-£500 "Quality Standard" player after all.

Email John Archer at Home Cinema Choice (follow one of the forum links above) - he's your only hope of bringing this to Sony's attention.

[swarrans]

First the good news! Got my replacement player yesterday and it's doesn't do the switching thing.
Bad news is that (on my Sony TV) the RGB output is so dark that it's unwatchable as before so I'm using S Video, which is fine - but IMO not any better than my Samsung on RGB. Anyway, I'm sure everyone is getting bored of this whole subject (I'm starting to bore myself!) so I'm going to get on with life now and put up with it. I may send a note to John Archer again as suggested.
If Steve says S Video is as good as RGB anyway perhaps I'm fussing over nothing - although there clearly is a problem with RGB on some TVs that SOny isn't admitting yet.

Thanks for your patience!

Simon

hello guys,
just to keep you informed, I've been refunded by Sony France last wednesday, and will get a 150 euro coupon for a future Sony purchase (if it happens during 2002)......
it seems that all the units of the NS900 that have been recalled by Sony in their factories have not been put again on the market....

swarrans, make sure -digital out- in setup menu is set to off.I bought my player from sony and it has the daft plug converter.