Cheapest DVi (not DivX) player available?

[pcavelle]

Hi - I am looking for an inexpensive DVi-equipped player to output a 720p signal, without PAL shudder, via a DVi cable.

Other than Momitsu 880, what are the other options? Is the Yamakawa 365 freely available in the UK?

Thanks,

Paul

 

[GrahamC]

Samsung HD935 from here Samsung HD935

 

[pcavelle]

Thanks, but I wanted one without PAL shudder ie 50Hz @ 720p, not 60Hz - I understand that the Samsung suffers from this,

Paul

 

[BlueNote 39]

Paul,
I believe the Yamakawa is not freely available in he Uk,I could stand to be corrected. I have seen them advertised in the link below ;

http://www.computeruniverse.net/

The price is 149 euros (excl.shipping).

Hope this helps.

BN39

 

[Kane D Williams]

I use my Yamakawa at 720p 60Hz with PAL and NTSC and see no shudder with PAL? The Sanyo Z2 that I have will not do 50Hz 720p and my DVD player has an older firmware without 720p 50Hz anyway!

I like the 365DivX and suggest you give it a go!

 

[Kane D Williams]

BTW. I do actually think the player/PJ combo is better with NTSC DVD's than PAL, but I don't believe this is a frame rate/refresh rate thing. R1 DVD's just seem to look better on this set up??

 

[pcavelle]

Thanks. The Yamakawa it is then!

Any idea how much the shipping will cost?

Paul

 

[stricko]

You occasionally get them on ebay.de, but a search on yahoo.de revealed lots of places in Germany with stock around €140 plus shipping.

 

[Kane D Williams]

Try paying via credit card if possible, as this will not only cover you for accidental damage (with many credit cards), but it also means you don't have to pay the £20 for the Euro bank exchange. It should only cost you about £100 - £120 in total and it is worth that easily! My £1200 when new Tosh 900E is now relegated to audio duties and TV viewing. Is your display device 720p native?

 

[uczmeg]

Hi,

I think shipping is high from CompterUniverse. About 50 Euros.

I believe the total comes in at about £145.

Email them, they will answer in English.

They are an excellent company, and will pay for return shipping should there be a problem.

The 365Divix is a superb machine.

Kane, I believe your problem with PAL discs is that many PAL disc are incorrectly flagged with the progressive film flag. If the flag is wrong the player does not show the film in progressive mode and you'll get a poorer picture as the onboard deinterlacer isn't great.

There are currently ongoing discussions with Yamakawa to see if we can get them to put a force progressive mode option into the firmware.

Obviously this is an issue with any progressive player, but some will have better deinterlacers than the 365. And cost lots more!

It seems most NTSC discs are flagged properly and look stunning on this setup.

I would recommend the 365 over the Samsung every time if you are prepared to take the hassle of ordering from Germany. I was not at all happy with the 2 935s I had.

Cheers
Marc

 

[pcavelle]

Thanks Chaps - I did try to order already already from Computer Universerse but they show it as out of stock.

I'll have another try, or just order anyway (using credit card, as suggested). It will be interesting to test with my projector (Tosh MT8) but also with my LCD TV, also via DVi at 1280 x 720.

Hopefully it will all work out for the best!

Paul

 

[Kane D Williams]

Hi Marc

I'm not sure what you mean? I understand about the flagging, but if I set my 356 to output a 720p signal, won't it be performing deinterlacing and scaling for both NTSC and PAL discs reagarless of flags? Won't the output alway be 720 progressive lines regarless?

Are you saying that most R1 discs will be corrctly flagged as film and thus the Yamakawa will do a 3:2 pull down and that most PAL film souced DVD's are not flagged correctly and so their will be no 2:2 pull down and the Yamakawa will treat it as video source material? Does this mean the output will be 720i then? I'm confused!

 

[uczmeg]

Hi Kane,

I have no real understanding about this. It's all a bit new to me.

But esentially you are correct. If it is incorrectly flagged then the DVD player will not treat it as film material.

Here is a post from the mailing list from someone who did some testing:

Hi Jose,

thank you for forwarding the request to yamakawa. Hope, that they
can find a solution to this problem. Forced progressive mode
(sometimes called forced film mode)is my major headache with this player.

Yesterday I made a small test, took 10 of my PAL DVD´s an checked
with two small programms (DVD2AVI and ReStream) on a PC wether they
show the progressive frame flag or not. Only on title (Lord of the
Ring) shows the correctly set progressive flag. All other, the flag
was not set.

For example the RC2 PAL DVD "A Bugs Life e.g. Das grosse Krabbeln"
which was digitally transfered from the master, did not show this
progressive flag. As a result, the film shows all over artifacts like
combing and line flickering from the badly implemented deinterlacer
mode of the Yammy. Especially due to the excelent DVI/VGA connection
of the Yammy as well a the overall clear source of the film material,
"A bugs life" is a good test canidate to show all the artifacts if the
progressive flag is set wrong.

In turn, I wanted to test how the film looks like if the flag was set
correct. So I used ReStream to set the progressive flag in part of the
film without reencoding the film. WOW! What a difference. Now that the
Yammi notices the progressive flag, the part of the film with the
progressive flag did not show any of the artifacts. This is the
quality, the film should be shown.

Thus to conclude, an option to force the Yammy into the film
progressive mode to ignore the wrong flag, should be imminent for the
next firmware update. A key on the remote control or a setting in the
setup to switch between auto and forced mode would be nice. Hope, that
the developer can do this task.

Jose, could you give us a feedback from the developer what the opinion
on this forced film/progressive mode is and if its possible to
implement this mode ?

Kind regards,
Tom

 

[uczmeg]

And here is Tom's first post:

Hi,

I´m using my 365divX mostly for watching PAL DVD´s. But it
is well known, that most of the european PAL DVD´s are incorrectly
flagged with the progressive Flag. It is also well known, that the
Yammi actually only uses this flag to show the film material correct
in progressive. Otherwise the player uses the lousy deinterlacer mode.
Thus, a lot of PAL DVD´s which false progressive flags, could be
shown better if the Yammi has switch or a function to force the player
into progressive mode (like the Sony 750) by ignoring the false flag.

Now the question is, can the EM8500 decoder chip perform the forced
progressive mode? And if so, can the developer pushed forward to
implement this function into the player software?

The Yammi, as well as all other Sigma EM8500 based player uses the
uCLinux as an embedded ROM based OS. The firmware can be simply
mounted into an existing Linux System. For an example, have a look at:
http://www.duke.edu/~java32/bravo/bravohacking.html

On this page you can find also a decompiled kernel driver named khwl.o
whis nearly identical to the Yammy kernel which especially includes
two functions named:

GetForcedProgressive and SetForcedProgressive.

May be I am wrong, but it seems as these two function calls are
necessary to set the EM8500 chip into the forced progressive mode.
Only, the fileplayer binary of the Yammi did not support this function.

Any developer look in this this group and can give a comment on this?

Did someone has a good connection to the developer, so that they can
implement the forced progressive mode into the fileplayer binary, say
by using the setup or better by using the remote control (another
hidden menu, or pressing two buttons simultaneously etc..).

Greetings,
Tom

(who would like to have a forced progressive mode on his Yammi)

 

[Kane D Williams]

Thanks Marc

Can you give me the link to actual thread, so that I can join in?

I'm still a bit confused, as if the Yamakawa is set to output any progressive picture 480p/576p/720p, it will be providing deinterlacing, as the disc is interlaced. Even if a player reads the flag correctly, it still deinterlaces. I think the difference is what algorythm it uses, ie, one for film or video and this is where we need to be able to set the player to always use the film settings.

 

[uczmeg]

The group is here:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Yamy365/

But not much seems to happen on it!

 

[jrosado]

Hi:

I'm the creator of that list. After a few exchange of e-mails between me and yamakawa technical support, sadly there is nothing that can be done, since sigma chips is not providing much help to the manufacturers and is concentrating there efforts on the chip that will appear this summer.

Anyway, i have a question: if we connect this player to a plasma (like Panny TH42PW6) will the plasma deinterlacer provide a good progressive scan?

Regards,
J. Rosado

P.S.: You can now get the player at www.technikdiretk.de and their shipping costs are only 20€ to anywhere in EU

 

[Andy.T]

You have the "t" and "k" in Technikdirekt the wrong way round.

 

[EffTee]

I'm still waiting for my 365 from computeruniverse. The latest update they gave me was stock arriving 24/3/04 - even though they're showing a 3 day lead time on new orders.

I dropped techniktdirekt a note to confirm stock and delivery times, but they haven't replied. Oh well, good test of my patience.

EffTee