Philips DVDR 1000 MK11

[sirjohnofbalham]

According to the latest Home Entertainment mag, although this player is capable of Pal ps, this feature will not be available 'out of the box'. Philips are waiting for the official ratification of Pal ps after which they will offer a free upgrade through the supplying dealer. Following the news of the 963SA in previous threads, is this correct?

 

[michaelab]

Yes - it is correct. There's a thread about this on the DVDPlusRW.org forums aswell. Also, new firmware updates are always available on that site for download so you may not have to go do your dealer to get it.

Out of the box the DVDR1000MkII will do PAL PS for things you've recorded off the TV, but not for pre-recorded PAL DVDs. This will come with the firmware upgrade. Once PAL PS has been ratified then all new 1000MkIIs will support full PAL PS out of the box.

Michael.

 

[kofsw4]

I'm considering getting one of these Philips DVDR 1000MkIIs and have checked through all the forums to whether there is a hack/upgrade yet to allow it to play pal progressive from pre-recorded discs but cannot find one.

Does anybody know whether this is available yet?

Are there any other (pal) progressive dvd recorders coming out in the UK in the near future?

Is there any other dvd recorder out there that plays back to a good enough standard to do justice to my plasma screen pref via component or VGA outputs?

Appreciate any help.

Thx

 

[michaelab]

Check out the Sony RDR-GX7.

It's cheaper than the Philips DVDR1000MkII and probably a darn sight more reliable Also is dual format (-R, -RW, +RW).

Has component out + 2 RGB SCARTs. Don't know if it does PAL prog. scan though - I don't think it does.

Michael.

 

[kofsw4]

Thanks for the reply

I had a look at the Sony's specs (nobody seems to have one yet to show me) but I was quite attracted by the Philips' ability to take my digiboxes RGB output and play it in progressive scan.

The US version of the RDR GX7 has progressive scan but, as usual, we in the UK miss out!

As I won't get a chance to go and see for myself how much difference passing the signal through the Philips' eletronics makes until the weekend, can anybody who has the recorder set up like this let me know what it's like?

Karim

 

[michaelab]

Karim,

Two things to bear in mind:

1) All the Philips DVDRs, when working in 'tuner' mode or RGB passthrough put the image through the MPEG encoding process (as if it were going to be recorded) aswell. What that means is that the quality of the output depends on the currently selected recording mode so for best quality you have to leave it in HQ mode if you're using it as a tuner or prog. scan box. Having said that, I have a DVDR890 and its output when using it as a tuner is superb in some respects better than my TV I don't know however if the 1000MkII will do PAL prog. scan 'on the fly' (ie when not recording) - something worth checking.

2) Check out the forums on http://www.dvdplusrw.org/ which have a lot of info about all the DVDRs. You will see that the Philips DVDRs have had some reliability issues (eg mine has had to be repaired twice already). I don't know the percentage of machines affected but it would appear to be larger than normal going by the number of problem posts, even taking into account that only people with problems are likely to post.

Michael.