Setting up my Pioneer 565A

NinjaKi11a

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I'm demoing new av receivers on Saturday and anticipate buying an Arcam AVR200. Being very impatient I want to go straight back home and have some mates round for a movie so I'm trying to get as much set up as possible set up in advance. Going through the menus on my 565, I have a couple of questions:

What is 'MPEG compatible' and is a AVR200 MPEG compatible?

What is '96mhz Linear' and again, it is comptaible?

If I turn of the JPEG viewer in the options, will there be any difference in the loading times of DVDs?

Cheers.
 
What is 'MPEG compatible' and is a AVR200 MPEG compatible?

MPEG compatible refers to another sound format similar to Dolby Digital, for replaying stereo and multi-channel soundtracks. All Region 2 DVD players have to be MPEG compatible although Region 1 DVD palyers do not (akthough most are). DVD's with MPEG encoded soundtracks appeared in the very early days of DVD when the format was competing against Dolby Digital. Philips were keen on using MPEG soundtracks as they got a royalty. However, it soon feel by the wayside as Dolby Digital was used by the movie studios for encoding their films. One of DVD's with a MPEG soundtrack was Flubber.

MPEG is still widely used today on DVD's but primarily on home made DVD's from camcorder footage. When you capture and encode footage for DVD using software such as Pinnable Studio 8 & 9 you have the option to use PCM soundtracks or encode the soundtrack to stero MPEG which takes only one quater of the space and therefore allows you to encode homemade DVD's at higher quality. Hence it's still quite useful for the enthusiasts making DVD's. You may also find a lot of copied DVD's of fims use MPEG soundtracks if the film hasn't been released onto DVD. People use software like Pinnacle to copy movies and convert the soundtracks to MPEG to cram a 2 hour film onto DVD.

The AVR200 should be MPEG compatible, most amps are, but you will need to check the spec. However it isn't really a problem if it isn't as the DVD player will convert MPEG soundtracks to PCM stereo anyway, if you use the analogue sound outputs.

What is '96mhz Linear' and again, it is comptaible?

There are some CD's recorded at 96MHz although I've never seen any in the shops but you can buy them, somewhere. It is different from SACD which can also be recorded at 96MHz but output via analogue outputs to your amp. 96MHz linear CD's can be output via coxial and optical connections. You amp should be able to hadle it. It's pretty much a standard feature on most amps/receivers except the really cheap models. My Pioneer D2011 handles the CD's OK.

If I turn of the JPEG viewer in the options, will there be any difference in the loading times of DVDs?

No. Not in my experience with Pioneer DVD players (DV-360 & DV-668AV)

Cheers.[/QUOTE]
 
Ah great, thank you very much for the help.

I hadn't intended to connect up the analogue outputs, so perhaps I should consider it.

I don't suppose you or anyone else would be able to explain to me what 'PAL 60' is. It's an option I came across on my X-box and have never heard of it.

Thanks again.
 
This is the technical blurb for PAL 60, so sit back and be baffled. Previous posting sums it up nicely but if you want to know some of the background info read on. Basically, unless you have a old TV you shouldn't need to use it. On you DVD player see picture putput to either NTSC or RGB (NTSC & PAL).

----

Picture is made from Luminance (Y) and Chrominance (C), Chrominace is made of the colour difference signals (U and V), the being the subtraction of the Red and Blue signals from the luminace. Green is worked out from these signals.

NTSC is 525 lines (about 483 visable lines) at 59.94 (the weird frame rate is to do with the colour carrier) frames a second. However the screen is interlaced (draws every other line then the next frame draws in the lines it missed and repeats) so you only get 29.97 frames. Horizontal scan rate is 15.73425Khz (59.94x525/2)

PAL is 625 lines (about 576 visable lines) at 50 frames a second (25 frames interlaced). Horizontal scan rate is 15.625Khz (50x625/2). Notice the similar HSR, this is intentional as it means that tubes designed for NTSC will work for PAL. If PAL was 60Hz and 625 lines it would require a much higher scan rate and the monitors wouldn't be compatable...

So the differences?

The gaps between the lines in NTSC is more visable so the picture looks darker...

NTSC also uses a low frequency colour carrier (3.58Mhz) which means that noise from the Luminance signal is likely to creep in.

NTSC also has poor colour hues due to the low frequency colour carrier and slight phase shifts of the U and V signals. This is why NTSC TVs (and if you look at the on screen menu a new option will appear...) have a tint control so you can adjust the green level.

PAL alternates the Phase in each frame so that phase shifts don't happen as much so green is er green.

Some NTSC curcuits will have a Hue compensator circuit which tries to make reds and pinks better however some other colours go slightly off (cyans and magentas...)

NTSC has a lower Gamma then PAL, so it does appear slightly darker.

PAL flickers due to the 4.97 Frame difference

PAL 60 is 525 Lines at 60Hz (horizontal scanning frequency 15.625KHz), it's not 625 lines (or 576 lines) as this would require the horizontal scanning frequency to be higher (18.73125Khz...). PAL 60 is technically PAL 59.94... but that doesn't trip off the tongue.
 
SansSouci said:
Ah great, thank you very much for the help.

I hadn't intended to connect up the analogue outputs, so perhaps I should consider it.

As long as you amp/receiver has enough inputs then use the analogue outputs from your DVD player in addiiton to the digital ones. It maybe useful for listening to MPEG soundtracks although you should be able to do this via optical anyway. If nothing else it's interesting to compare the optical/coaxial and analogue outputs.

I use both the optical and analogue outputs from my Pioneer DV-688AV to feed my amp though the amp does switch to the optical automatically which I use 98% of the time. However I do occasionally use the analogue channels.
 
To be honest I can't say I understood much of that (it's only recently that I've sussed exactly what progressive scanning involves). I assume that my Tosh 36ZD26P is not PAL 60.

laser, I think probably it's a good idea for me to take my Qunex 2s off eBay and stick em back on my dvd player. :rolleyes:

Cheers for the help.
 
You should have no problem using PAL 60 with your set but for best picture quality use NTSC or PAL via the scart from the DVD player and set the DVD player to output RGB.
 

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