LiteON LVD-2001 vs. Bravo D1 (1 Viewer)

[Citizen87645]

In all my searches I haven't seen a comparison between these two players for 1080i ouput so I picked up a LiteOn this weekend to do my own.

If you're looking for the best 1080i picture quality the Bravo is still king, at least using the DVI connection. But operational incosistencies go along with it. Generally my player will play anything after the inital loading issues. Sometimes it takes a couple power cycles to get it to take though. But once it plays it's a beautiful thing.

If I had purchased the LiteOn first and had no Bravo for comparison I'm sure I would be singing its praises to everyone. The picture is just a bit softer in comparison to the Bravo, but then you get operational consistency and some other bells and whistles that actually work.

For picture quality the most revealing elements for me are usually titles and lettering, the best being the slow fade up on the "Lord of the Rings" (the one that looks like hammered gold). The Bravo just goes a little farther in terms of overall clarity and edge detail. The LiteOn looks good, but lacks that extra "oomph".

I am planning to keep the LiteOn as a back up for anything that won't play on the Bravo. Perhaps over time I will make the LiteOn the primary player because I won't be wondering every time if a disc is actually going to load.

I once read a comparison review in which the writer liked both products but for slightly different reasons. He then said if these products were women, he would date one but marry the other. For my tastes, the Bravo is the one I would date and the LiteOn the one I would marry...assuming of course I could only have one of them.

I know this isn't very technical, but any questions asked I'll do my best to answer.

 

[Stephen Hopkins]

May want to look into replacing the loader on the Bravo. It's a quick and fairly easy process and gets rid of 99.9% of the loading issues as well as loading faster. It doesn't get rid of the remote IR code overlapping it has with some pioneer equipment but hopefully the bravo d2 will. I'm waiting for the D2 early '04 to decide if i want to keep my d1 and do the loader replacement or replace the whole unit with the d2 or something else released after CES.

Here's a link to more info on loader replacement on the d1:

http://www.duke.edu/~java32/bravo/bravohacking.html

 

[Citizen87645]

Thanks for the URL. Much better than sifting through the posts! I think I WILL give the loader replacement a whirl.

 

[Stephen Hopkins]

Like i said, i'm going to see what's up w/ the D2 before I do the loader replacement. Since I have a Pioneer Elite 43TX receiver and Pioneer CLD-406 LD payer the overlap in remote codes can be pretty annoying. The biggest problem is changing the volume on the receiver can cause the DVD player to stop, open, FF, RW, or sometimes even turn off. Hopefully the D2 will fix this as well as have a more reliable loader, better Divx 3 support (if you consider the D1 as having any at all), and a better remote.

 

[Citizen87645]

Was able to locate one of the drives listed as a D1 replacement option at newegg.com the LiteOn 166 (the black model). It just happened the site was running a 27.00 special+free shipping on it that ended at 4:00PM today!