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Quick review on 1080i scaling Liteon LVD2001 DVD Player (1 Viewer)

Nathan_R

Supporting Actor
Joined
Dec 4, 2000
Messages
717
Mine will be here tomorrow afternoon. I'll let you know about the secret menus and flash upgrading.
 

BeatCrazy

Stunt Coordinator
Joined
Mar 7, 2002
Messages
129
Real Name
Sam
Nathan,

Let us know if you're able to update the firmware above v227, which it comes with.
 

David_Silva

Auditioning
Joined
Jan 22, 2004
Messages
2
Kudos to Jay!

After reading this very long thread, I took the upgrade plunge. I bought a IOSS Gladiator 8" cable, and went to a local gardening place and bought some copper anti-slug material.

Replaced and grounded the IDE cable. Made a copper shield between the power supply board and the DVD drive. Noticed all the power cords running under the drive and made a copper shield to slip between the underside of the drive and the power cords running beneath. Covered the copper with one layer of clear packing tape to avoid shorts.

There was one power cable on the power supply board that had no twist before diving under the drive, I unplugged it and gave it a twist. Also on the video board on the right one of the power cables also didn't have a twist, so I unplugged that one as well and gave it a twist.

I also am very surprised at how well this worked. On my unit not only did I notice the improvements reported above, but I also noticed I was able to nearly eliminate the ringing this drive showed on the Avia resolution screen. I have a Tosh 46H83, and had to take the sharpness level down to 20, but sure enough the ringing is gone. Previously there was always some ringing even with sharpness down to 0.

Thanks gents, this was one of the best cost effective tweaks I have run into for my home theater!

Cheers -David
 

Robert P. Jones

Second Unit
Joined
Jun 18, 1999
Messages
289
Would insulated Mu metal be better shielding than copper or aluminum?


My roomie exchanged my IDE cables for an ungrounded but well made, twisted-pair shielded version I mentioned earlier, and neither of us see any difference.

Would anybody happen to have a set of scenes that unequivocally demonstrate the difference this upgrade makes?


Mr Bob
 

Jay Blair

Second Unit
Joined
Nov 3, 2001
Messages
333
David, thanks for posting your findings. With all the upgrades I've done to my LiteOn I can still see the right side ringing on my Sony RPTV. That's the bad news. The good new is that I can only see it when I move much closer to my TV from where I normally sit, so I don't worry about it.

But being more than a bit of a perfectionist, I might at some point go a little further with the upgrades to see if I can find a way to get rid of the ringing. It may be the copper shielding you did under the drive that does the trick since this is something I have not done.

I really doubt that the copper tape makes any difference from aluminum tape, but the copper tape certainly looks cooler, so I only used copper tape outside the unit around the plastic housing in front and underneath the unit. I used mostly aluminum tape inside.

As an experiment I also did the same type of shielding to my Toshiba SD-4900 (only the shielding, the Toshiba does not use an IDE cable that can be upgraded) and I see absolutely no improvement to the Toshiba picture.

I'm still surprised (and delighted) by the improvements that can be achieved with the LiteOn upgrades.

Mr. Bob:

I'm also still surprised that you say you can't see a difference with the IDE cable upgrade, even if the cable is not grounded or one of the two cables I've been pushing (the IOSS Gladiator and Antec Cobra cables). The first cable I tried was a cheap ($5) not grounded shielded round cable and I saw a distinct improvement using this cable, and then when I moved up to the grounded IOSS Gladiator cable I saw another distinct jump in quality. This is not one of those things were you test it and go, "I think the quality is better, but you know, maybe it's just my imagination and wishful thinking." It is a large improvement, and several people who have seen my system before and after say they see the same difference I do. It is not suble.

Here again are my findings summarized a little bitter from another post I did elsewhere:

Using Sony 53" RPTV and comparing the LiteOn to a a very fine Pioneer DV-37 run through an iScan Ultra video processor and then using the same films on DVD and on DVHS with my JVC 30K HD D-Theater VCR, the comparion is as follows:

Pioneer DV-37 is a 5 at 480P with the iScan Ultra
JVC 30K HD D-Theater at 1080i is a 10
LiteOn out of the box at 1080i with 2.23 firmware is a 5.5+
LiteOn with 3.01b firmware is a 6
LiteOn with the IOSS Gladiator IDE cable with no other modifications a 7+
LiteOn with all the other modifications and shielding I have done an 8

The LiteOn with the right modifications takes you more than half way to the quality of true hi-def from a regular DVD player. I would say that the LiteOn with my original IDE cable upgrade is a 6.5. In particular, the films I have compared are the two X-Men DVDs with the same films on DVHS D-Theater.

I'm sorry I don't have any way of showing you pictures of the improvements. But if you're going to be in the San Fernando Valley in the near future, just drop me a note and you can come by to see for yourself. I say near future because right now I have access to an unmodified unit for comparision purposes, but that will be upgraded soon.
 

David_Silva

Auditioning
Joined
Jan 22, 2004
Messages
2
Jay
Thanks for the comments. I suprised myself thinking of the shield under the drive, but it made sense to me - I would've thought the best way to route power feeds would be *around* the drive(g). But I guess when designing and inexpensive unit every inch of wiring saved adds up after producing lots of units...

I have also been thinking of adding a shield to the left of and in front of the video processor board - couldn't hurt as long as I leave a bit of a gap for airflow - don't want to overheat that Sigma chip(g).

Re: ringing - I was viewing from about 6' back, it's only a 46" WS, so maybe I just didn't get close enough. It was good enough for me though as the ringing was blatently obvious at that distance before.

Cheers -David
 

Gary Hunter

Agent
Joined
Nov 12, 2003
Messages
36
Hey guys. I've ordered the Norcent and would like to upgrade the firmware to 3.01 but don't have a burner. Would someone be willing to snail mail me a good disc copy of a the firmware update by any chance? Of course I'd be willing to pay for a blank disc and postage. Let me know. You can email me @ [email protected].

As always, I appreciate the info.

Gary
 

Eric Samonte

Screenwriter
Joined
Mar 31, 1999
Messages
1,318
OK, got the Norcent Liteon clone, updated the firmware, now I am in great need of ccf files for the Pronto. Anyone have them...please?

Gary, I can send u a disc..maybe early next week. LMK if u still need it this weekend.
 

Robert P. Jones

Second Unit
Joined
Jun 18, 1999
Messages
289
Jay -

I have just had 2 inquiries from the Fresno area for calibrations. Is that anywhere near the San Fernando Valley?


If you can find scenes that demo the differences and still have both the modified and unmodified LiteOns at your place there, try and take pix of them, as before and afters. I have many before and afters I have taken over the years, some demonstrating the improvements in clarity that cleaning the optics makes, some showing convergence error before and the clarity of supertight convergence afterwards...

I have seen pix sent in to boards of the ringing that 1080i makes on the LiteOn model this thread is all about, vs. the non-ringing of its 480i.

It can be done most easily with a digital cam, where it's easy to send out pix over email. All my pix so far have been with regular old 35mm, tho, scanned and then sent out by email or posted on these boards after being converted to electronic media.

A photo negative reading scanner makes slightly better send-outable pix than a photo print-reading scanner.

Most of the other boards I frequent these days allow for sending attachments, which can be photos. When I did it with cleaning the optics pix here years ago, one of the founders - I believe it was Ron Epstein - helped me. I sent them to him and he put them up on the board, at the thread in question.


Mr Bob
 

Jay Blair

Second Unit
Joined
Nov 3, 2001
Messages
333
Mr. Bob

I'm afraid Fresno is a long way from the San Fernando Valley. The Valley is in the city limits of Los Angeles. I live north of the North Hollywood, Van Nuys area of LA.

I must be mistaken, I thought you had mentioned in this thread you had a brother who lived in the Valley.

I have a 3.2meg digital cam with optical zoom that I can use to try and take some decent pix. I'll see what I can do using scenes from my X-Men DVD before and after and then also compare to my D-Theater tape of X-Men, since I have been spouting off about how close the LiteOn comes to true HD quality. I'll also try to use a film like Blade Runner, because it is of much lower quality than X-Men and will be a good display of the LiteOn's abilities with less than stellar material.

The unmodified LiteOn I have belongs to my roommate and I will probably be doing a complete upgrade to that by next weekend if I can assemble all the parts by then. I've already done the IDE cable upgrade, but that is easily removed, and the original cable is still around to pop back in for demo purposes.

Maybe I'll try to take some pix of the upgrade process as well, but won't make promises for any of this since I'm busy right now with some writing projects besides my full-time day job. I'm not sure how effective this will be though because I did take a couple pix of my Sony when I first got the camera and they looked awful, but maybe I just have to get the settings right. I haven't used it that much.
 

Robert P. Jones

Second Unit
Joined
Jun 18, 1999
Messages
289
My brother lives near Sunset Blvd in LA. I believe that is West Hollywood? Somewhere near Santa Monica?

I was just down there a couple weeks ago!

Send me some contact info to my email address and I can look you up next time I'm down.


Mr Bob
 

Eric Samonte

Screenwriter
Joined
Mar 31, 1999
Messages
1,318
One more thing......does anyone know how to change the Liteon splash screen to ur own image? It would be cool to get my own up there when I power on that thing....
 

Ricky T

Supporting Actor
Joined
Oct 28, 1999
Messages
921
Gary,

Robert Jones was gracious enough to burn and send me a copy of 3.01. Please send me a PM with your full name and address, and I will mail it to you.

Ricky
 

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