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

[Nathan_R]

Is your macrovision "off"? Turning mine back on fixed all playback problems (and still allows me to upconvert).

~~Nathan

 

[videobruce]

I may have to do something about that red light around the power button when the unit is off. Who thought that was a good idea?

It makes it easier for thieves to find the unit in the dark.


Does anyone think the pic quality (forget the features and the poor remote) is as good as the Panny RP-82/XP-30/XP-50?

 

[Jay Blair]

Marc, for the problem with The Osbornes you're having, have you tried going into the secret menu to change the region code from 0 to 1? I've now found 3 discs that won't play unless the region code in set to the proper region instead of region 0, including Jurassic Park that I just looked at this morning. Those 3 discs behave exactly as you're describing, they start to play then shut down without the expected error message saying wrong region being played. I don't know if this is caused by RCE coding on the discs or not.

 

[Robert P. Jones]

Carlo Medina -

>>a. supports 480p
>>b. scales 480i to 1080i

>>Now this is curious because pretty much most R1 commercial DVDs are 480p, no? Or can you have it choose to do either 480p or 480i per disc, and then the 480i option is then scalable???


The format for DVDs has not changed since its inception. It will, sometime in the future - to 1080p most likely, as evidenced by DVE - but hasn't yet.

As such, it is strictly a 480i-native format. Always has been. It has been redone to 480p by the player itself, and now to 1080i and 720p by the players in this thread.

But the native format of DVDs is still the original 480i.



JohnSterling -

>>OK...another question...(and BTW...thanks for the response, Marc)...My Mitz has two video modes: 480P and 960I. Will the 1080I work with my TV?????

Again, thanks in advance for your help.
John


Any Mit HDready will play 1080i, which is a completely different scanrate from 480i or p. The TV will sense it automatically and pick it up for you, as soon as you send it in, whether from an HD STB or from one of these players. To the appropriate IPs, of course - don't expect it from the S or composite IPs.

It's best if you have it calibrated before expecting the best performance, tho. The first 100 hours is called the "drift period", as far as convergence goes. They also ovescan them horribly at the factory, losing you much of your picture area. Resizing them properly not only restores lost pic area, but also tightens the already ultra high resolution even more.

Adding a high precision convergence after the template has been restored to reflect the resizing, and you have a breathtaking picture, that you can sit far closer to than ever before, OOB.


960i is a selectable variation of 480i and only for 480i material.


From what I've been reading, the 1080i upscaled from the players in this thread will totally blow away the 960i feature.


Mr Bob

 

[JohnnyG]

Wow, this player sounds great! I started a big web search to see if I can get ahold of this unit to sell myself and low and behold, the Canadian distributor just happens to be a company I already deal with! Looking forward to checking this puppy out!

 

[JohnnyG]

I wonder if the LiteOn with it's conversion to 1080i in the box would help with the old Toshiba RPTV upconversion issues from the past 2 years

A 1080i input bypasses Toshiba's upconversion completely, so the answer is yes!

 

[Ike]

Nathan nailed it right on the head. The secret menu seems to be a little finicky when it comes to certain DVD's. Now, I can give somewhat more clear impressions.

Out of the box, the player is heavy. I set it up, and while some are saying it's noisy, I found it to be way more quiet than the previous player that occupied it's spot. I quickly updated the firmware to 2.29, and went in. The secret menu is easily gotten to, and easy to understand.

Using my previous calibration, the 480i signal looked great: colors were deep, and the picture was very film like. Switching through the many display types (480 component, PAL, PAL Component, 720p, 1080i, and 480 composite in that order) revealed that anything above 480 component caused the picture to completely blow out the contrast.

After the hiccup I had with macrovision, I finally did a re-calibration. The settings for 480p and 1080i are drastically different than the setting for 480i component. My brightness is set to 12 out of 63 now, since upconverting tends to ramp the brightness up, causing the picture (un-calibrated) to look plain terrible.

During calibration, I noted that unlike my previous player, the Liteon was capable of producing the blackest bar on the brightness pluge on the DVE disc (4% below video black).

The first thing I watched was Blood Simple. The opening (with the Forever Young historian), is 4x3. This was pillarboxed like 4x3 material being brodcast in HD. The movie then correctly displayed in 16x9. The transfer was far smoother than I had expected, looking close (to me at least) to HD.

Afterwards, I popped in a concert DVD that was 4x3. I watched it in 480i and to my surprise, it still pillarboxed. Playing with the settings, I found that no matter if upconverting or not, selecting 16x9 in the setup menu makes all 4x3 material pillarboxed. For me, this is an absolutely fantastic feature,since I'm not a fan of the grey bars the TV produces, as they crop a substantial portion of the image, and I find them too bright. If you want to stretch something, go into the setup menu, and change display to one of the 4x3 modes.

The flash card reader is a surprisingly nifty little feature. The quality of the pictures blown up was considerably better than I expected. Simply put your card into the reader, and hit the button on the front, and the player goes through a slideshow. You can change the amount of time an individual picture stays on the screen, and hitting stop brings up a menu of all the pictures on the memory card. While I'm not sure how often I'll use this feature, it's definitely nice, and could be useful for family get togethers where there's no easy way to show a group of people digital photos.

That's all for now. I'm not at all the person to say anything about the audio. I'm good to make sure my receiver is outputting the 5.1 track. Maybe someone else can post their thoughts on this aspect of the player.

 

[Brajesh Upadhyay]

I'm seeing subtle improvements in 1080i upscaling as I watch more DVDs. It's like watching a SuperBit version of a previous transfer that was already quite good.

Over the weekend, I watched "Nowhere in Africa" DVD. The movie has nice outdoor scenery & some close-ups of actors' faces. At times, the 1080i upscaling was as good as an upconvert on Showtime-HD or HBO-HD. There was better texture/detail in people's faces & scenery shots.

 

[JohnnyG]

Ike, TVs have seperate internal settings for different resolutions. It's likely your TVs 'fault' that the brightness is too high for a 1080i input.

 

[Robert P. Jones]

I've read that the loader is rather noisy, but that a LiteOn loader you can replace it with - the 166? - is much quieter and perfectly interchangeable. I hear the Toshiba 1712 is ultra quiet. As all are actually computer drives, I suspect the connections on all of them are interchangeable.

I ordered mine last night from newegg.com. $150 with FedEx Saver s&h provided at no charge. Did have to pay tax, tho, as I am in CA. Coulda had it shipped to my brother's home in Portland, OR, but then he woulda had to reship it to me, etcetcetc...

Can't wait!


John -

It would be unfortunate if the DVDP truly has the brightness set way off from normal. Usually on RPTVs, the brightness subsetting is global, and not local to each scanrate.

Which simply means that when the unit is in play, an accuate subsetting in the User brightness will have to be located and kept around, for whenever use. Can't set it esp. for 1080i, because at least in my case, 1080i is already taken for OTA HD and Comcast Cable HD. Which are ID in terms of their brightness settings, and as such would take priority over whatever the LiteOn displays, as far as subbrightness setting goes, at my 65" Panny. Upon HU'ing the LiteOn, I will have to go to the Shack and get a switcher, as all 3 will be putting out 1080i.

But if it works as well as I suspect, from the reading I am doing here and elsewhere on the LiteOn, I will then be selling off my Panny RP56, so that will free up its component OP at my Panny RPTV...

I have actually needed a component switcher ever since I got the Comcast HD, a week or 2 ago. Been doing the switching manually so far.

This has been true ever since the advent of the DSS satellite, which to my display back then always showed noticeably increased brightness "fill" in dark areas compared to the regular stuff, including DVD and cable at the time. And as such, required dialing back. It was DirecTV back then, on a now-primitive VS-6071 Mit.

I have not noticed it on my current Dish setup, on my current year 2000 720p native-capable Panny - DSS's S video compared to the component OPs of my Panny RP56, when both are in 480 interlaced. Nor when the DVDP is set to progressive.

Most of the better DVDPs these days have a LIGHTER/DARKER setting inside the player's menu, for matching things up between scanrates and/or input locations.

This does NOT allow the player to pick up blacker than black or not - it is ONLY for brightness matching between various image source devices, like DVD vs. DSS.

The player has to be BthB-capable on its own. I have been told this one is. It will be one of the first tests I will be running on it, with the VE pluge pattern.


Mr Bob

 

[Brajesh Upadhyay]

On my unit, the drive isn't noisy. I ordered mine from newegg.com as well. Only thing is they didn't ship it double-boxed. Thankfully, the player came fine.

 

[Robert P. Jones]

They said it was primarily noisy in the loading and cueing up, and got appreciably less noisy once the disc started playing.

Not double boxed? I'm amazed it didn't just disappear in transit, with all its marketing info brazenly displayed to ALL the shippers personnel, all along the way!


Mr Bob

 

[Brajesh Upadhyay]

I was worried about that too--the box is indeed a walking advertisement for the player . When I went to pick it up at my FedEx center, people were starting at it so much (while I was signing for it), I felt like all eyes were on me & the box .

But, it's FedEx w/a tracking # attached to it, so that kinda makes it hard to steal I guess.

Mine came w/the box a little beat up, but LiteOn did pack the player fairly well, so yours should be fine too.

 

[Robert P. Jones]

>>When I went to pick it up at my FedEx center, people were starting at it so much (while I was signing for it), I felt like all eyes were on me & the box .


What made it stand out? It would be just another DVD player, to them. They would have no idea about its new HD capacities, right?


Mr Bob

 

[jeff peterson]

So how do we update the firmware? I see from Liteon's website how to download it, but do you burn it to a CD and just insert it into the player? Or is there a remote button combination you must go through to get it to update?

How do you display the firmware the machine is currently running?

I did a search in this thread but couldn't find the answers to my questions.

 

[Robert P. Jones]

You do have to have a CD burner in your PC to do this, from what I have heard so far. Then you pop in what you have downloaded and burned, and the LiteOn acts like a computer and keys you into its internal menu automatically. You then select up the upgrade and let it do its thing.

I think.

Nero is the key.


Mr Bob

 

[Brajesh Upadhyay]

So how do we update the firmware?

After you download the zipped file from LiteOn's website, you get a Nero .nrg (image) file, which you can simply open in Nero & burn onto a CD-R. You also get raw files, which you can put together & burn as directed. Word & Acrobat instructions are included. The firmware flashing starts automatically when you insert your CD-R into the player. It takes about 1-2 mins., with the progress shown on the player's LCD display. (I had my player in 1080i, so maybe that's why it didn't show onscreen.) Anyway, do NOT disturb the player while it's flashing! When done, the disc tray will open automatically. Take the CD-R out & press Power to turn the unit off, then Power back on. You're done. The new firmware version will be shown when you go to the Setup menu.

 

[Brajesh Upadhyay]

Another cool thing about this player is that the ZOOM feature actually appears to "scale" the picture, similar to the Malata N996/520, Panasonic RP91 & JVC players w/the Mediamatics chip.

 

[JohnnyG]

Usually on RPTVs, the brightness subsetting is global, and not local to each scanrate.

Robert, the Toshiba's and Pansonic's that I routinely calibrate do indeed maintain different brightness level offsets for a 1080i scan rate. On the Toshiba's, there are seperate brightness offsets for NTSC, 480i component, 480p and 1080i scan rates. On the Panasonic, there are seperate settings for 480i and 1080i.

Also, the Lighter/Darker setting on DVD players is to set to black level at zero of 7.5 IRE. 7.5 IRE is the standard black level for NTSC video and 0 IRE is the standard level for any type of component video signal. Which you pick really doesn't matter, as long as you match the level on the TV. A PLUGE test pattern is all you need.

When I get the Liteon, I'll hook it up to my personal (and, of course, calibrated ) Toshiba 46H83 and I should be able to tell instantly whether the units black level is incorrect.

 

[Robert P. Jones]

>>Also, the Lighter/Darker setting on DVD players is to set to black level at zero of 7.5 IRE. 7.5 IRE is the standard black level for NTSC video and 0 IRE is the standard level for any type of component video signal. Which you pick really doesn't matter, as long as you match the level on the TV. A PLUGE test pattern is all you need.


I have seen prog. scan DVDPs that delivered blacker than black on 480i and NOT on 480p, within the same unit. I think it was either a Tosh or a Sony that I saw do that. I have seen many DVDPs - some very expensive and high end - NOT deliver blacker than black on their p component OPs, via the VE pluge stripes test.

Not all component prog. OPs from DVDPs deliver blacker than black, unfortunately. Wish we could count on that.


Mr Bob