Home Theater/HDTV/et al...

[bmwracer]

groink wrote:

Here's my update... I ordered the LITEON LVD2002 this past Monday. I had trouble working with mypcgoodies.com, and their 1-866 number didn't work. Also, it appears that they disabled the ability to purchase the unit off their web site. Looks like they just plain ran out of them! So I guess maybe this thread is the cause of that!!! hehehe...

Yep. I think that's the case. I visited yesterday in passing and they want you to send an e-mail to get a price on the LVD2002... Hmmm.

Quote:

So I ended up going with another company, linkbyte.com. Paid a bit more, $118.94. Their website was professionally designed, functional, and easy to use. Shipping to Hawaii is a huge chunk of change, $41.07 to be exact. However, I think it would be that much anywhere else (USPS Priority shipping) seeing the shipping weight of unit is about 11 pounds, so I don't have an issue with it. Hopefully the unit will be here by this coming Monday! It's just too bad a company like Circuit City, who sells LITEON DVD writable drives dirt cheap, couldn't bring in any of LITEON's DVD players.

Yeowch! $41 for shipping. Shikata ga nai. Well, hopefully you'll get your player in good time. Hopefully you can provide us with a mini-review like Amrayu did, if it's no trouble.

[kndy-nt2099]

Bedi wrote:

What are the strengths? Plays DivX 3.xx, 4.xx and 5.xx, XViD, WMA, MP3, JPEG, ASF, VCD, SVCD, DVD (of course!). Upgradable firmware however you may check if it's available in the US Here in Germany it's pretty rare.

That's so cool that it plays so many formats! I have two multi-region DVD's...but one can play Mpeg's...my friend bought one of those new RCA portables but it only plays .AVI XVID and not DIVX. Would be stoked to see a player in the US with the functions that you have above at a reasonable price. I think that RCA one is like $400...ugg... So, I guess I'll continue to use my PowerMac ala cables to TV to watch DIVX/XVID.

kndy

[groink]

bmwracer wrote:

Yeowch! $41 for shipping. Shikata ga nai. Well, hopefully you'll get your player in good time. Hopefully you can provide us with a mini-review like Amrayu did, if it's no trouble.

Found out later they shipped it UPS 2-day air. It should be at my front door tomorrow. We'll see what happens!

--- groink

[bmwracer]

groink wrote:

Found out later they shipped it UPS 2-day air. It should be at my front door tomorrow. We'll see what happens!

Way cool. Now you'll have the whole weekend to test it out... Good luck!

[Bedi]

There is a nice DivX Test cd for all avi, wmv etc. playing DVD Players well spread on emule. I suggest those, who want to test everything out, to get the cd if using emule.
I think would be better if I pm the emule link instead of posting here ?! In fact I don't know if it's allowed to post that stuff here. There are only many copies of one single scene from the movie 'Shanghai Noon' encoded in many different ways (video/audio/resolution) and also one picture in different sizes to test out the zoom ability.

[groink]

bmwracer wrote:

Way cool. Now you'll have the whole weekend to test it out... Good luck!

Well, the LITEON LVD2002 DVD player has arrived... And it's MAJOR KILLER OF A PLAYER!!!!!!!!!!!

It's awesome!!!! First Jdorama I played on it is Yamato Nadeshiko... There's a bunch of DivX 3.11 AVI files on a single DVD-R ISO formatted disc, and the DVD player read and played the files perfectly!!!!!

I also threw in another DVD-R ISO formatted disc with a bunch of MPEG-2 files, and it reads/plays them as well.

I'm totally stoked so far... Next is the region-2 hack test...

--- groink

[amrayu]

groink wrote:

Well, the LITEON LVD2002 DVD player has arrived... And it's MAJOR KILLER OF A PLAYER!!!!!!!!!!! It's awesome!!!! First Jdorama I played on it is Yamato Nadeshiko... There's a bunch of DivX 3.11 AVI files on a single DVD-R ISO formatted disc, and the DVD player read and played the files perfectly!!!!! I also threw in another DVD-R ISO formatted disc with a bunch of MPEG-2 files, and it reads/plays them as well. I'm totally stoked so far... Next is the region-2 hack test... --- groink

glad you like the player so far!!!
i reccommend this player to everyone, you might as well throw away your old dvd player!!
_________________

SARS High Quality Asian Drama FanSUBs:
http://www.sars-fansubs.com/
..dorama & fansubbing obsession blog.. http://blog.goo.ne.jp/amrayu78/

[bmwracer]

groink wrote:

Well, the LITEON LVD2002 DVD player has arrived... And it's MAJOR KILLER OF A PLAYER!!!!!!!!!!! It's awesome!!!! First Jdorama I played on it is Yamato Nadeshiko... There's a bunch of DivX 3.11 AVI files on a single DVD-R ISO formatted disc, and the DVD player read and played the files perfectly!!!!! I also threw in another DVD-R ISO formatted disc with a bunch of MPEG-2 files, and it reads/plays them as well.

Great news! I was gonna check with you on this earlier...

Quote:

I'm totally stoked so far... Next is the region-2 hack test...

Ooooh, that's a biggie. I'm at the edge of my seat...

[groink]

Well, I received the LVD-2002 this past Friday... I've put the unit through two days of testing. So far I'm very happy with the unit, and I'd recommend it highly. Things I've verified to work so far:

- DivX 3.11, DivX 5.0
- XviD with MP3 audio
- MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 of various resolutions
- JPEG files
- Region-free hack
- Macrovision hack

HOWEVER, one missing function, one incompatibility, and one bug:

missing - OGG support. According to the LITEON web site, the next release of the firmware will have OGG support. OGG, BTW, is an audio codec, used by many DVD rippers. It's pretty common to find a XviD or DivX video file using OGG audio.

incompatibility - it won't read an AT&T brand CD-R. Well, not that much of a big deal. I don't use that brand - someone gave it to me (contains a bunch of BoA videos). Re-burning it to a different brand (I'm using Memorex black CD-Rs) is a work-around.

bug - A really strange bug, hard to summarize... I'll let the following letter I wrote to their tech support tell the story:

Hi! I just bought a LITEON LVD-2002 unit, and it�fs really great!

One problem I�fve found though�c When I insert a ISO-formatted DVD-R or DVD+R disc with at least one very large movie file in the mix (at least 2GB, could be less – haven�ft found the limit yet), the LVD-2002 does not properly recognize the sizes of all the files on the disc.

For example, I burned several MPEG-2 files onto a DVD+R ISO formatted disc using VERITAS RecordNow DX. Under Windows XP Pro, the files show as:

File_01.mpg – 2.42GB (MPEG-2 720x480)
File_02.mpg – 49.7MB (MPEG-2 480x480)
File_03.mpg – 383MB (MPEG-2 480x480)
File_04.mpg – 391MB (MPEG-2 480x480)
File_05.mpg – 391MB (MPEG-2 480x480)

However, when I play the same exact disc in the LVD-2002, it displays the files sizes as:

File_01.mpg – 4MB
File_02.mpg – 1MB
File_03.mpg – 16MB
File_04.mpg – 7MB
File_05.mpg – 7MB

And the length of time per file is just a few seconds each. I�fm able to re-produce the problem using different movie files, and the problem isn�ft limited to a certain movie file format (MPEG-2, DivX, XviD, etc.) I�fm quite sure the disc is properly formatted because I�fm able to play the discs just fine in a few other PCs I have.

It appears that the firmware in the LVD-2002 isn�ft reading the ISO formatted discs properly. I�fd be more than happy to mail a couple of my DVD discs to help you troubleshoot. The firmware currently installed came with the unit, Release V0.T2.29. I haven�ft tried downgrading the firmware.

Please let me know what can be done about this. Thanks!

So that's my summary thus far!!!!!

--- groink

[bmwracer]

Groink:

In regards to your bug where the LVD2002 doesn't recognize the file size correctly: does it have a problem playing the disc as well?

[groink]

bmwracer wrote:

Groink: In regards to your bug where the LVD2002 doesn't recognize the file size correctly: does it have a problem playing the disc as well?

Yes... On the 16MB file, it only plays about 10 seconds or so.

--- groink

[bmwracer]

groink wrote:

Yes... On the 15MB file, it only plays about 10 seconds or so.

Oooh, that's not good. Is the configuration/arrangement of files of this DVD+/-R disc typical? Could that be causing the problem?

[groink]

bmwracer wrote:

Oooh, that's not good. Is the configuration/arrangement of files of this DVD+/-R disc typical? Could that be causing the problem?

Well, later tonight I'm going to see if using some other CD burning software (other than RecordNow DX) will make a difference. You would think that all ISO discs are alike. In the past, I tried using Nero to burn ISO formatted DVD-R discs, but couldn't figure out how to (RecordNow DX came with the SONY burner). I'll try Nero again (I just upgraded to 6.3.0.0).

To summize the issue so far... If I burn five 800MB files onto the DVD-R, the LVD-2002 will read/play all the files just fine. However, when a huge file is among the other 800MB files, that's where things screw up. In the two instances I ran into this, the 4GB plus file was at the top of the list. Just coincidence, though... It's alphabetized! I'll play around with the ordering as well to see if that makes any kind of a difference.

Bottom line, it's a bug... A lot of people are using RecordNow DX with their DVD burners. Even if I'm able to figure out a work-around, LITEON should still address the issue.

--- groink

[bmwracer]

groink wrote:

Well, later tonight I'm going to see if using some other CD burning software (other than RecordNow DX) will make a difference. You would think that all ISO discs are alike. In the past, I tried using Nero to burn ISO formatted DVD-R discs, but couldn't figure out how to (RecordNow DX came with the SONY burner). I'll try Nero again (I just upgraded to 6.3.0.0). To summize the issue so far... If I burn five 800MB files onto the DVD-R, the LVD-2002 will read/play all the files just fine. However, when a huge file is among the other 800MB files, that's where things screw up. In the two instances I ran into this, the 4GB plus file was at the top of the list. Just coincidence, though... It's alphabetized! I'll play around with the ordering as well to see if that makes any kind of a difference. Bottom line, it's a bug... A lot of people are using RecordNow DX with their DVD burners. Even if I'm able to figure out a work-around, LITEON should still address the issue. --- groink

Hmm, interesting. Well, good luck.

This bug brings about a very good question: how prompt is LITEON with their customer support... Pretty important, I'd think, since they do provide firmware upgrades for their players... We'll see...

[groink]

bmwracer wrote:

Hmm, interesting. Well, good luck. This bug brings about a very good question: how prompt is LITEON with their customer support... Pretty important, I'd think, since they do provide firmware upgrades for their players... We'll see...

I brought the manual to work... They have a phone number for their US office in California. I won't call them just yet - trying to describe this type of problem over the phone would be a major social engineering challenge. I'll stick with the e-mail for now and see if they respond soon. The e-mail should be descriptive enough for them to work with.

FYI, here's their US office info:

LITE-ON (USA) International Inc.
726 South Hillview Drive
Milpitas CA 95035
Phone: 408-935-5353 Fax 408-946-1891
Service mail: [email protected]

--- groink

[Bedi]

Are you going to run the Avi test CD I mentioned before that LiteOn player?

[groink]

Bedi wrote:

Are you going to run the Avi test CD I mentioned before that LiteOn player?

Sorry, I don't have access to eMule. Is there any other place I can find it?

--- groink

[amrayu]

groink:
i heard that their tech support is pretty good in addressing problems.
although i've heard that the english they use is kind of ENGRISH.
i've only had some bugs playing certain discs..
the player doesn't like Sigma neon black cdrs (which i got from a trade), it skips a lot.
and so far i've only had 1 problem with playing 1 file, (doesnt even play its divx 3.0 fast motion).
as for the problem that you emailed tech support about, that hasnt happened to me yet. i should try burning some files that are big like that and see if itll play correctly. im using Nero 5.5

i'm pretty sure with their new firmware upgrades, that all these little bugs will be fixed.. i'm happy that i got a player that plays almost everything for SOOOO cheap.. i was even looking into the KISS divx player, but it costs a fortune ($300-$400 when i last checked).
_________________

SARS High Quality Asian Drama FanSUBs:
http://www.sars-fansubs.com/
..dorama & fansubbing obsession blog.. http://blog.goo.ne.jp/amrayu78/

[groink]

Well, I haven't heard back from LITEON just yet. I'll give them a few days.

However, PM'ing with bmwracer, he actually came up with the possible cause of the problem: Linux.

Surfing around the web, I'm now discovering that there's a 2GB file limitation within the ISO-9660 level 2 specification. And, Linux uses this specification when working with removable media like CDs. So this may be the problem. If so, I doubt there would be a fix anytime soon because this would require modifying the Linux OS itself seeing ISO support is an integral part of the OS and not an extended feature like XviD support. I'm going to roll with this logic a bit and experiment around.

--- groink

[bmwracer]

groink wrote:

Well, I haven't heard back from LITEON just yet. I'll give them a few days. However, PM'ing with bmwracer, he actually came up with the possible cause of the problem: Linux. Surfing around the web, I'm now discovering that there's a 2GB file limitation within the ISO-9660 level 2 specification. And, Linux uses this specification when working with removable media like CDs. So this may be the problem. If so, I doubt there would be a fix anytime soon because this would require modifying the Linux OS itself seeing ISO support is an integral part of the OS and not an extended feature like XviD support. I'm going to roll with this logic a bit and experiment around. --- groink

Cool. Good luck.