[geeks] Appliance Mods

[Joshua D. Boyd]

I think this model decodes all the various suround sound stuff on its
digital out.  At least, I know it does Dolby 5.1 according to the manual.
I don't know about the other things.  

Originally, I had a P2 next to the TV with a SB Live 5.1 card setup for
quadraphonic.  I then switched that machine with a P166 with only plain
stereo (The SB Live had to stay with the P2 because it was the only
soundcard I owned at the time that didn't cause the machine to
spontaneously crash). Then the DVD-Rom in the P166 got fried, and the
replacement I bought just didn't work acceptably (it paused at chapter
changes, and frequently authentication failed with the new drive), so I
said screw this and bought the Apex.

I still have the quadraphonic amp and speakers set up (and in use).  What
I need is a cheap external suround processor that is willing to do either
Dolby Suround (the original 3 chanel kind) or quadraphonic.  Either that,
or I need to replace my quadraphonic amp with a more modern amp capable of
doing it's own surround sound processing.

As to video, you probably are correct.  However, who is going to buy an
HDTV set and then compromise it with a DVD player that can't at least do
progressive scan or component out? 

I wasn't all that thrilled about upgrading to a 27" TV until I hooked the
DVD player up to the Svideo in and played a wide screen movie.  The
difference that the svideo makes is amazing, and the bigger screen didn't
excite me for TV, but for widescreenm movies it is so nice.

--
Joshua Boyd

On Mon, 18 Jun 2001, Ken Hansen wrote:

> Digital audio is just numbers, but the Apex may not decode all the various 
> bits/offerings from the DVD (SAP, Dolby 5.1, whatever) - not really my
> area, but the digital out on that unit may just be a straight stereo
> digital sound out, nothing fancy.
> 
> The video on a good DVD would probably only be detectable on a high-end 
> video monitor (HDTV, or a very good large screen set) - I suspect your
> projector and  27" monitor/TV are munging the signal beyond the point
> that the differences would be detectable.
> 
> Just a few thoughts,
> 
> Ken
> (Who took a DVD player on vacation with him, only to forget the remote! And 
> for some reason my player kept reverting to spanish audio, with closed
> captioning on, requiring me to navigate through the menu using the
> front-panel buttons. Ugh.)
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Joshua D. Boyd [mailto:jdboyd at cs.millersville.edu]
> Sent: Monday, June 18, 2001 11:15 AM
> To: geeks at sunhelp.org
> Subject: [geeks] Appliance Mods
> 
> 
> Refering back to the previous discussion of appliance mods, I just bought
> an Apex AD-500W dvd player ($98 at you local piece of hell, err Wallmart).
> In addition to the usual macrovision and region firmware mods, it looks
> like this thing would be reasonable for other mods to.  Off the top of my
> head, adding RGB out should be a pretty easy task.
> 
> I think I'll wait till at least the moneyback guaranty expires before
> considering such action.
> 
> BTW, the sales idiot at hell (err wallmart) desperately tried to sell me a
> significantly more expensive machine (albeit one that didn't have any
> extra features over the Apex).  He told me that the video quality was
> crap.  So far it looks just fine on a viewsonic projector and on a 27" TV
> using the s-video connectes on both.  
> 
> He also told me that the digital audio was crap.  Now, am I mistaken here,
> or is digital audio digital audio?  I mean, assuming that it is standards
> compliant (which should rule out ground loop possible problems), how does
> the digital out on a cheap DVD player differ from the digital out on a
> cheap sound card or the digital out on an expensive DVD player?  I guess
> some of the pricier sound cards and dvd players use fiber optic instead of
> copper, but is there any quality difference here?
> 
> I don't use the digital audio transports on any of my sound cards, nor on
> this new DVD player.  If linux would support the digital in jack on the
> Live Drive upgrade for the SB Live series, I'd consider getting that and
> performing the digital out hack for Playstations (my playstation's audio
> output is annoyingly noisy).
> 
> --
> Joshua Boyd
> 
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