Technical Issues and Questions

Discuss North American DVDs and Blu-rays or other DVD and Blu-ray-related topics.
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domino harvey
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Re: Technical Issues and Questions

#1676 Post by domino harvey » Fri Mar 08, 2019 11:57 am

I use Preview to save PNGs as JPGs all the time (it’s how I make the lower rez album covers in the announce for my mixes). That said, I have no idea why your pix are being saved as all black, esp since they’re not displaying that way for you— I suspect the problem is with Film AF and they’re not actually all-black

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mfunk9786
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Re: Technical Issues and Questions

#1677 Post by mfunk9786 » Fri Mar 08, 2019 12:17 pm

I use http://rsizr.com/ to create avatars for this site, you can customize the size of the resulting .jpg, etc. It's very useful, but only works on Flash enabled browsers (or did last time I visited it).

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Morbii
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Re: Technical Issues and Questions

#1678 Post by Morbii » Fri Mar 08, 2019 1:26 pm

domino harvey wrote:
Fri Mar 08, 2019 11:57 am
I use Preview to save PNGs as JPGs all the time (it’s how I make the lower rez album covers in the announce for my mixes). That said, I have no idea why your pix are being saved as all black, esp since they’re not displaying that way for you— I suspect the problem is with Film AF and they’re not actually all-black
Oh. Well, my other thought was that maybe it has an alpha channel and Preview doesn’t really know how to handle it.

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Cash Flagg
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Re: Technical Issues and Questions

#1679 Post by Cash Flagg » Fri Mar 08, 2019 5:26 pm

Morbii wrote:
Fri Mar 08, 2019 11:00 am
Have you tried any online converters, such as this one (found with google): https://image.online-convert.com/convert-to-jpg
That did the trick, thanks!

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cdnchris
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Re: Technical Issues and Questions

#1680 Post by cdnchris » Sat Mar 30, 2019 6:54 pm

I was able to get a region B LG 250 for pretty cheap and hooked it up. When I throw a region B disc in it starts and plays no problem, but I can't get to the home screen: I get a "mode not supported" error. I assume the home menu is outputting at 50hz and I think my setup options are limited when a disc is playing, So i can't change the output. Just wondering if anyone has any ideas on how to adjust this. I don't see a resolution option on the player or the remote.

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FrauBlucher
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Re: Technical Issues and Questions

#1681 Post by FrauBlucher » Sun Jun 02, 2019 6:57 pm

What's the longevity of a bluray player? I have a Sony S550 from 2009. I feel it's starting to show some signs of wear and tear. Takes longer to load. Periodically skips, unlike my other player (LG region free). The opening and closing of the drawer doesn't always respond right away.

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Godot
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Re: Technical Issues and Questions

#1682 Post by Godot » Mon Jun 03, 2019 5:45 pm

cdnchris wrote:
Sat Mar 30, 2019 6:54 pm
I was able to get a region B LG 250 for pretty cheap and hooked it up. When I throw a region B disc in it starts and plays no problem, but I can't get to the home screen: I get a "mode not supported" error. I assume the home menu is outputting at 50hz and I think my setup options are limited when a disc is playing, So i can't change the output. Just wondering if anyone has any ideas on how to adjust this. I don't see a resolution option on the player or the remote.
Hi, Chris, are you connecting to a TV or PC? On page 12 of your player's manual, they have instructions for resolving this resolution hand-shake problem (for TVs), but there are also different instructions for connecting to PC. Here's the page 12 note:

If your TV does not accept the resolution you have set on the player, you can set resolution to 576p as follows:
1. Press B to open the disc tray.
2 Press Z (STOP) for more than 5 seconds.
-If you select a resolution manually and then connect the HDMI jack to TV and your TV does not accept it, the resolution setting is set to [Auto].
-If you select a resolution that your TV does not accept, the warning message will appear. After resolution change, if you cannot see the screen, please wait 20 seconds and the resolution will automatically revert back to the previous resolution.
-The 1080p video output frame rate may be automatically set to either 24 Hz or 50 Hz depending both on the capability and preference of the connected TV and based on the native video frame rate of the content on the BD-ROM disc.

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cdnchris
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Re: Technical Issues and Questions

#1683 Post by cdnchris » Mon Jun 03, 2019 6:36 pm

TV

I looked through the manual too but I obviously missed that. Thanks for pointing that out! I'll try it out tonight.

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Re: Technical Issues and Questions

#1684 Post by cdnchris » Tue Jun 11, 2019 3:55 pm

So to follow-up I tried the steps listed above and couldn't get it to work. But it didn't matter much in the end: got my early Father's Day gift (and gift for the whole year, really), a new 4K TV (an LG) and once I hooked everything up, including the LG player, the player automatically adjusted itself to output at 24p, so I no longer have the issue. It seems the player just couldn't detect what the frame rate was on the old TV.

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DarkImbecile
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Re: Technical Issues and Questions

#1685 Post by DarkImbecile » Tue Jun 11, 2019 4:29 pm

Is it one of the OLED models? I love mine to the extent it’d be difficult to choose whether to carry it or my kids out in a fire situation (in my defense, the kids can walk, while the LG would be totally reliant on me).

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Re: Technical Issues and Questions

#1686 Post by cdnchris » Tue Jun 11, 2019 4:34 pm

It is! My kids actually seem to love it more than me and I'm super pleased with it. I threw the 4K Coco in and they were just overjoyed by what they were seeing. I think my kids would understand if I chose the TV over them.

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mfunk9786
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Re: Technical Issues and Questions

#1687 Post by mfunk9786 » Tue Jun 11, 2019 4:40 pm

It's a really spectacular television, it's what I have in my den and I couldn't be happier with it. I'm sure I drive folks crazy here when I post about how much I prefer a 4K HDR digital copy of a film over a Blu-ray, but it's really an incredible jump.

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DarkImbecile
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Re: Technical Issues and Questions

#1688 Post by DarkImbecile » Tue Jun 11, 2019 4:41 pm

I think even for standard Blu-rays the difference is substantial in the colors and black levels; just watched the Criterion Days of Heaven the other night, and it was spectacular.

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mfunk9786
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Re: Technical Issues and Questions

#1689 Post by mfunk9786 » Tue Jun 11, 2019 4:54 pm

Oh, absolutely. The rising tide of that TV's up-scaling and color depth floats all boats.

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cdnchris
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Re: Technical Issues and Questions

#1690 Post by cdnchris » Tue Jun 11, 2019 4:58 pm

Yes, even my wife (who really doesn't give a shit about this kinda stuff) had to admit it was an amazing TV (and she's been getting more use of it than me so far!) I'm not all for 4K digital copies yet, or streaming, but I was impressed with how the 4K Buster Scruggs and Roma looked on Netflix, much better than I would have expected. I have some 4K digital copies (from codes I got from the 4K disc counterparts) I'll try out at some point. But I'm thrilled with the 4K discs I've been trying out. The Pixar films I tried, stuff like The Last Jedi and a couple Marvel films, they all looked great, and I was even pleased with Goodfellas. Very clear upgrades. I wasn't sold on 4K because my father-in-law has a 4K set-up and I wasn't all that impressed when I saw it. But I suspect he doesn't have everything set up correctly because it's night-and-day for me now. The blacks are really incredible on their own.

And yes, it all upscales well. My Blu-rays (that I've tried) look great, and I was even impressed with some of the DVDs (though, yeah, they're still limited).

I'll be lucky to get a Toblerone for Christmas this year after this, but it was well worth it.

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Michael Kerpan
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Re: Technical Issues and Questions

#1691 Post by Michael Kerpan » Sat Jun 29, 2019 10:27 pm

Our 10 year old Samsung plasma TV (which worked great last night) stopped working today (maybe relevant maybe not -- we had a very brief power outage earlier in the day). Now, when the power is turned on, it does nothing but maybe a sort of click every few seconds. Is it possible to get these things fixed anymore? Is it worth trying? Will something like a new LG OLED55C8 be so much better that I wont miss my old TV?

In any event -- very bummed out.

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movielocke
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Re: Technical Issues and Questions

#1692 Post by movielocke » Sat Jun 29, 2019 11:43 pm

We had our then four year old Panasonic plasma repaired over four years Ago and even then I had to diagnose it online and do it myself. And because the replacement parts supply was all exhausted at that point and since there were no more parts, repair shops couldn’t fix it (and parts were not even being manufactured anymore) so to repair it, (it was a common model failure with some bad solder on the circuit boards) I had to open up the tv, disconnect everything, remove all the circuit boards, pack the circuit boards up and ship them to Ohio to be repaired by the specialists. Wait a bunch of weeks to receive them back and then reassembled and reconnect everything.

Has worked like a charm since, but it was a process (about 300$ overall and a couple hours labor). If you’re not comfortable building computers it would be pretty intimidating, fairly standard plugging unlugging and connecting and screwing otherwise.:.

But it might not be worth it now. 4k TVs are way cheaper and the plasma tv is older, I probably wouldn’t today.

So the risk is that parts and expertise to repair it could be hard to come by and a repair cost of even a few hundred bucks is one third to one half the cost of an excellent and probably superior new tv.

I would not order from amazon though. Their counterfeiting problem is so big and so bad any expensive item is likely to be counterfeit, and since they store all products that look the same together (even if they come to the amazon warehouse from different countries!) it’s a literal luck of the draw if you get a genuine expensive item or a counterfeit. And amazon officially doesn’t care about counterfeits they sell because it doesn’t harm them in any way. We ordered our second tv from b and h.

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Re: Technical Issues and Questions

#1693 Post by David M. » Sun Jun 30, 2019 12:43 am

Michael Kerpan wrote:
Sat Jun 29, 2019 10:27 pm
Will something like a new LG OLED55C8 be so much better that I wont miss my old TV?
Yes.

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Michael Kerpan
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Re: Technical Issues and Questions

#1694 Post by Michael Kerpan » Sun Jun 30, 2019 12:49 am

I never order electronics stuff from Amazon (not even memory cards) -- B&H Photo always.

We have someone local who does these fixes (at least for newer TVs) -- I'll see what he has to say about this. If it weren't for the money, I know what I'd LIKE to do. I'm currently using a 13 year old receiver (nice Onkyo one -- but not AV) -- I wonder do I need to upgrade this too. ;-)

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Adam X
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Re: Technical Issues and Questions

#1695 Post by Adam X » Sun Jun 30, 2019 4:06 am

Michael Kerpan wrote:
Sat Jun 29, 2019 10:27 pm
maybe relevant maybe not -- we had a very brief power outage earlier in the day). Now, when the power is turned on
Unfortunately, this was likely the cause. A brief loss & restoration of power can kill the power supply in electronics, which depending on the item's value, can sometimes not be worth replacing. I'd let your local guy check it out before deciding - unless you really want that new TV :wink:

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movielocke
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Re: Technical Issues and Questions

#1696 Post by movielocke » Sun Jun 30, 2019 10:30 am

We got a new onkyo receiver about eight years ago, mostly so I could do hdmi switching for all our devices. That was handy but when we moved I never did the attic runs to support surround sound and since I don’t really play games anymore, I just use the Tv to do the hdmi switching with an optical audio return to the receiver for the front three speakers.

Also, the onkyo receiver makes a physical “Click——CLACK” sound every time you changed the channel on direct tv (because it was trying to adjust to the channels resolution or some such silliness) so running the hdmi straight to the tv and the audio to the receiver took away the problem.

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Michael Kerpan
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Re: Technical Issues and Questions

#1697 Post by Michael Kerpan » Sun Jun 30, 2019 1:33 pm

We still just have old (but good) stereo speakers -- no likelihood of changing them until they die. ;-)

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movielocke
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Re: Technical Issues and Questions

#1698 Post by movielocke » Sun Jun 30, 2019 2:29 pm

Michael Kerpan wrote:We still just have old (but good) stereo speakers -- no likelihood of changing them until they die. ;-)
Yeah unless you’re a surround sound die hard, receivers are utterly pointless now, Ive found I kind of prefer just having the stereo pair in the front, and if it’s a fancy sounding movie, I’d rather just put on headphones for it, which sound better than home surround sound anyway.

And I’ve been incredibly impressed with the sound bars I’ve seen people have, feels like those are making receivers obsolete.

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cdnchris
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Re: Technical Issues and Questions

#1699 Post by cdnchris » Fri Jul 12, 2019 9:01 pm

My wife's not thrilled with our remote control situation and I need to finally invest in a universal remote. I have directtv and had been using that remote for some things but it won't properly control the receiver (outside of volume) and won't work with other devices.

Does anyone have any recommendations for one? Everything runs through the AV receiver (a Yamaha) so it would be nice if it could handle basic functions for it, (power, volume, switch inputs), TV, my Blu-ray players, and the DirecTV box.

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Michael Kerpan
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Re: Technical Issues and Questions

#1700 Post by Michael Kerpan » Fri Jul 12, 2019 11:07 pm

I think we have 7 or so remote controls in use....

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