Technical Issues and Questions

[mfunk9786]

Does anyone have an HDTV indoor antenna that they'd recommend? I live in an apartment in a suburb about 30 miles away from the city where the local channels are broadcast, but I also don't really have any good place/way to mount an outdoor antenna. I've got all summer to figure out how best to resolve this, but if I don't get the NFL this year because I don't have cable, I might lose it.

[Jean-Luc Garbo]

I don't know if it's HDTV compatible or not, but one of the Amazon Gold Box deals for today is a living room antenna. You should take a look if it's one that'll fit the bill for you.

[Brian C]

Or if you're OK with waiting, I can leave you the fillings in my teeth in my will.

Make it stop!

[knives]

Okay I've finally used a Blu on my replacement player today and no matter what I do it plays as if the teevee were 16:9. 4:3 movies appear 1.9:1 and 2.35 1.85 and so on. Keeping everything with the television on the right setting I've screwed around on a few things like putting it on pan and scan instead of native yet nothing changes.

[Drucker]

Sorry to ask a question really more opinion than technical, but I'm thinking what I'd like to do is buy a region free player at a store in New York City. Kim's sells them. It wouldn't be a blu-ray...just a SD-DVD one. Would you guys do the same if all you had was a region 1 standard blu ray player? Or do you think a region-free blu ray is a necessity at this point? Thanks!

[swo17]

There are enough region-locked Blu-ray releases from MoC, BFI, and others that I wouldn't want to be without a region-free Blu-ray player.

[knives]

I.E. me, though fortunately most of these companies are doing dual releases now. The region free players aren't really up to snuff to be honest.

[Drucker]

I have a friend traveling the globe right now. I've considered sending her some money to bring one back for me.

[kekid]

Does anyone have a recommendation for a hardware modification kit for OPPO BDP 95? Some of them look more complicated to install than others.

[kaujot]

Just so I'm certain, the Sherwood/Oppo Whatever remains the only region-free bluray player, right? (that is, before the firmware updates). I like my Sherwood okay, but it can get noisy sometimes and doesn't really behave very well switching between blu-ray and dvd.

[Abelian]

Hi everybody, hope you can help me with this question. Recently I bought a couple Criterion blu-rays, "Chungking Express" and "Solaris". The former played beautifully on my Insignia player, but when I tried watching "Solaris" I couldn't access anything beyond the title menu - in particular, the movie would not play. When I selected "Movie", the screen would turn black, the Criterion C would appear at the top-left of the screen like it was trying to load, and then a window would pop up saying "Resume Playing?" At that point, whether I clicked Yes or No, it would return me to the title menu. Same deal if I tried starting any chapter. What gives?

[skeets kelly]

Sorry to ask a question really more opinion than technical, but I'm thinking what I'd like to do is buy a region free player at a store in New York City. Kim's sells them. It wouldn't be a blu-ray...just a SD-DVD one. Would you guys do the same if all you had was a region 1 standard blu ray player? Or do you think a region-free blu ray is a necessity at this point? Thanks!

i have the same region-free blu-ray player that kim's sells, the pioneer bdp-330, but i bought mine from international electronics. i've only had it for about 6 months and i have to send it back for repairs because it won't play blu-rays anymore. started out not playing selective discs, then it stopped playing my major studio region As (universal, fox), and then it would only play criterions and region Bs. now, nothing.

have no idea if this is a known problem with the players, the dudes at kim's tell me they've never had problems with the ones they sell (but, it's kim's so who knows...) and international electronics is pretty reputable (bought 4 region-free players from them over the last 10 years or so).

kind of regret not getting the oppo, though.

[denti alligator]

Ok, so I have a bunch of DVDs ripped to a big HD upstairs and a nifty little WDTV box downstairs hooked up to my theater system. I can play all my music (FLAC) from upstairs over the Network (which is wired, not wireless) no problem. Ditto .avi and wmv files and such.

But when I load a VTS file from one of the DVDs I get occasional pauses in picture and sound. The films plays fine for sometimes 5 minutes, but then I get this hiccup.

Question: is this my router? I have a 2Wire from AT&T. I figured that could handle the bandwidth. Am I wrong? I can't think of what else would be the source, and since these video files have to arrive with more kb/sec than the FLAC or .avi or whatever, it would seem to make sense.

If it IS the router, then what minimum speed do I need to look for when purchasing a new one? Thanks!

[Oedipax]

Hmm. Assuming you're on a 100mbps network (pretty much the standard for years), that should be plenty of bandwidth for any DVD you throw at it. I don't know if the WDTV supports gigabit ethernet, but that could be an option to give you more overhead for bitrate spikes on certain visually complex scenes. If the WDTV is configurable, you could also try increasing the buffer size.

Edit: Looks like it might be a firmware issue, actually.

[denti alligator]

Wow, thanks. I hadn't even thought to search the forums there. Now let's see if I can "downgrade" to a firmware that works...

[Drucker]

This may have been answered before, so excuse me (and link me?) if it has, but does PAL speedup tend to happen to you guys who are region free here in the US? Is this not as much an issue with dvds anymore?

[mfunk9786]

I'm not sure I understand the question...

[Rob]

PAL speedup does not tend to happen, it happens or it does not, and has nothing to do with what the region coding of a disc is. Simply stated, film is 24fps, PAL DVDs are 25fps and NTSC DVDs are 30fps (actually 29.97fps). Blu-rays retain the 24fps of the original movie, A PAL transfer simply speeds up the film, so that the film runs 4% faster, and a NTSC transfer does something horrible with the interlaced video fields (called 3:2 pulldown) which allows the film to run at the proper speed. Personally I prefer a PAL transfer, as the NTSC transfer makes slow pans appear jittery, and also the PAL frame size is larger and the colour encoding better. Blu-ray avoids all this nonsense. :-)

[neal]

This may have been answered before, so excuse me (and link me?) if it has, but does PAL speedup tend to happen to you guys who are region free here in the US? Is this not as much an issue with dvds anymore?

Yes, a movie is still over more quickly if you play it back at 25fps rather than 24fps.

[Drucker]

What I meant is, I guess...is whether PAL speed up still occurs when you are region free? So once I have an all-region player, and I'm playing PAL discs, they will be faster (though from what I've read it's hard to notice?) for me as I'm in America

[swo17]

Yes, if the source was shot at 24fps and is presented in PAL, it will be slightly sped up on your region-free player.

[willoneill]

What I meant is, I guess...is whether PAL speed up still occurs when you are region free? So once I have an all-region player, and I'm playing PAL discs, they will be faster (though from what I've read it's hard to notice?) for me as I'm in America

Not everyone notices (I don't), but some people do, apparently. What they notice is that because the film is playing slightly faster, the audio is pitched slightly higher. The time difference isn't considerable, except in something like Berlin Alexanderplataz, where it adds up to almost half an hour.

[MichaelB]

You'll notice if you have perfect pitch and/or a good memory - ideally both. Which is why most people don't.

I'm not aware of anyone convincingly claiming that they notice the speedup visually - it's such a tiny increase that you'd really need to run a 25fps and 24fps version side by side, and even then it wouldn't be obvious which was running at the wrong speed.

[zedz]

Yes, it would only be a major issue if you happened to have perfect pitch, and then primarily for the music in a film (unless you knew an actor personally and could tell that their voice was pitched wrong).

Even then, it might not be that big a deal. After all, how many people really found Kind of Blue unlistenable for the first forty years of its existence?

[Oedipax]

I always notice it when I watch Beau travail because I've listened to "The Rhythm of the Night" so much outside the film.