Info and forum posts by 'wanger1uk'

RE: HDMI DVD Player with 5.01 Surround Sound = £40 Tevion DVD-8000

Can anyone confirm whether the HDMI upscaled picture actually looks any better than component progressive scan. If you check the AV forums there are people on there who (quite agressively - they seem to take it very personally!!!) state that upscaling DVD players are a waste of money as any LCD will upscale a component input internally.

It does make sense, as DVD players upscale to 1080 or 720 whereas the native res of most LCDs is 768 so the picture that you finally see will have been upscaled twice, once by the DVD player and once by the TV. Wheras using a component input at the normal DVD res, the LCD will upscale once only, thus reducing the amount of digital processing and therefore the chance of introducing didgital artifacts is reduced.

Saying that my Tosh 330 wont play DIVXs so I am very interested in getting one of these and doing the USB mod to use my removable drive - does anyone have a web link on how this is done please?

RE: Horror recommendations please..

Gotta second that one for the Changling - Classic 70`s horror flik

Also

Salems Lot (original)
Omen (original)
Event Horizon (alien meets the shining)
Amityville (original)
Grudge (Jap)
The Haunting
The Shining
The Ring (jap and american versions both good in their own right)
The Keep (Michael Mann`s 1st film)

Get well soon.

RE: Speaker advice pleaswe

I`m not sure what this years reccomendations are, but both the Kef (Eggs + sub) and the B&W 5.1 systems allways seem to get glowing reports in Wghat Hi-Fi, and are around £700 leaving you £300 for a HDD DVD recorder.

I have a mix of Kef `eggs` for the rears, Kef Q1s for fronts, Q9 for the center and a PSW1000 sub woofer. Small discrete and sounds superb. The sub and the fronts are all in the dark apple colour and look great. A complete set of "eggs" would be very discrete.

RE: REMOTE FTP/BIT-TORRENT QUESTION :)

Are you sure it is not your ISP packet shaping. I have just moved from Pipex for them doing this. Despite their claims of it only being applied to higher users, and it not affecting overall bandwidth, it has now been applied to all users who use P2P and despite their claims as soon as you open up P2P they throttle your entire bandwidth. When I spoke to them the lady on the phone insisted that they do not know anything about packet shaping, but they do have a fair usage policy.

Check to see if your ISP has a fair use policy. If they do then the chances are that your only option is to try one that does not. I am moving to Evolution dsl - 8mb, static IP, no packet shaping £25 a month.

RE: Backing Up DVDs?

AnyDVD to decrypt - its so easy.

Nero Recode, Clone DVD, DVDFab, 1 click DVD copy to recompress in that order of preference IMHO.

RE: The 3 Best 32 inch LCDs?

Sorry - I did`nt make it vary clear. Most of my message was about the LE32R41BDX. The M61 looks even better, but for twice the price.

RE: The 3 Best 32 inch LCDs?

Hi

I just got the Samsung LE32 R41BDX from Freemans for £680. 20% discount for 1st order, and then 5% cashback through quidco.

It is stunning especially using the computer. I`m not sure about the Samsung M61, but most reviews reckon it is one of the best LCDs around. Only the Loewe, Panasonic, and one Hitachi set seem to recieve better reviews. What HiFi said that it would have been an early 2006 award winner if not for the contrast problem. Blacks are very black, and sometimes it is difficult to tell the difference between shades of black. However, after using a THX setup from any THX disc (eg Star Wars) this problem has virtually gone away.

RE: Nokia sat nav ?

I bought mine of ebay last year - it uses a bt 338 (I think) chipset. Things may have moved on since then, but the advise then was to ensure it was sirftrac III. Apparently these are the only ones that will work with those heated windscreens, and are supposed to be a big leap on from the standard TOM TOM ones.

RE: HD DVDs

Has anyone actually used one of these upscaling players. Some of the people on AV forums are suggesting that they do not actually make that much difference to a standard DVD player connected via component or RGB.

I`m interested in buying one, but £100 is a lot of money to outlay if the results are not very noticable.

Regards

RE: Russian Vampire Film - Name please????

Thanks for the replies, that was the one. If its nothing like the recent blood and guts horror films, then I`ll probably enjoy it.

Cheers

Russian Vampire Film - Name please????

Hi

I recently overrheard a conversation on a train about a stunning russian vampire film. I made a mental note of the name, but before I wrote it down, I visited the local, and promptly forgot. The couple discussing it really rated it.

Can anyone help please???

Thanks

RE: simplest programme to store DVDs onto HD?

By far the simplest program is AnyDVD. Have it running in the background and you can copy and paste directly from your DVD drive. it also removes region info, macrovision, user prohibitions. Works with CDs to.

RE: £750 to spend, who where what for 32" lcd

Samsung 32 inch with freeview from Freemans at £899, but if it is your first order with them, u get 25% off. General concensus seems to be that this is one of the best 32 inch HD ready LCDs under a £1000.


http://www.freemans.com/web/main/ProductDisplay.asp?An=0&A=38C319%5F&N=430+4294957281+634+479&Au=P%5FMasterItem&Nu=P%5FMasterItem&Ns=P%5FColour%7C0%7C%7CP%5FSize%7C0&colour=32%20ins&size=&catno=38C404&suffix=1&quantity=1

RE: O2 drop 3?

Its much more likley that 3 are dropping O2 due to the charges they pay for roaming onto O2`s GSM network, and the fact that the 3 network now covers much of the country. Three have ended up paying a massive amount to O2 for this service. I have heard that it is more than we pay 3.

It is possible that O2 are dropping 3 due to reduced revenue. The latest 3G phones stick to the 3 network like glue and will only ever drop to GSM on O2 if there is absolutley no coverage. The older 3G phones often defaulted to GSM. I have never noticed my 6680 using the GSM network.

Even if it is a rumour, it would not surpise me if it were too happen sooner rather than later.

RE: EBuyer - missing item in parcel

Sorted now, replacment stick on its way to me.

Many thanks to Daniel at Ebuyer.

EBuyer - missing item in parcel

Has anyone ever recieved an order from ebuyer with 1 or more items missing. here`s my story.

Neighbours took delivery of my order while I was at work, but did not sign "goods unchecked". When i picked it up from them later that night the packaging was perfect and undamaged. When I opened it a memory stick was missing.

I left an enote on ebuyers system, which they promise to deal with in 7 days. 2 1/2 weeks later I had heard nothing so gave them a call, eventually getting through. I was told that it would be immediatley referred to their missing goods dept and i would have an outcome in 48 hours.

3 days later - nothing, so gave them another call. I spoke to a very helpfull chap who had no record of my call three days previously, and he told me the same. Within 2 minutes of the phone call I recieved an email from their missing goods team telling me that they had repacked my entire order and that it weighed exactly the same as the order that they sent out, and thus an investigation would be made with the courier, and I would have a response within 48 hours. So I raised another enote asking:
1, How they had done this in 1 minute.
2, Surley the weight of a stick of DDR memory (a few grammes at most) could be confused with 1/2m of packing tape.

2 days later that customer service chap that I spoke to previously reponded to my enote, staing that the parcel that the missing goods team packed actually weighed 20 grammes less than the parcel sent out, so the memory stick must have been included.

Untill I get a final and formal response from ebuyer I have to give them the benefit of the doubt, but I can see where this going. The courier will say that as it was not signed as unchecked they have no responsibility and ebuyer will deny any further liability.

has anyone else had a similar experience. I can see the merit of comparing weights of parcels when things like graphics cards, psu`s etc go missing, but for a memory stick??? If I do not get a satisfactory outcome what would you suggest was my next step.

I should also say at this stage I have used ebuyer frequently in the past and have never had a bad experience with them, even when goods have arrived faulty or damaged, they have always been replaced promptly with return postage paid.

RE: Cables advice needed!

Not sure where to get them from, but manufacturers that seem to produce some well rated (and good value) leads include Thor, Ixos, and QED. I got most of mine through either ebay or www.tlc-direct.co.uk

I don`t know much about your kit, but generally, it seems to be considered that it is better to let the amp do the audio decoding, so you may want to try using a digital interconnect from the DVD player to the amp, co-axial is generally considered to be marginally better than optical. Don`t forget to tell the dvd player to use the digital output

RE: Need Freeware Screen Capture program due to re-loading XP

Try mwsnap

RE: Lets get all nostalgic and play,

Mine was an Oric Atmos (great machine shame about lack of support), shortly followed by a spectrum 48k. Oh, how I miss games on cassette. Faves on the spectrum were Atic Atac, Manic Miner, Jet Set Willy, and Jetpac.

First PC was a 486 SX25 with a 60mb hd, 4mb memory, the cpu was quickly replaced with a 487 co-processor (no floating point in the SX cpu, so Doom, Duke Nukem and ROTT were terrible). This cpu was actually a rebadged and much cheaper 486 DX2-50. I overclocked this by swapping the 25 mhz crystal on the mb for a 33mhz one, turning it into a DX2-66. It didn`t even need a fan on the hintsink.

This item was edited on Thursday, 14th July 2005, 21:03

RE: My DVD writer not compatible with my DVD player ?

I had a similar problem and contacted Toshiba. Apparently they only read DVD-R and some DVD-RW. I`ve heard that this is due to Tosh`s involvment in the creation of the DVD-R format.