Info and forum posts by 'Bernie'

This user hasn't used our main site yet, so has no main account at present.

Joined on: Wednesday, 3rd January 2001, 19:27, Last used: Wednesday, 3rd January 2001, 19:27

Access Level: Mostly Harmless

About this user: This user has chosen not to submit a description :(

This user has posted a total of 42 messages. On average, since joining, this user has posted 0 messages a day, or 0.03 messages a week. In the last 30 days, this user has posted 0 messages, which is on average 0 messages a day.

Recent Messages Posted:

RE: Advice for a new SC2000 owner

Can anyone provide a link to the tytelstar page with the firmware on it?
I`ve tried finding it myself but can`t find it.

Does the latest firmware provide `long` MP3 filenames?

RE: Wharfedale 750S macrovision hack

I have no problems in actually programming the PIC, NiVZ, it is the actual code (i.e. PIC RISC listing or hex) for the Macrovision disabling software that I want. It progs into a PIC 12C508 - must be of interest to Wharfedale owners, surely?

Wharfedale 750S macrovision hack

A friend (honestly!) has a Wharfedale 750S. It seems that it is possible to buy and programme a PIC microcontroller which can be installed inside the 750S to remove macrovision. We have the connection details for this but need the PIC software. Does anyone have this or know of a website from which it can be downloaded?

Incidentally, I now have a Scan and it is working just fine. Very happy with it (FW 2.08) although I`ve found playback quality is poor on one or two DVD`s. I have region 3 Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and playback is definitely a bit blocky. On the other hand Das Boot, and Lion King 2 are brilliant - must be down to the disc rather than the player I think. MP3 playback is really good - it is worth the money for that alone.

Bernie.

RE: IS THE TESCO LG3000 REALLY A SCAN ? ? ?

I have seen the packaging for a Logix 3000 and it says `Made by LG` on it. Does this mean that there is some connection between Scan and LG - not impossible I suppose, since both products are Korean.

RE: Aiwa shite

Yup, I agree with the both of you.

I actually bought an Aiwa not knowing about all the hype (I hadn`t seen this site at that point). The picture had colour bands across it.
I returned it and bought another - picture was fine, but it wouldn`t play MP3`s (the first one did....) and come to think of it the drive was pretty noisy. That one went back and I got a refund.

I have since been wanting to get another player. I had a look at a Scan (owned by a friend of a friend) and, believe me, there is nothing wrong with the picture on the Scan. It is excellent (tested on `Das Boot` DVD which has loads of dark scenes). I`m just wary about buying one because of all the adverse comments about Scan customer service and the apparent 1-in-20 return rate. Maybe I should consider the Encore.

RE: REPLACEMENT SCAN -WORSE THAN FIRST ONE!!!!!!!!!!!

Got a Sony have you Wasp? Hmmm..... I smell a rat (or more accurately a BEAR!)

Anyway, the problem I have is that I only want to spend about £200. Good MP3 playback facilities are a must. There isn`t much choice really. I`ve seen Mico and Encore machines and they look flimsy compared to the Scan. If Scan come up with firmware to show proper MP3 filenames then that really will be a killer feature and I`ll have to take a gamble and buy one....

Don`t belive that bit about a pallett of 60 machines though, pull the other one Scan!!

RE: REPLACEMENT SCAN -WORSE THAN FIRST ONE!!!!!!!!!!!

Wasp wrote:
"I bet Bernie wont be buying one now!"

Hey Wasp, you`re talking to the guy who had TWO faulty Aiwa machines!

As to Xeno; well I think Scan are trying to pull a `fast one` on you. When I enquired (over a week ago) if they had any machines they said they were out of stock and wouldn`t have any more till later in January. It sounds like they sent you an old one (maybe a return) to quieten you down. If it is firmware v1.03 then it must be very old.

As I said before on this forum, I had a look at a Scan on Sunday (v1.92 I think) and the picture was brilliant. Enough to make me want one on the spot.

There is more to all this than meets the eye though. I guess most Scan buyers have internet access and post their complaints on here fairly swiftly (as would other non-high-street brands like Mico). We therefore get to hear of a lot of scan problems. My guess is that stores like Comet, Argos etc sell a lot of branded machines that give trouble but their owners don`t have access to this forum to complain.

I still have doubts over some of the branded kit out there; LG for example rate badly in Which? magazine for reliability and I have seen negative comments on their return rates from `those in the know` on other forums.

I think the issue is more with Scan customer services than the actual machine. I suspect that many of the components in the Scan are common to other players and it is probably no worse than they are.

RE: DVD Technical test disc

Thanks - looks very useful. Like you they are expensive though and would presumably attract customs charges. i am trying to find a UK supplier.

RE: BIG PROBLEMS WITH SCAN SC2000

Glad you got it sorted, Xeno.

I had a look at a Scan on Sunday (v1.92 firmware) and I must say that the picture looked excellent. I am puzzled as to the talk of `pixellation` - even looking very close at the screen (2 inches) there was no sign of anything untoward that I could see.
I would still like to know if it is possible to buy a technical test disc that could be put in a player so that its performance could be judged (e.g like a series of test cards, difficult-to-decode scenes etc.). Surely the service agents must use something like this?

RE: BIG PROBLEMS WITH SCAN SC2000

Seems like Xeno was the victim of both Scan AND citylink.
I ordered something from HED.co.uk back on 18th Dec., they despatched it 19th and I didn`t get it until 5th JAn!! No one seems to know where it was between those dates. When it arrived the packaging was all beaten up (fortunately the product - a vacuum cleaner - was undamaged). Bad couriers is a real problem with mail order.

Also, if you receive an electrical product that is very cold you should leave it for several hours to settle at room temperature. If yoou operate it cold you could get condensation on the PCB`s and the DVD optics etc. I imagine this could be very harmful to the player.

As to the firmware being old, well I don`t have a scan but I recall seeing a fairly recent post from Nelley saying that v2.04 was the latest but the Jan 5th players may ship with v1.92??

Of course none of the above excuses the problems you had getting an answer from their customer services though.

RE: Logix 3000 / Scan 2000

I thought that the Logix 3000 was a clone of an LG machine (at least it said `made by LG` on the packaging of one that I saw).

RE: SCAN SC2000 - Total picture breakup with Disney

There is a post on a DVD newsgroup about problems with these Disney discs - a lot have players have been affected.

Scan owner quote off a newsgroup

Found the following comment about the Scan sc2000 on a newsgroup; interesting because the guy claims to be a broadcast engineer. What do you all think?

"I got one before Xmas.....It`s great. Plays everything I throw at it,
DVD/VCD/SVCD/CD/CD-R/CD_WR/MP3....I did have a slight fault on loading
some disks (NO DISK or long search time), rang them up and spoke to a
very helpful guy who sent me a software upgrade via email that very
moment...just burn on a CD-WR disk and insert. Now all problems are
sorted, and Macrovision is disabled (which it was not when I bought it).
No layer change glitches, Audio fine
And the crux of this, is that for a living I an a Principle Engineer
designing MPEG-2 broadcast compression equipment....I spend my life
picking holes in MPEG artifacts on my own stuff (and cringing at
Digital TV) I See EVERYTHING, no matter how slight...I am sensitised
to it...........and so what do i think of my SCAN Video

Quality........as good as I have seen on Players >£500 - Certainly as
good as the similar priced Pioneer etc (same basic chipset anyway).

So, in summary....maybe there HAVE got build problems....and I`ve been
lucky...but in terms of design, it`s great, and the Customer Service
has been ideal.

I`m not saying it is without problems....obviously lots of people
cannot be wrong, but it is obvious that it CAN be OK.

Rich"

RE: Mr Bear

Wasp wrote:

"And 10 year old on internet , well get in the real world bad language is every where and you aint gonna change it!"

There are some good, clean and useful forums out there. This could be one of them. I swear just like everyone does from time to time, but I don`t like to read messages where every other word has four letters.
As to bear being singled out, well, he did write a heck of a lot of those messages, it wasn`t just the odd one. He could make a career out of it (but not here).

RE: Mr Bear

No I don`t own a Scan - I am thinking of getting one though, but apparently they are not available at the moment anyway. Frankly I don`t really know what to buy. This forum has added to my confusion, rather than reducing it.

I`m not bothered about Bear`s views on the Scan, but I didn`t like the language he used. Like I said in a previous post, I`m not some kind of prude but this is a forum about DVD`s for God`s sake - why can`t it be kept clean enough that I`d be comfortable with my 10 year old lad reading it. If I want to read loads of swearing and abuse there are lots of news groups to read. The NG`s are ruined by all the vulgarity and spam messages - let`s keep this forum clean and useful so that new visitors don`t take one look at it and then never come back, especially any female ones.

As to Bear being funny, well I don`t think saying `Scan is crap`, Scan is crap and all the rest of his language over and over again counts as comedy or wit. I got his message the first time round and then got pretty cheesed off when he hijacked a lot of other threads. Obviously a lot of other people and the site owner felt the same way.

SCAN Quandry

Since I had my faulty Aiwa`s I I have been wanting to get a replacement DVD player. The Scan looked good, but the comments on this forum put me off a bit.
Yesterday, quite by accident, I discovered that the son of my brother-in-law`s neighbour (got that?) got a Scan in December last year.
Anyway, he is only 12 miles away so after taking my son swimming early this morning, I drove over there with my `Das Boot` DVD (the one about the German submarine). It has lots of dark scenes so I thought it would be a good test for the Scan, going on what`s been said in the past on here.

Well, bugger me, but the thing played it absolutely brilliantly. The picture was really, really good. Now I am really confused! This film goes on for about three hours and we watched about 2 hours worth.
I am not a technical expert, but can someone explain how I would see the `pixellation`; there are lots of dark scenes on Das Boot and we didn`t see any problems, even looking closely at the screen. Maybe the colour was not as `deep` as it should be (we turned up the `colour` control a bit more) but there was no `noise` on the picture. The 19 year old lad who owns this player reckons he`s pleased with it and has not had problems.
If the Scan is supposed to be a `bad` DVD player then the best ones must be absolutely bloody brilliant!! I find it hard to believe that the picture could be improved much (he has a fairly new Toshiba TV, not widescreen).

Anyway, a question: Is it possible to get some kind of test disk with lines, light and dark areas etc. that could be used to test out a DVD player like the scan?? Maybe Das Boot is not a very rigourous test? Is it possible that the chipset that Ironduke goes on about has been altered or improved in some way to get a better picture?

The lad who`s got the player does not have a PC and he`s asked me to try and find out the following from other Scan owners:

1. Why is the sound too quiet on some films (can it be fixed?)
2. What do the settings in the secret menu do (`non-flicker`, hi-res etc. etc. - is there an explanation somewhere).

I will pass any messages on. Thanks.

Bernard

RE: Mr Bear

BEAR was a retard and the forum is much better off without him.

Bernard

RE: BRING BACK THE BEAR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I`d always assumed he worked for one of Scan`s competitors.....

RE: Anyone know where I can pick up an Aiwa 370?

Sadly this is not the case. The two players had completely different faults!!

Bit OT - OnDigital box wanted

Anybody know where I can get a cheap (but not stolen!!) OnDigital box.
I only want to watch the free to air channels (BBC ITV etc.) on it in another room on the Bush telly I have there. I already have an OnDig box (and subscription) for my main telly. Since I won`t be subsribing it doesn`t matter if the card slot & decoder is broken, just so long as it recieves BBC etc.
Anyone got any ideas?

RE: COULD SCAN OWNERS ADVISE THE BEAR PLEASE...

And the point of your post is.........???

RE: Looking for reasonable priced well built TV (perhaps Samsung widescreen?)

I got a Bush 28 inch WS from Aldi. Picture is not actually that bad (Panasonic tube and a German-made [Schneider??] chassis). Home Cinema tested one and gave 3/5 for picture I think.
It is an ugly telly though, big and black. I have a slight `whistle` on the sound on mine, just about audible - it only comes through the speakers though, not through the audio jacks so I think its curable.
For £229 it was quite a bargain though. I also have a Panasonic, that`s much better but was three times the price!!

Is January 5th Scan OK?

Last week a number of posters were anxiously awaiting arrival of Scans from the January 5th batch.

Now that you have got them, are they OK? Are they better than the earlier Scans?

I am not asking if it is the worlds best player, because frankly I will only ever probably own 10-20 DVD`s (but lots of MP3!!) and I am quite prepared to upgrade in 12-24 months time when better players come out at a lower price. I just want a basic player that plays MP3 and VCD with reasonable DVD picture (on the crap Bush WS telly from Aldi).

RE: Scan SC2000 not too bad for mp3, but ...

Will the Sony play mp3 and VCD? I have a lot of mp3 files so mp3 playback is v.v. important (more so than DVD picture really). How, roughly, would it cost?

RE: Anyone know where I can pick up an Aiwa 370?

Well I took two faulty ones back to Comet in the days after Christmas so maybe they are in the system somewhere? Maybe they are being used as `display machines`?

Jimbo, what happens to this faulty stuff that is taken back. Does it get repaired and re-sold as new? or does it become a `manager`s special`.

RE: Scan SC2000 not too bad for mp3, but ...

I do because I am thinking of buying one of these machines.
Thanks for the info.

Since a number of folks were waiting to receive `Jan 5th batch` Scans and non have come on here moaning can we assume that these latest machines work OK and it is safe to order one?

After my trial of the two faulty Aiwas and the lousy Bush TV from Aldi I couldn`t stand any more problems. I am not asking for the Earth, just a DVD player that plays OK.

Bernard.

RE: Thanks for NOTHING

Very Well said Gothie.

I can`t understand why people write such filth about DVD players. I had problems with two Aiwa before I discovered this forum and came here for help with regard to a replacement. It seems that all players are either absolutely brilliant or so bad that everyone writes a string of obscenities about them. It is very annoying to start reading a thread and then find that most of the postings are vulgar sexual insults and nothing to do with the origianl question. So much technology put to such an unpleasant purpose. It should be moderated out and the people banned.

Anyway, I too want to buy a budget player. The Manhatten review looks quite favourable. Since it is the same as the Scan and the Scan is in black and has 2 scarts I might go for the scan. I am waiting for posts from people who have got the jan 5th batch of scans before I make my decision though.

Cheers,
Bernard.

RE: Scan 2000 / Aiwa 730 / LG3200 - What a dilemma !

Well everyone says the Aiwa is magic but I had two faulty ones, one after the other, from Comet. Got my money back and the guy in Comet said they`d sold out but had a number come back faulty after Christmas.

Everyone says I was just unlucky and Jimbo said the Comet guy was talking rubbish, but I`m not so sure. Bought a duff widescreen Bush TV from Aldi (in fact TWO, the first one was faulty, the second one work but is just not a very good telly) so I have been really unlucky recently. Don`t feel like buying anything at all at the moment.
Why is there so much faulty brand new stuff around.

Everyone is saying great things about Aiwa at the moment, but what will the story be in a couple of months when they`ve had a bit of use and played a 100+ DVD`s?

RE: Took the Thomson back..got a Medion from Aldi (£129) BIG thumbs up :)

Careful with the ALDI stuff lads.

A couple of us here got suckered into Aldi`s great offer last week (see discussion on general forum).
A Bush widescreen telly (28") for £229. Bought first one Friday night (nearly sold out), faulty so it went back on Saturday. Then had to drive miles to get another from another store. The telly is very poor and very basic - I think Bush made a cock-up with the spec. (won`t display letterbox picures across the screen) and off-loaded them through Aldi. Bush `Helpline` didn`t want to know!!
Hoping to get my money back tomorrow.

Bernie

RE: Wharfedale 890 problem

I have the Bush WS6672 which is basically the same telly. Mine doesn`t do this so I suggest you take yours back.
Mind you, I have a very slight `warble` on the sound during `bright` scenes on the picture..