Info and forum posts by 'Anonymous'

RE: How do other budget players compare to the MiCO?

None of you lot know me, and I`d like to keep it that way ;)

No one had taken Anonymous so I did. I may one day give the password out so you can all use it. Maybe not.

Anyway, I`ve just got the damn thing so no VCD just yet but MPEG1 aint really my thing, I`m more interested in miniDVD and DIVX but that`s not gonna happen soon. I`ll make some disks up with MPEG2 on when I get the time and will probably try S/XVCD just for fun.

The lipsynch problems may exist but I`ve got complete control over my audio (the amp has all kinds of variable delays you can play with so its compensatable, I could live with it. That said I`ve NOT YET TOUCHED THEM CONTROLS and I`ve not noticed any problems except when pausing, flicking to slow mo, x30, x8, slow, 1/8, 1/2 and play again. After that Steve Buscemi`s table tapping at the beginning of Desperado did seem slightly (I do mean slightly, maybe 1/5 second, my ears are are good as my eyes so I imagine most wouldn`t even notice it. Nothing that Stop, Start didn`t sort out. In normal use you won`t be hammering the controls like that and I wouldn`t have cared much if it threw it 3 seconds out (ok, maybe) becuase I won`t be doing it again. It was a test to see if I could find anything wrong with it.

Anyway, unless it develops some psychotic behaviour or starts mining my discs for gold in circular fashion (like the bloody DVD in my old VAIO once did) I`ve got no grumbles. Even as just a DVD player its fine.

This item was edited on Wednesday, 7th March 2001, 23:41

RE: Afreey 2060 / Phonotrend S-2100

Yep, the Afreey 2060 looks very good, just upgraded my firmware to 3.5f, worked perfectly. I`m just about to sit down and watch El Mariachi on it now with my girlfriend.

I`m not into all the "Hitachi Rocks" and "Aiwa (officially) Rules" crap (let them do their own bloody marketing I say) but its pretty good for the money you pay. In the worst case its an slightly expensive PC ATAPI DVDROM so what the hell, but I`m glad to say their pretty solid and don`t do anything wrong.

RE: How do other budget players compare to the MiCO?

The "this player sucks" is from http://www.halfmoon2.com/movie/dvdplayerslist.htm

Its not exactly explicit and I`m not sure why its there, it almost looks like he`s saying it about the next items listed?

Anyway, it certainly doesn`t suck. Its uglier than most but that`s negligable.

RE: How do other budget players compare to the MiCO?

OK, Got my Afreey 2060 this morning. Looks like Clayts has cleared up all the Macro and miniDVD stuff so I`ll cut to my first impressions.

Its ugly (even after removing the psychodelic "MP3 AND DTS" sticker"). Not exactly pretty but hey, I didn`t want to look at the player ;)

First things first, whack the scart lead in, switch it to S-VIDEO and run a digital co-ax to the DSP-A5. Pop in DVD and play. Hey, it aint bad at all, in fact its pretty damn good. Sound I expect to be top notch (it is the amp decoding it anyway and I spent some proper money in that direction) but the picture is very clean on my 28" hitachi 4:3 TV. Macro hack and multi reg are easily selectable but no worries as all my current films are Reg 2.

So, hectic scenes in flight club on, artifact hunting we go. It copes really well, the quickest scenes were perfect. As with every DVD players I`ve seen (and even digital TV / Cable) I see artifacts when other people don`t. Dunno why, maybe I know what to look for or have strange eyes. Some of the backgrounds on slower moving scenes have them but a lot less than Dig TV (makes sense, that has lesser bit rate). In fact, I had to look pretty hard to see them. I imagine I`ll see more if I watch a film straight through though. Compared to other players I`ve seen the film on, its about as good as the best of them (cousins sony), and a whole lot better than the Logix 3000 I looked at in Richer sounds (probably old firmware though).

Colors are prefect, black is black and white is white although that may have something to do with me using SVIDEO (carries luminance seperately).

The digital output also carries everything, CD audio, DTS and MP3. Grand, I can sell my marantz cd player now and let the amp do the D/A conversion. I do with the CD player anyway (idiot in Richer sounds tried to tell me that the marantz would supply a better digital stream than a cheaper dvd player when I wanted to part ex it (I`m not poor, just don`t have much tonnes of space ;). After I laughed he started on about dual laser pickups and noise from error correction circuitry. Well, since the DVD unit in the thing is a computer grade one (which has to read programs bit for bit perfect) I`m happy to replace the dedicated CD player. A quick blind listen (girffriend swapping leads over without me knowing) proved to my ears that they are identical sounding. The point of digital surely, and the reason Richer didn`t get my money this time.

Anyway, overall I`m very pleased with it, no regrets and I can`t see anything I`m likely to dislike about it in the future, except maybe that facia. Perhaps I do look at it more than I expected ;)

RE: How do other budget players compare to the MiCO?

With regard to the Encorre DV450 option, the demise of encore direct does little to effect the situation here since the machines are made by Sampo and firmware updates come from them. The loaders used in these (and the newer Afreey LD2060s) are normal PC ATAPI drives and are interchangable to faster units for playing higher bit rate miniDVD (DVD format on CD-R) - see www.robshot.com, he seems plenty happy with his Afreey 2060.

I`ve just ordered one (afreey 2060) from second spin and will let you know how it performs when I get it. I`ve already got a Yamaha DSP-A5 so the analog sound quality doesn`t bother me in the slightest (a digital PCM / DTS link to the amp will be all I need from a player sound wise).

www.second-spin.com have Afreey units in stock and more coming. They cost 165 notes (inc VAT and Delivery) if you tell then you came from www.area450.co.uk

Since I don`t yet have a PC DVDROM drive, I thought I`d risk this cheapo since I can always salvage the drive if its not up to requirements.

No doubt I`ll let you know.

This item was edited on Monday, 5th March 2001, 13:18