Page 1 of M5 whats the score?

hi there

after all the fuss about getting the region hack what has happened to all the Wharfedale M5 owners?

Whats the score with the machine ? is it any good? are there any problems with the known discs i.e. toy story disc 3, gladiator disc 2 jaws , matrix etc etc.?

is the machine any quieter than the 750 / 750s? lastly ( thank god i hear you say ) are there any artifacts or blockyness on the picture.?

please let us know

david

The machine`s definitely quieter than the 750(s).

In can only tell you the discs I`ve played that work:
The Matrix R1, Gladiator R2 (original pressing), Se7en PE R1, T2:UE, The Abyss R1, ID:4 R1, High Fidelity R1, Hollow Man R2, The Rock CE R1, Snatch R2. There are a couple of "problem" discs in there and a couple of which wouldn`t play on my sister`s 750, all of which now seem to play without any problems on the M5

As a player, it`s visually not up to scratch compared to my Sony 715 as (IMHO) the picture`s a tiny bit soft compared to the Sony. No blocky artefacty stuff that I`ve seen/heard.... although it does get a little narked if you play a disc that`s even slightly dirty, causing the sound and picture to "pop". Sonically, DD seems quieter and doesn`t seem to have as much "thickness". However it thrashes the 715 hands down on DTS (seeing as how the Sony doesn`t do it!). MP3 & CD playback is reasonable. Again though, it`s not as good as the Sony for CD playback and sounds positively poor next to an Arcam Alpha 8SE.

Personally, I think it`s a damn good player for the price and what it does. It`s just a bugger that it`s not black and it`s not Sony - it`s spoiled my black Sony home cinema monolith now (the Arcam`s in another room BTW).

Anyway, that`s my ten pence worth and I hope it helps you out.

Cheers,

Caca

Hi
I purchased an M5 last Wednesday...

..and took it back the following day.

My first impressions of the machine were good. It looked great and a lot better than the 750 that I also have. Once set up and switched on you are greeted by a colourfull wharfedale logo. The menus are much better than the 750. The region hack was easy to put in and worked fine on Fight Club R1.
The first problem I noticed was a slight jerkiness in the film. There seemed to be a slight split second pause every few seconds on fast moving scenes.
The picture quality was also not as good as the 750 and seemed a bit `grainy`.
I was impressed by the mp3 playback, but not the 8 character filename limit.
The next problem was that the machine `crashed` and the screen went all pixelated and started flashing. I thought this was the screensaver at first, but the machine failed to respond and I had to switch it off and back on again.
This happened a couple more times and on the third occassion it failed to switch back on and was completely dead.
I took it back to Tesco to exchange it. On arrival there were 2 other people returning players at the same time. I therefore decided to get a refund.

I will wait and see what other people think about it before buying another one.

Andy