Page 1 of Wharfedale DVD-M5 Vs LG 3000E

Like many people I have had problems with my current DVD player, the Wharfedale 750, playing LA Confidential.
Taking advice from various sources I took the player into my local Tescos to see if they could give me a firmware upgrade.
The bloke in Tescos said that rather than send it off to have the firmware patch inserted it would be more cost effective to replace the player with a new one. He told me though that Tescos no longer stock Wharfedale players but he would replace it with the LG 3000E.
Looking at Tesco.co.uk and reading websites it appears that Tescos have just bought out the Wharfedale DVD-M5 - is he lying????

I have sent an e-mail to Tescos to explain that I would rather have a DVD-M5 than a LG 3000E, as I have a large collection of Region 1 discs and am worried that these may not work.

Can someone please tell me the hack for the LG 3000E (if they wont give me DVD-M5?

Also, does either the DVD-M5 or LG 3000E have problems with the following discs?

REGION 1

Toy Story Box Set

REGION 2

X Men
LA Confidential
Matrix
Scary Movie
RCE discs in general

Thank you for reading this rather long message

zaz_fan

LG3000E is multi-region and VCD hackable, see www.lgdvd.co.uk for more LG DVD players informations.

Info on the M5 at http://www.area450.co.uk

However, sad to say, the early batch of M5s seems to be blighted with a DVD drive problem, causing stuttering playback on DVDs and CDs. I think Wharfedale I now finding out, via my website, what the problems are as it seems Tesco`s aren`t telling them the reasons players are being returned.

That said, the player (actually built by Sampo in Taiwan to Wharfedale`s spec, and that includes on board DTS decoding) is RCE-friendly, region hack friendly (SETUP and 62836), plays back all formats known to man (CD-R/CD-RW/CD/DVD/VCD/SVCD/MP3) as well as independent on line support.

The LG3000E also benefits from independent online support from IT Troll`s superb site.

I obtained an M5 today having previously owned a 750.

I was aware of the drive problem on some units, but throughout my extensive testing of my entire collection today I have observed no problems whatsoever.

I can also honestly say that it is an improvement on the previous model, and not just in terms of it`s extra onboard features (the decoder is not used given that i have an external av amp) but in terms of looks, speed (menu navigation, chapter switching etc.) and overall operational slickness.

I would recommend it to anyone looking for a decent player under 200 quid - just remember to keep the receipt in a safe place just in case you get a duff one.

Tesco`s are very good at refunding/exchanging so as far as i`m concerned there is no risk in buying this machine.

To be fair, it seems that the dodgy drives are in the minority, so it may well be a bad batch of players that were either dropped in transit, or weren`t QC`d at Sampo`s factory correctly.

Glad you got a good `un there, Eric - welcome to the Sampo Family !

I have an M5 and have no problems whatsoever with RCE dics (I have Charlies Angels Region 1) or the menus on The Matrix.

I haven`t noticed any problems either on The Matrix, X Men or Toy Story Box Set (Region 1).

I also have a 750 that did have problems with the menus on the Matrix.

What hasn`t helped is the fact that Wharfedale fine tuned the firmware on the 750 and latterly the 750S and ended up with 5 ever-so-slightly different machines that outwardly all looked identical.

Certainly the original 750 had problems (including The Matrix) but my 3rd generation (!) 750 didn`t !! This causes a hell of alot of confusion in most people given that they will believe the same dvd player is being considered each time when in fact it isn`t.

I just hope they don`t do the same with the M5 ... (he says touching as much wood as humanly possible).

Can you disable Macrovision, and is the MP3 playback any good - does it have long filenames on MP3`s ?

Thanks,

NiVZ.

M5 - no at the moment, no hack been discovered for Macrovision, but chances are it`s a six figure number of sorts.

As for MP3, I`ve heard audio playback is fine, but the file name is limited to 8 letters, with `0`s replacing any blanks eg `Funny Break` would appear as `FUNNY0BR`

My friend has purchased the LG and we have not discoved a reigon hack for it as yet.

On another point my DVD-750 is set for multi reigon and when playing R1 disks it appears to skip frames. Have you encountered this and is it curable.?