Re: Video Quality-SVCD vs DVD

On Mon, 23 Jun 2003 18:23:13 GMT, John Navas
<(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

>>Is there some reason that both steps can't be done? Why is this step
>>necessarily in place of looking at the database on dvdrhelp.com? You
>>conveniently "SNIP"ped the part where I specifically said that people should
>>use multiple resources. It seems logical that testing the product before
>>buying would be the step you take _after_ you filter your choices down to a
>>few with resources like reviews and the dvdrhelp.com database (which I
>>suspect is far more accurate than Mr. Anonymous Hotmail Troll would have us
>>believe, even though there's no way it's 100% reliable).
>
>I see no point in using the database on dvdrhelp.com, which might filter out
>perfectly good choices, when I can easily get complete and accurate
>information simply by testing.
>

In theory that is a great idea, but my attempts didn't turn out so
well in the real world.

I have 2 DVD players now. Both play DVD, VCD and SVCD although they
don't claim to support all those. Both also have some glitches --
certain things pretty bad on both -- and I wanted to get a new
player for my main TV that can play everthing I may want to try.

On the web I checked what Best Buy and Circuit City are offering
now. I looked through the dvdrhelp lists and several possible
choices weren't covered yet. I settled on a couple possibilities.
(BTW, if you read the reviews for a given model, there is usually
quite a bit of conflict about what works or doesn't on the same
model.)

I burned sample VCD and SVCD from the sample images you can download
from dvdrhelp. I burned a short DVD onto -R and -RW and took along a
comercial DVD that gives problems on one of my current players.

I went to Best Buy and Circuit City locally and neither were set up
so you could try the DVD players. They gave me a guarantee that I
could bring it back if I wasn't satisfied, but that's a painful way
to test.

Fortunately I found a different Best Buy store where a friendly
salesman let me move and try a couple players. First I tried a JVC
XV-N5SL which sounded good from the reviews. It was good in most
cases, but had a glitch on playing one SVCD file - I saw the same
thing on one of my home players. I asked if the salesman had any
suggestions and we tried a Sony. This played the SVCD, but had other
issues. Its method for navigating menus was particularly awkward.

I gave up at this point and bought nothing. Anyone here have
suggestions?

So nothing that I have tried yet seems to be the one. No player that
I have tried has handled subtitles on the SVCD samples correctly
(although that's not a big issue).
I'm in the US so only tried NTSC samples.

Its not easy to find that super DVD player.

-xray


xray

[POSTED TO rec.video - REPLY ON USENET PLEASE]

In <(E-Mail Removed)> on Tue, 24 Jun 2003 16:28:20
-0700, xray <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

>I gave up at this point and bought nothing. Anyone here have
>suggestions?

JVC XV-S500

--
Best regards,
John Navas <http://navasgrp.home.att.net/>
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