Londo

Absolutely... but (engage humor mode) I kept having SCTV and McKenzie Bros flashbacks with every 'eh..' and 'oout') [very large grin]. But seriously, these guys are top notch and will get a lot of my business in the future...

Matt Stevens

Thanks, Brett! I feel warm all over.

I just watched some of the Region 2 PAL "Umbrellas of Cherbourg", which looks a heck of a lot better than the non-16x9 Fox Lorber edition, though it does suffer from some artifacting.

Thanks to Chuck for letting me borrow it.

Brett

Matt,

I thought I saw you post this somewhere before, but I couldn't find it...What is the default value for the zoom...I played around with it so much that I don't remember what the original value was.


Thanks

-Brett

elengineer

Has there been any further talk/action lately regarding getting macrovision disabled on these units?

LennyNero

Why does macrovision bother people?
If you are a DVD fan you will not ever watch VHS or VCD copies of these movies, so it doesnt matter if macrovision is on or off

Nosebleed

Well I'd like to have Macrovision turned off. My GF is getting her wisdom teeth ripped out and I was going to tape a few movies from my collection for her to watch, but I can't. Not a big deal though.

elengineer

To answer the question, I don't have any desire or intent to copy DVDs onto tape. That is actually kinda silly as there is some signal degradation during that process even without MV anyway. There are legit reasons to want to turn macrovision off:

1) Macrovision screws with picture quality

2) MV will screw up some home theatre equipment, i.e. I have heard about various projectors, TVs, etc.. not being able to properly display a MV "enhanced" signal.

3) Not everyone (incl myself) is fortunate enough to have TVs that posess composite inputs. I generally have my setup running through my VCR. I see no sense in spending extra $$$ to get an RF modulator from Rat Shack when the VCR performs the same function and will actually boost the signal. I personally know a couple people who have this same problem.

You don't have to be a pirate or bootlegger to want Macrovision disabled.

Matt Stevens

Brett, to reset any "Feature" defaults, simply select that feature and then hit the middle OK button. That puts that particular feature at the default.

I myself zoom out out a couple clicks, to eliminate overscan on 1.85:1 films. A very cool feature.

kinky

I got my R0 Malata yesterday by UPS. Played my R2 Prisoner set perfectly.

I have a question to those who have the Malata and the AVIA disc. When I display the 16x9 enhanced patterns (circle-hatch) through the Malata, I see that it is still being displayed as a 4x3 image on my 16:9 HDTV. The circle is elongated vertically. My previous Toshiba SD2109 displayed the 16x9 patterns perfectly.

Anybody have a clue about this ?

kenbuzz

Man, I can't decide which way to go. The R0 unit is $50 more expensive, but the firmware upgradability has been disabled, and I'm all thumbs when it comes to popping open the case to monkey around with the innards myself. I personally don't care which region the unit boots up in, as long as I can change it to enable watching my non-R1 titles.... *but* I'd like to be able to bypass Macrovision down the road, because of the way I have my system hooked up.

Seems like getting the R1 unit is the way to go, though I lose any future firmware upgrade capability. I'd like to replace my Apex, but not if I end up losing capability (=Macrovision).

Arrgh! If it only it were simple!

Histrionic

You would still have to "do-it yourself," but I was told that the Region 1 player was upgradable as well as the Region 0. Also, the firware upgrade to the mother board, is to allow for the problems encountered when attempting to play certain disks; i.e. RCE'S. As far as I know, there has not been a mention by AVDeals of a macrovision bypass or disable type upgrade. As previously stated, these people are very easy to talk with, call and all will be answered.

Jepthah

So, now that both machines--R1 and R0--have been shown to be similarly capable of firmware (non-)upgradability, what is the point of paying $50 more to avoid a few button presses?

Anyone? Or has this been sufficiently covered and I'm just not 'reading between the lines' correctly?

Matt Stevens

The R0 will do RCE automatically. That alon is worth it for me. But that's me!

The AVIA 16x9 patterns have the 16x9 flag, so the Malata doesn't understand that they are in fact, anamorphic. A bummer, for sure.

AVIA an VE should be fully 16x9, if you ask me.

Aghama

Are the R0 modes on both identical, i.e. can you play R1 & R2 RCE discs in R0 regardless of the player?

Matt Stevens

You can do that on the R0 edition, but not the region 1, which needs to be changed with the remote.

Aghama

I understand that you need to use the remote on the R1 version for region-free operation, but once you do that will RCE discs play like they do by default on the R0 edition?

Matt Stevens

I am not sure I understand the question. Please rephrase if you will, in more detail. Maybe it's just late, but I cannot figure out what you mean.

Aghama

Sorry, I think it's all the "R"s.

Basically, I just want to make sure the R1 unit can play R2 RCE DVD's.

Brett

Aghama,

I don't own any RCE R2 titles to verify it for you, but I have the R1 default player.

You can set it to be specifically any of the six regions that you want (I believe this should take care of any RCE problems) or it looks like you can set the region to 9 using the normal region changing instructions on the avdeals site and that appears to be putting it into the mode that the R0 players start out in, where it can play any region...

Hope this helps

-Brett

Aghama

Good enough for me. I guess I'm going to be out $300 soon, thanks a lot.

AdamGott

I broke down and ordered one today! I think I can get $150 for my apex so that will help take some of the sting out of it and then I can probably get $50 or $75 if I decided to sell my Pioneer too.

kenbuzz

Adam:

Let us know when you're moving your Apex. I may soon be following you in the Apex-to-Malata migration, and others on the board might want to pick an Apex up.

Trinitron

I've read this on one of the boards but can't remember -- can anyone remind me how to pass through audio without using the Malata decoder? TIA.

cartman

Just don't use the built in speaker jacks. You will have to tell the player not to convert DTS to PCM, though (it's defaulted as converting the signal).

Matt Stevens

Choose 5.1 in the Common menu and DTS in the Expert menu.

Let us know if you have any dropouts during DTS playback. I had my first during THE RED VIOLIN this afternoon. It doesn't do it during T2.