Bleddyn Williams

Like a number of people here, I took the plunge for multi-region playback, and just received one of these machines yesterday.
The manual isn't exactly comprehensive, but set up was straightforward.

Playback of R1 DD & DTS with my Denon 3200 and Millennium 246 DTS decoder both seemed fine.

Video quality on my 27" 4:3 TV via S-Video looked very good with R1 NTSC.

With R2 PAL discs, however, I noticed a nasty shimmering which was most obvious for the titles of "The Royle Family" and also on the text of menu options for some Hong Kong Legends discs, like DRUNKEN MASTER.

In fact, looking at the menus for "IRON MONKEY" (the menus are also letterboxed for PAL on this player, unlike R1)I noticed that the edge of the letterboxing was actually shimmering up and down at top and bottom.

I vaguely remembered reading something about video filters beforehand (I failed to find it again before this post) and found that if I changed the filter from MOVIE to STILL, the shimmering totally disappeared!

I found two drawbacks from doing this - the first shot of Royle Family episode 1 has a camera tilt, and when it happens, a very distracting "blinds" effect occurs. Also, in ONCE UPON A TIME IN CHINA, there is a bonus Jet Li interview. When he moves his hands, the same effect occurs.

Interestingly enough, I watched Drunken Master in its entirety last night, and with all the fast motion, I saw not one problem.

Could this be a matter of source? Jet Li's interview comes from VHS and the main feature transfer doesn't seem to share the problems.

Also - are there any drawbacks to using the still filter otherwise? If I just leave it on, does it negatively affect NTSC? I didn't notice anything, but my time with the player is still pretty short.

Those of you with 4:3 displays - what settings are you using for your PAL discs?

Any feedback appreciated, as always....


Bleddyn

kinky

The general opinion on the video filter over at the AVSForum is to set it to "Smart". This setting supposedly uses the right filter according to the source (Movie for NTSC and Still for PAL)


Question: I have the same setup as you (Denon 3200 + Millenium 246) and I am curious as to how did you hook up the digital outs ?

I initially tried
[b]Malata --(coax)-->Millenium --(6+1 coax)--> Denon

But I got better results with

Malata --(optical)-->Denon
Malata --(6ch coax)-->Denon, leaving the Millenium out of the picture.

What's your set up ?

carnifern

I had the same problem with odd image movement when I was watching Another Heaven (R3 anamorphic NTSC). I had it set for still because it made captions and text look better but I switched it back after I discovered this annoying effect.

Donald Brown

This shimmering is an inevitable artifact that pops up, especially on straight lines and patterns, whenever a PAL signal is converted to NTSC. There's no way to get rid of it completely other than to watch PAL material on a multistandard TV without any conversion.

It should be noted that the Malata seems to handle shimmering better than other players with internal signal conversion, like Apex and Sampo, and it's better than running the signal through an external converter like a Samsung World Wide VCR.

Ted Todorov

I do have a multistandard TV (and am expecting the Malata shortly). Should I just have my filters set for "movie" on PAL & NTSC? I will probably be watching mostly PAL material, because I have a Toshiba 3109 for the R1/NTSC stuff.

Also, how do I set the video output so that it does not try to convert PAL into NTSC?

Thanks,
Ted

Matt Stevens

You need to set the player to PAL, because right now it is converting PAL to NTSC and will do so unless you set it to PAL for all PAL DVDs.

For NTSC, you need to set it to NTSC.

There is an auto function, but nobody knows if it works, as it has not been tested yet. Try it.

Bleddyn Williams

Kinky, my set up is-

Malata ----(coax)---> Denon
Malata ----(optical)--->Millennium

I am running a 5.0 system, and have had no problems with this set up.

The Video filters are not well explained in the manual - without extra help, how would you ever know the difference between cinema 1 & 2?

I'm not sure the smart mode does run still when you watch PAL - the shimmering returns in smart mode. Go back to still and its gone.

I will also head over the AVS, and see what's cooking over there. Thanks guys.

Bleddyn

Brett

I've had to fool around with the video filters for various discs, different ones work better than others...

As far as the shaking WS bar, that can usually be fixed by adjusting the the video filter, otherwise, a couple clicks on the zoom adjustment tends to fix it.

Donald Brown

Ted,

Like Matt said, just select PAL output from the Signal Type menu when watching PAL discs. As far as filters go, Movie and Smart seem to be the best for watching films. The Still filter actually eliminates shimmer, but isn't practical because, as its name suggests, it's only good for still images; anything in motion displays nasty jaggies.

There are two other filters available, Camera 1 and Camera 2, but I've yet to discover what their purpose is.