Technical Issues and Questions

Discuss North American DVDs and Blu-rays or other DVD and Blu-ray-related topics.
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tenia
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Re: Technical Issues and Questions

#1776 Post by tenia » Tue May 26, 2020 7:58 am

I use DVD Passkey (also because my old computer screen isn't HDCP compatible), with MPC-HC for the main feature and taking screencaps, and VLC if I need to access the menu and the extras.

I used to use an older version of PowerDVD I had bundled with an old computer, but it progressively got rubbish and couldn't do proper screencaps anyway.

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mfunk9786
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Re: Technical Issues and Questions

#1777 Post by mfunk9786 » Mon Aug 24, 2020 12:42 pm

Question for the HV geeks on this forum (of which I was once one...) - any recommendations for a low profile and/or small Blu-ray player? I figure they must have gotten more compact and efficient lately, but my use case is a little specific so I didn't know if something exists for users like me. The contingency is - our TV is mounted on the wall, wire to the outlet is hidden, and we are very happy with the fact that there are no wires going to the TV and there is no shelf below or next to it. The problem is, we don't have a disc player hooked up to it for that reason, and it's beginning to get a little impractical to only have a disc player in one room.

Long story short - looking for a small player that could mount to a wall, or would be small enough that it could be placed on a small shelf next to the TV without much impact. I found the now OOP Samsung BD-P4600, but the reviews and the relatively high price since it's no longer being produced have scared me off a bit, coupled with the fact that it's often sold missing the mounting hardware, the remote, etc. Anything else on the market that might serve this purpose well?

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domino harvey
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Re: Technical Issues and Questions

#1778 Post by domino harvey » Mon Aug 24, 2020 12:55 pm

Why not get one of those wall mounted cord cover strips and just paint it to match your wall?

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cdnchris
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Re: Technical Issues and Questions

#1779 Post by cdnchris » Mon Aug 24, 2020 1:01 pm

I run my cables behind the wall, which is usually not hard to do since going down the wall there shouldn't be any studs in the way, tbough wall patching is not hard if it comes to that.

There are also mounting kits. But you'd need a player that doesn't have a tray.

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mfunk9786
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Re: Technical Issues and Questions

#1780 Post by mfunk9786 » Wed Aug 26, 2020 11:53 pm

domino harvey wrote:
Mon Aug 24, 2020 12:55 pm
Why not get one of those wall mounted cord cover strips and just paint it to match your wall?
Already running one for the TV extension cord, so there'll be no need. Just don't have a shelf to place a horizontal player on and don't plan on adding one, hence the desire to mount if possible. Chris, glad to hear those are available - going down the rabbit hole now.

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J Wilson
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Re: Technical Issues and Questions

#1781 Post by J Wilson » Tue Sep 15, 2020 12:05 am

I have an Oppo BDP-83 that I've had for probably 10-11 years, which has always worked without issue. Recently, I've had two different releases that the Oppo wouldn't play video for (sound worked fine on both otherwise), the Arrow Gamera set (the US version) and Eureka's Murders in the Rue Morgue disc from the Lugosi set. Everything else I've played has worked without issue. Does this seem like a disc-based thing, since the player is getting rather old and maybe can't handle something about recent discs, or could there be a mechanical fault? The firmware is up to date, but they haven't updated it in six years.

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Drucker
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Re: Technical Issues and Questions

#1782 Post by Drucker » Sat Oct 10, 2020 10:43 pm

A very basic question for 24 FPS playback. Should cinema smooth be enabled on Samsung plasma TVs when watching blu-rays? I have it off, and the pictures from when I got my TV calibrated have it greyed out, so I think it's supposed to be on and must have been accidentally disabled during one of my recent moves, but want to be sure.

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Adam X
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Re: Technical Issues and Questions

#1783 Post by Adam X » Sun Oct 11, 2020 3:52 am

You don’t want it on, no, unless you want everything looking like it’s been shot on noise-reduced digital video. I imagine your calibrator did it deliberately, even if it would’ve been better to just explain why you want it off.

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Drucker
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Re: Technical Issues and Questions

#1784 Post by Drucker » Sun Oct 11, 2020 3:02 pm

Good to know. It’s been off but I’ve had to reset a few settings after a couple of moves for some reason restored some default settings even in my calibrated setting. Thanks!

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domino harvey
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Re: Technical Issues and Questions

#1785 Post by domino harvey » Sun Oct 11, 2020 6:34 pm

I just bought my first new TV in over a decade (!), also a Samsung, and I was thankful for the much lauded Scorsese/Nolan-endorsed Filmmaker mode because even with reading lots of reviews and guides the different options were all so confusing. Plus your dumb brain automatically thinks brighter and bolder colors are better even if they are inaccurate, so at first when switching between options I thought Filmmaker mode was just putting a hipster dull sepia tone on everything like an Instagram filter. Nope, I’d just been watching shit wrong with mad boosting of everything.

flyonthewall2983
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Re: Technical Issues and Questions

#1786 Post by flyonthewall2983 » Thu Nov 26, 2020 1:43 am

On the cusp of getting my first 4K TV. I've had a trusty 50" Magnavox for 4 years now, atop the small but stylish TV stand I had when I got my first HDTV 10 years ago. Hoping to get something at least 60" this time, and am wondering what cheap alternatives there are out there to the more pricy TV stands I'm seeing all over. I do not want to mount anything to the wall. I don't even have paintings up.

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Mr Sheldrake
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Re: Technical Issues and Question

#1787 Post by Mr Sheldrake » Thu Nov 26, 2020 2:06 pm

I bought this stand last month for $100 on Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B089 ... UTF8&psc=1
I needed something on wheels, it’s very sturdy. I bought a 65” TCL Roku tv that has an option for less wide feet length, some 65” tvs with wider feet might not fit it.

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Re: Technical Issues and Questions

#1788 Post by flyonthewall2983 » Sat Nov 28, 2020 4:51 pm

The Sony I've got my eyes on is slightly too wide for that, off by an inch actually. Best Buy has those specifications thank God. Thankfully the dining table I have that I don't use much is just wide enough for it.

Really annoyed that most of these TVs don't have a center stand attached to it.

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therewillbeblus
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Re: Technical Issues and Questions

#1789 Post by therewillbeblus » Sat Nov 28, 2020 11:09 pm

I bought a new TV for the first time in roughly a decade, a 50” 4K Roku, and was disappointed to find that the RCA ports are apparently all outputs on the TV, so my Vizio soundbar won’t plug in since Rokus seemingly only take HDMI inputs, not RCA..

So my questions are: 1. Does anyone with a Roku TV and a non-Roku-branded sound system (or I guess anyone who is tech savvy) know of a cheap way to merge the two (like some kind of mediator that functions as an input for RCA and has an HDMI cable to plug into the TV)?

2. If I wanted to just ditch my sound bar, are there any recs for sound bars/systems that have an HDMI input?

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domino harvey
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Re: Technical Issues and Questions

#1790 Post by domino harvey » Sat Nov 28, 2020 11:55 pm

Can you just use a $11 RCA to HDMI converter off Amazon?

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therewillbeblus
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Re: Technical Issues and Questions

#1791 Post by therewillbeblus » Sun Nov 29, 2020 12:34 am

domino harvey wrote:
Sat Nov 28, 2020 11:55 pm
Can you just use a $11 RCA to HDMI converter off Amazon?
Thanks- I saw that, and I'd like to think so(!), but I'm so not tech-savvy that for all I know that's not going to work for input vs. output or something. I'm really not confident in these matters, which is why I'm positing it to those who are, or who have Rokus and have troubleshooted similar issues.

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DeprongMori
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Re: Technical Issues and Questions

#1792 Post by DeprongMori » Sun Nov 29, 2020 12:54 pm

Has anyone had issues with DVDs (typically 1.33:1) that will not play at the correct aspect ratio?

Most recently, I picked up an older copy of “Twelve O’Clock High” on a 2001 DVD, and it gets zoomed to full-screen on my HDTV (not horizontally stretched, but chopped at top and bottom). I’ve gone through and tinkered with all the settings on both the Samsung TV and LG Blu-ray player to no avail. Checking the image on a VLC player shows the disc does contain a 1.33:1 image — I just can’t get it to display as such.

I encountered this problem once before on a different TV/player setup, and could not find any solution to that one either. In that case it was discs in the Warner “Thin Man” DVD box set.

I can document the settings in detail (and it is a rare event), but has anyone had experience with this? Was the setting adjustment typically on the player or the TV?

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willoneill
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Re: Technical Issues and Questions

#1793 Post by willoneill » Sun Nov 29, 2020 1:00 pm

My old Panasonic 3D blu player did that to every single 1.33 DVD I had. I had to watch them all on my region-free Seiki. Once I upgraded my Region A player to a Sony 4K unit, I’ve only had the problem once, and it corrected itself after I ejected the disc and then re-loaded it.

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domino harvey
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Re: Technical Issues and Questions

#1794 Post by domino harvey » Sun Nov 29, 2020 2:35 pm

therewillbeblus wrote:
Sun Nov 29, 2020 12:34 am
domino harvey wrote:
Sat Nov 28, 2020 11:55 pm
Can you just use a $11 RCA to HDMI converter off Amazon?
Thanks- I saw that, and I'd like to think so(!), but I'm so not tech-savvy that for all I know that's not going to work for input vs. output or something. I'm really not confident in these matters, which is why I'm positing it to those who are, or who have Rokus and have troubleshooted similar issues.
What brand/model is it? Assuming the TV has an optical audio output, that would be the easiest solution-- optical audio to RCA converters are about $13, and that way you're not hogging an HDMI slot. It's not a RokuTV-thing, it's going to depend on what outputs your TV has.

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DeprongMori
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Re: Technical Issues and Questions

#1795 Post by DeprongMori » Sun Nov 29, 2020 3:18 pm

willoneill wrote:
Sun Nov 29, 2020 1:00 pm
My old Panasonic 3D blu player did that to every single 1.33 DVD I had. I had to watch them all on my region-free Seiki. Once I upgraded my Region A player to a Sony 4K unit, I’ve only had the problem once, and it corrected itself after I ejected the disc and then re-loaded it.
99.99% of 1.33:1 discs play fine on my setup. During my experimentation with setting combinations on the player and TV, I ejected and reloaded the disc countless times. Ordinarily I’d just toss the disc and replace it with a Blu-ray, but the Blu has gotten rare and expensive in this case. I’m also curious to be able to navigate these sorts of issues in the future. It might just be some sort of weird encoding on this particular disc that falls between the cracks in the playback code on my player.

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cdnchris
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Re: Technical Issues and Questions

#1796 Post by cdnchris » Sun Nov 29, 2020 3:51 pm

I've actually come across this issue with a few discs on multiple Sony players I've owned, though they're usually non-anamorphic widescreen discs, like Ravenous, which in that case I was okay with (though it looked like ass).

The only other one I can think of was a 4:3 DVD of The Aristocats that I had to put on for my daughter ALL the time, and she wouldn't have noticed. But all my other full frame ones appear to be fine so it's not consistent. My PS3, before it died, never had the problem so I assume it's the player.

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therewillbeblus
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Re: Technical Issues and Questions

#1797 Post by therewillbeblus » Sun Nov 29, 2020 6:16 pm

domino harvey wrote:
Sun Nov 29, 2020 2:35 pm
therewillbeblus wrote:
Sun Nov 29, 2020 12:34 am
domino harvey wrote:
Sat Nov 28, 2020 11:55 pm
Can you just use a $11 RCA to HDMI converter off Amazon?
Thanks- I saw that, and I'd like to think so(!), but I'm so not tech-savvy that for all I know that's not going to work for input vs. output or something. I'm really not confident in these matters, which is why I'm positing it to those who are, or who have Rokus and have troubleshooted similar issues.
What brand/model is it? Assuming the TV has an optical audio output, that would be the easiest solution-- optical audio to RCA converters are about $13, and that way you're not hogging an HDMI slot. It's not a RokuTV-thing, it's going to depend on what outputs your TV has.
Thankfully there’s a fourth HDMI slot on this TV, and I’ve always made do with three, so either way works. It’s an Element 50” 4K Roku, and seems to take S/PDIF or ARC (the latter of which I think means HDMI) for audio.

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TheKieslowskiHaze
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Re: Technical Issues and Questions

#1798 Post by TheKieslowskiHaze » Sun Nov 29, 2020 6:34 pm

DeprongMori wrote:
Sun Nov 29, 2020 12:54 pm
Has anyone had issues with DVDs (typically 1.33:1) that will not play at the correct aspect ratio?

Most recently, I picked up an older copy of “Twelve O’Clock High” on a 2001 DVD, and it gets zoomed to full-screen on my HDTV (not horizontally stretched, but chopped at top and bottom). I’ve gone through and tinkered with all the settings on both the Samsung TV and LG Blu-ray player to no avail. Checking the image on a VLC player shows the disc does contain a 1.33:1 image — I just can’t get it to display as such.

I encountered this problem once before on a different TV/player setup, and could not find any solution to that one either. In that case it was discs in the Warner “Thin Man” DVD box set.

I can document the settings in detail (and it is a rare event), but has anyone had experience with this? Was the setting adjustment typically on the player or the TV?
When I encountered the problem of a DVD playing in the wrong aspect ratio, I just converted the DVD to a VUDU digital copy by scanning the barcode. It costs $2 ($5 if you scan a DVD but opt for HD).

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Adam X
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Re: Technical Issues and Questions

#1799 Post by Adam X » Mon Nov 30, 2020 7:48 am

DeprongMori, unless there's an authoring issue with the DVD it sounds like you've got a setting in the incorrect mode, most likely on the TV.
Both the TV & player should have a setting that lets you tell the player what sort of TV is connected, & the TV how the image should be presented.

The player will usually have a 16:9 / 4:3 setting, but the TV will generally have multiple options. A Samsung TV I used to own, had a P.Size (picture size) button on the remote & a Size setting in the picture menu. It'll be something like that, or Aspect Ratio.

On this TV, the correct setting was 16:9, in order to display everything in the correct ratio. Even though it had a 'Just Scan' setting, which might sound related to TV overscan, this actually (if I remember right) would fill the screen with the image, no matter the ratio. Other settings will simply zoom in on the image, just like is happening with your DVD.

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DeprongMori
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Re: Technical Issues and Questions

#1800 Post by DeprongMori » Mon Nov 30, 2020 4:08 pm

Thanks. My LG player has options of “16:9 Original” or “16:9 Full”. It is set to “16:9 Original”. Both options tested.

My Samsung HDTV has Picture Size options of “16:9”, “Zoom1”, “Zoom2”, and “4:3”. I have it set to “16:9”. All options tested. None of the other options produced a decent output either.

Having done my due diligence with regards to settings thanks to the diagnostic suggestions of those here, I’m just going to write this disc off as a rare anomaly. (FWIW, the only other time I ran into this problem was a Thin Man DVD from the WB set on a Sony Blu-ray player.)

Since this was a DVD with no supplements anyway, I’m going to take the suggestion of TheKieslowskiHaze and just convert it to an HD digital copy through Vudu. Thank you all.

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