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Old 4th August 2005, 11:18   #1  |  Link
Y.T.
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Stand-alone MPEG-4 (DivX, XviD...) Player Buyers Guide

Quite recently I went through the tedious process of researching the whole stand-alone player topic. Overall, there seems to be huge confusion over the actual technical features of these players and you have to scavenge dozens of Internet Forums for bits and pieces of unreliable information to aid your buying decision. Furthermore, Europeans suffer from a huge selection of players while people in the US have to choose between only a few available models.

Either way it is difficult to make an informed decision since there is no central review website for MPEG-4 players and reviews often forget to cover important technical details. Thus I decided to put together the things I learned while doing my investigations. I would very much welcome all input you can give me to this thread and in time it might become a fairly comprehensive overview.

I myself ended up choosing the Sigmatek XM-400 Pro with the Pioneer DV-575 and Pioneer DV-470 on a close second place on my ranking list. For the US market, the Oppo Digital looks like an excellent choice. From all the information I have gathered so far, all three of the above can be highly recommended.

In the following I will try to summarize some of the most important factors you should take into account when making your choice. This article will be mainly concerned with technical issues - after all, this is the Doom9 Forum. Issues like "is this player stylish enough for my living room and is it available in a colour that matches my Monet on the wall" you will have to solve yourself. Additionally, a strong focus will be on subtitles since almost all reviews of stand-alone players forget to accurately cover subtitle issues. Unless you live in one of the few countries where all movies are dubbed or you fancy only the bland, watered-down fare that Hollywood puts out for mentally challenged audiences these days, you will agree with me that subtitle support is important.

How to choose a stand-alone MPEG-4/DVD Player
(or at least the way I approached the problem )

1. Consider the alternatives:
  • PC connected to TV via TVout - no compatibility problems whatsoever. On the other hand you have to consider the noise your PC makes and whether or not you can keep it hooked up permanently or have to fiddle around with the cables each time you want to watch a movie.
  • Xbox with Mod Chip and DVD remote running XBMC - just like a PC, no compatibility problems at all. On some older models the DVD drive might have to be replaced; plus it still looks like a cheap game console and not like a DVD player. More details: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox_Media_Center
  • HTPC - several Home Theatre PC solutions offer much more than just DVD & MPEG-4 playback and the added benefit of no compatibility problems. You can have a complete integrated system for playing and recording TV, Movies and Music with Internet access to IMDB and TV schedules. Expect to pay as much as for a new PC though.
  • Various devices to stream videos from your PC and display them on your TV; harddisks with integrated MPEG4-playing firmware that you can hook up to the TV. Great if you have a "normal" DVD player already and only need a MPEG-4 solution.
Except for the first option in the list all of the above are more expensive than a high-quality stand-alone MPEG-4 player. The highly-debated compatibility issue with stand-alones has, for all practical purposes, been pretty much solved by now so stand-alones are very much worth considering!

2. Filter the broad selection of players on the market by defining your must-have features:
Go to http://divx-compare.com/section-1-lecteur-dvd-divx.htm and reduce the choice of players by searching for some rare features that you absolutely need and cannot do without. This could be stuff like .idx/.sub support, .ogm support or Nero Digital support. (Yes, the divx-compare website is in French only but it is really easy to use even if you don't understand a word of French. The 100+ players reviewed there are taken from and centered on the European market so US readers will have to stick to the global players whose products are available worldwide.)

3. Compare details, look for professional reviews & user opinions, find a firmware support community, check for availability.
Make sure you like the detailed test results for the player. Reviews help to find out if the player is very noisy or if the DVD drive breaks easily. Make sure to buy a model that has strong firmware support with people actively modding the firmware. Lastly, make sure you can actually get that model in your own country.

4. Try taking a close look at the player in a store (Optional)
If you are extremely lucky, you might be able to find the model you are looking for on display in a store. That way you can check it out real close and there won't be any nasty surprises after buying it. Before you go to the store, be sure to bring some DivX/XviD Test material along:5. Order your player and have fun!

This is the basic process that I followed and I quickly ended up with a very small and manageable selection of players to choose from. Of course you could also start your search by determining the price range you are prepared to pay but I opted for a feature-centric approach instead.

Now on to all the juicy details on what you should pay attention to when buying a player... the following is knowledge gathered from a multitude of forums and I hope it can give you a good initial overview of the situation.

What you need to know before buying a MPEG-4 Player

1. General Hardware Criteria

Inside all of the players you will find the following:
  • Chipset - Dealt with under Section 2. Just make sure you know which one is in the box and that it's a Mediatek 1389.
  • DVD-Drive - Should be able to read all combinations of CD-R/RW, DVD+/-R/RW with good error correction for scratched disks. Should not make loud noises while reading disks.
  • Video D/A converter, Audio D/A converter, De-interlacer - Especially if you are a Cine-/Audiophile, find out what chips are used in your player and what the expert opinion is on the quality of their output.
  • DD (Dolby Digital) & DTS decoders - If you want to hook up your DVD-player to a surround stereo system and your amp does not have such decoders you will need these inside your player for full surround sound.
  • Fan - make sure the overall noise level of your DVD-Player is barely audible and does not disturb your viewing experience.
Outside check for the following:
  • Casing - Should be sturdy with firm rubber feet.
  • Display - Should be easily readable in broad daylight; a dimming option is a plus (so it doesn't disturb you while watching with all the lights off).
  • Remote - Make sure it works at your required distance and also from wide angles.
2. Chipset

There are several different Chipsets available on the market right now but arguably the most capable one is the Mediatek 1389 Series. Therefore I will only discuss the Mediatek.

There are several different versions of the Mediatek chip. Each one has a slightly different set of features but the feature matrix is confidential and has never been released by Mediatek. Here are some common ones:
  • 1389 GE - This is not DivX certified so don't buy players with this chipset.
  • 1389 FE
  • 1389 DE
  • 1389 EE - Most players with the EE chipset support SACD. Seems to be the most functional version out there right now.
Depending on the firmware used, functionality in your player can vary. More on this in Section 3. However, there are some limitations which are inherent to the Mediatek Chipset and are highly unlikely or impossible to be fixed by a firmware update:
  • No support for XviDs with GMC enabled.
    It is important to distinguish between DivX and XviD here. DivX with GMC uses 1 warp point and is supported on all Mediatek-based players. XviD on the other hand uses 3 warp-point GMC and is not supported on any stand-alone player right now. XviD + GMC however is very very rare. No need to worry.
  • No MKV (Matroska Video container) support.
    Unless Mediatek releases some more specs on the function calls in their firmware I doubt this will be implemented anytime soon. If you haven't heard about Matroska before, no need to worry about it.
  • No MOV (Quicktime Movie container) support. No RM (RealMedia) support.
    Same as above... In fact, this also goes for any super-rare, ultra-proprietary, non-MPEG-4 codecs and containers you can pull out of your hat and that I haven't even heard about!
  • Maximum resolution limited to 720x576.
    The upper bitrate limit also probably lies at ~5,000Mbps although that can vary from player to player. In plain terms this means: No playback of encodings of HD (High Definition) material. This is pretty much a non-issue at the moment since there is hardly any HD content available on the market for you to consume. In order to be prepared for the future, you might want to look at the first HD-capable chip on the market, the Sigma, covered extensively in this thread: http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=84003. Personally, I'd rather wait until BluRay and/or HD-DVD have established themselves on the DVD side of things and H.264 playback becomes possible on the compressed-video side of things. I wouldn't be surprised if this takes quite a while so I consider HD support to be a moot point right now.
  • No H.264 support.
    Right now, nada. In the future: Both H.264 and WMV9 will be playable with the new Sigma EM8622L and EM8624L chipset, as this press release claims: http://www.sigmadesigns.com/news/pre...ses/050418.htm
    Come christmas time, we might already have the first H.264 compatible DVD-player!
  • No support for any picture format other than JPEG (e.g. GIF, PNG) and any music format other than MP3 (e.g. FLAC).
    For music, note that OGG Vorbis and WMA are supported by a lot of players as detailed below. In general however, you will be better off if you simply regard your MPEG-4 player as a movie player, and not as an all-in-one solution for any media.
3. DivX/XviD Compatibility and more

All Mediateks (except the 1389GE) support both DivX and XviD in all combinations and variations. This includes CBR & VBR MP3 and AC3 sound, even as multiple audio tracks (so-called BivX). This also includes GMC & QPel for DivX and QPel for XviD. It also usually includes .srt and .sub textfile support for subtitles.

Where the differences between players start to show are:

- .sub / .idx vobsub support: Only a handful of players on the market support bitmap subtitles at all. For me, this immediately limited the choice of players very drastically since I could not live without vobsubs (text subs like .srt very frequently suffer from poor spelling due to the OCR process performed to extract the text out of the original bitmap subtitles).
The only players that have been confirmed to support vobsubs and that I have found out about are: Pioneer DV-380, DV-470, DV-575, DV-585, DV-676A; Philips 720SA; United 4969 Divx Certified; Sigmatek XM-400 Pro; Techwood DVX-5050S, DVX-550S; Keyplug KP-5610; H&B DX-3255; LG DK-8321N, DF-8900P; Targa DP-5100x; Silvercrest KH6507; Yamaha 550; Zensonic Z330; BlueSens 3005; Medion MD 7457; RJ Tech RJ-800DVXII.

- .ogm & .ogg support: A few players support playing .ogg music files but only a very small selection actually support the .ogm container. The ones I know about are: Pioneer DV-470, DV-575, DV-585; Sigmatek XM-400 Pro; H&B DX-3255.
The latest hacked Pioneer firmware fully supports .ogm with multiple audio streams and subtitle streams. Same for the Sigmatek, except it does not support subs included in the .ogm, only external subs. I haven't checked up on the H&B firmware.

- XviD with Packed Bitstream (N-VOP) and more than one consecutive B-VOP (DivX with PB is no problem at all): Most Mediatek-based players do not properly supports this. Note that apparently players based on the old ESS Vibratto chips had no problems with packed bitstream XviD but since the Mediatek chip is superior in pretty much all other aspects I would not recommend ESS-based players. The problem occurs only if the XviD in question has more than one B-VOP at a time (one B-VOP seems to work fine) and usually leads to video stuttering (dropped frames) and loss of audio sync. This problem is actively being solved in many firmware releases right now. My Sigmatek XM-400 Pro, with the current official firmware, can handle any packed bitstream XviD thrown at it. Packed bitstream support also seems to have been implemented on the Targa DP-5100x, RJ-800DVX and LG 8900P as this article points out: http://www.divxtest.com/article.php3?id_article=93. This might mean that in the future firmware hackers will be able to implement N-VOP support in other Mediatek-based players as well. In the meantime, if your player does not support N-VOPs, the solution is quite simple yet bothersome: Get MPEG4 Modifier from http://www.moitah.net/. This simple tool can check if your XviD uses packed bitstream and disable it without having to re-encode the whole movie. MPEG4 Modifier runs with .NET on Windows or with Mono on Linux and MacOS as the command-line version (I have used it successfully on all three OSes).

- Region Free support: Unless you have been living under a rock for the past couple of years you should know about this one. Most players have some kind of trick or hack to set them region free. Before buying, be sure to look up your model in the VideoHelp Database: http://www.videohelp.com/dvdplayers.
Certain models can require expensive hardware & knowledge to be made region-free in which case you might want to look for a different player or for a dealer who sells your model as region-free.

(continued in next post due to character per post limit on this forum...)

Last edited by Y.T.; 20th September 2005 at 09:10.
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