Ideas - is it possible to create own/customise a standalone dvd player

[Biggles]

One of my old gen dvd players has started to malfunction, old pio - porbably due to a worn out laser.

On wondering what to do I thought it probably would be fun to modify and switch the unit, afterall dvd players and writers are very cheap these days (as I know new dvd players are too).

Just as one can by a pc case, select own parts and units and build themselves a pc - why cannot the same be done with a standalone player - you could convert it (or customise a case) into a recorder as well as a player, alter connections (hdmi - vga etc by buying plug-in boards akin to the way one uses AGP, PCI/express), add harddrive at you leisure even add scalers or wireless control. I suppose the key would be a. the software to run on startup, and having suitable and adaptable modules, and suitable boards.

Anyway I am no electrical engineer but anyone with any ideas out there whether such is possible?

[Smile2]

for DVD player, there is no such thing as custom build since its very complex stuff, you need some degree of skill to build your own Stand Alone Player.

Fortunately, there is alternative called Media Center PC, this is a PC with VGA Card, MotherBoard, CPU, RAM, etc...but act just like a Stand Alone Player + TV Tuner Combined, you can control it using remote as well.

[communist]

You can try to build one using this software and a PC.
http://geexbox.org/en/index.html

[johnhamler1]

dont waste ur money to build one, u can get a good one for 200$.



Oppo Digital - OPDV971H



MPEG Maker: Mediatek
MPEG Model: MT1389FE
Deinterlacer Maker: Genesis
Deinterlacer Model: FLI-2310

MSRP: $199.00
Website: http://www.oppodigital.com



OPDV971H (DVI) - Default

Passed Borderline Failed Not Tested
Layer Change
Responsiveness
Chroma, 3-2 Film Flags
Chroma, 3-2 Alt. Flags
Chroma, 2-2 Film Flags
Chroma, 4:2:0 ICP
Video Levels
Blacker-than-Black
YC Delay
Image Cropping
Sync Subtitle to Frames
3-2 Cadence, Film Flags
3-2 Cadence, Alt. Flags
3-2 Cadence, Video Flags
3-2 Cadence, Mixed Flags
Film Mode High Detail
Bad Edit
Video to Film Transition
Incorrect Progressive Flags
Motion Adaptive
Recovery Time
2-2 Cadence, Film Flags





The 971H is the premier DVD player from a brand new company here in the US: Oppo Digital. The company is a spring off from the electronics giant, BBK Electronics. BBK has been in the business for a long time and is a world leader in the electronics field with total manufacturing output matching Sony and Matsushita. If the 971H is any indication, we have a lot to look forward to from Oppo Digital.

As you can see from the Benchmark scores, the 971H is an outstanding budget DVD player. But I must advise you that the scores only pertain to the DVI output. This player’s component outputs do not support progressive playback, only 480i, so we were not able to plot a video frequency response curve. I was quite surprised, because I’ve never seen this before. The DVI video board in the player houses the Genesis FLI-2310 video processing chip, so the component video connections cannot take advantage of it.

This is the second union of the FLI-2310 and a Mediatek MPEG decoder. Ever since I first tested the Mediatek chips, I’ve been hoping for their fusion with a high line de-interlacing solution. The first player that I tested with this was the Toshiba 593 DVD/VCR combo. Unfortunately, that player had inconsistent performance from player to player, and the implementations of the chips were not what they should have been. I left feedback with Toshiba on this, but they didn’t take advantage of the suggestions. When Oppo originally sent me their player, I found some problems that needed to be addressed, I let them know, and they fixed them. I must say I was extremely impressed with how Oppo handled the issues I brought up, as well as the issues that I’ve seen raised on some of the Internet A/V forums. Their fixes led to a score of 94 in our benchmark, which is only second to the Denon DVD-5910. Not bad for a sub-$200 player!

This player offers the standard upscaling resolutions of 480p, 720p and 1080i. The DVI output is not HDCP compliant, so consumers with older DVI monitors that don’t support HDCP are in luck! The Faroudja chip seems to be set up appropriately, though it lacks a mode for 2-2 cadences. Oppo informed me that this is a feature that will be implemented on their next player. The Genesis chip has the same limitations as every other player using it. This includes somewhat sluggish transitions between film and video material and the unfortunate macroblocking issue. When I used my standard A Bug's Life test, the player did show signs of the macroblocking bug but it isn’t as bad as some other players such as the Teac Esoteric UX-1 or Samsung HD-1000.

The Mediatek chip is utilized to its fullest potential here. The player breezed through our chroma tests with no signs of banding or jaggies at all. The chip is also extremely fast with menu navigation and supports a seamless layer change.

I did find a few additional problems with the player and hope to see Oppo resolve them with a future firmware change. The cross color suppressor function of the Faroudja processing is defaulted to ON with no way of turning it off. We saw this same issue with the Panasonic RP-62 a while back, and it can cause some abnormalities with chroma performance, including slight flickering. I played animation material, including Toy Story, A Bug’s Life, The Incredibles, and Finding Nemo (think I’m a Pixar fan??) and didn’t see any issues at all. But I did notice a big drop off in vertical chroma resolution using the test patterns from Avia Pro.

Some of the bonus features of this player include excellent PAL support with PAL to NTSC conversion. On top of that, the player is region free out of the box making it an excellent choice for fans of foreign cinema or foreign market DVDs. The player also supports DiVX and MPEG-4 files. On the audio side, you’ll find an internal Dolby Pro Logic II decoder that can be used with the analog audio outputs. There is also full DVD-Audio support with bass management and time alignment.

If you are in the market for a budget DVD player, with DVI output, and which has exceptional video performance, the 971H definitely meets those criteria. This player passes below-black, has no pixel cropping, and there are no signs of Y/C delay. I personally can’t wait to see what Oppo has in store for