James Mok’s Soliloquy

Just renewed a PCCW land-line contract for the home phone and received a free Hyundai TBH-8828 DVD player. Since it has progressive scan, I decided to give it a try on the digital projector before I decide which one to use in the living room and which one for the bedroom.

Upon plugging in the Component video ports there was no video signal at all. A check with the manual reviewed my biggest fear that the stupid output ports needed to be setup in an on screen menu before the desired video output port could be used. This has proven to be completely crappy design since the setup menu was default to be used with the on screen display and it could only be setup when the correct output port is used.

So I had to plug the composite output port into the VCR which is hooked up to the digital projector in order to see the setup menu only to find out the default was on “S-Video” and it worked with the composite output port without a specific “composite” setting. As soon as I set it to progressive scan, the video signal was switched and thus the setup screen can’t be seen any longer until the player was hooked up with the component ports which is being used for progressive scan output.

480p looked much sharper than 480i on the old Toshiba DVD player with little difference in brightness/color/contrast. However, it sounded like shit! I tried both analog as well as digital audio through a Micromega Duo D/A converter. The Toshiba/Micromega setup was relatively close to my 15 year old Proceed CD player in audio quality. The Hyundai sounded like a cheap radio either way.

So I decided to used the Hyundai in the bedroom 14″ TV instead despite the much needed progressive scan on the digital projector. Upon plugging in the Hyundai into the VCR which is hooked up to the TV – no fking video!

Back to the living room to have the video signal path switched.

Damn Stupid! – me, for being a suckle for such crap.