Archive for the ‘Products & Services Review’ Category
Boycott NBC!
It’s Olympic time again and sure enough, for those of us in west coast, NO live coverage for Olympic on NBC again! How ridicules can it be when a live game is played on west coast and people like us who lived on west coast is not able to watch it live?
This really shows NBC is a STUPID and GREEDY company! The only way to make those greedy guys take note is BOYCOTT NBC. If you must watch the stupid delayed taped show, write to the advertiser that you are BOYCOTTING their products until they demand NBC to wake up and take those of us who live on west coast seriously!
West coast people should not be second class citizens when it comes to live coverage. We have rights just as east coast people!
Quicken 2010 Update Problem
I just got the Quicken 2010 Deluxe to upgrade my old version 2008. Big mistake. Not only the 2010 version has not changed much from 2008, it is slower and apparently very buggy!
The very first thing after the installation of the Quicken 201o, it goes to check for update as before. The problem is the auto update FAILED!
After searching the web, I found a manual patch to update the initial version of the 2010 from R1 to R5. It also FAILED. Both version end up giving the erreor message “Oops, update was not completed. Restart your computer and try again.”! Needless to say, restat did not work.
After searchng the web further, I found this “full manual patch” of over 100MB. Well, at least this time it worked and now I have R5 version of the Quicken 2010. Sad to say though, this version is still slower than 2008. If you have Quicken 2008 or newer and have not “upgrading” to the 2010, don’t waste you money on this very sloppy new version! If you are like me already waste the money and unable to update the Quicken 2010, Here is the link for
Full Manual Update Patch for Quicken 2010
Get the Biggest Saving out of Amazon’s B2G1 Sale
Amazon is having another one of so call “Buy 2, Get 1 Free Sale” for Blu-Ray movies. But is it really a “sale”? It seems Amazon has raised the prices on those qualify for the “sale” by average of $5 or $6 from the day before the “sale”.
Let’s assume for a movie that was listed for $12 the day before and now is $17. If you buy three of these movies before the “sale”, your total is $36 and now with the wonder of the “sale”, you paid only $34! A whopping $2 saving!
On the other hand, let’s say the movies you want were priced $20 before the sale and now they are $25. You would have to pay $60 but now the grand total is $50! A $10 saving or a little less than $17 per movie.
So, it looks like in order to “save” more you have to spend more to buy the higher priced ticket items. Amazon changes prices on items all the time. I for one rather want to wait for price dropped on individual movies but YMMV.
BTW, the “sale” expire on 8/21/2009
$98 Magnavox NB530MGX Blu-Ray Player (4) – Usage Impression Follow Up
When I first got the Magnavox NB530MGX I was using an older Pioneer receiver that lack of HDMI connection which means I was not able to decode the HD audio formats. I was using the coaxial digital output of the NB530 to the receiver. The result of course is as good or as bad as regular DD or DTS.
By coincident, right after I got the NB530, I stumbled upon a great deal on Yamaha RX-V665 receiver. As a receiver, the Yamaha RX-V665 has a rather mediocre power supply and even worse power amp section but if use as a pre-amp and processor, it is quite decent. Anyway, connecting the NB530MGX to the RX-V665 is straight forward; all is required is the HDMI cable.
The NB530MGX does not have HD audio decoder but it can pass the HD audio bitstream when HDMI HD audio output is selected. The Yamaha RX-V665 detects and decodes DTS HD Master or DD TrueHD or for that matter, PCM without any problem.
Speaking of decoding HD audio, many more expensive Blu-Ray players besides adding what I view as less than useless BD live function, they also added HD audio decoding. On the other hand, most if not all the sub $300 players even most of the sub $400 players do not have multi channel analog outputs. If a player does not have multi channel analog output then what is the use to decode the HD audio inside the player? The need to have the player to do in player decoding is for those older receiver is not capable to decode the HD audio, most of which does not even have HDMI input. Without analog output, the decoded HD audio bitstream is of no use for those older receiver, as those greedy studios would not allow HD audio stream be sent over the coaxial or optical digital I/O. While it is true there are some early HDMI days receiver has the HDMI input for PCM stream but does not have ability to decode HD audio, their number are far fewer than receivers either do not have the HDMI connections or the newer ones like the Yamha RX-V665 that is capable to decoding. The question then is why pay for something most people don’t need? Even for someone like me who did not own a HDMI HD audio capable receiver when I got the Blu-Ray player, I would not want to pay the extra to have built-in decoder. I would rather save the money to get a receiver that does. It does not have sense when you have more than one HD audio capable devices each has its own decoder when all is required is one set in the receiver.
I only have a small issue with the remote in the sense I think the FF/RR and chapter skip keys can be better arranged and somewhat bigger. As for the NB530MGX itself, I am quite happy about it. True, it is profile 1.1 and does not have Ethernet connection and that’s fine as I consider the BD Live even the Java stuff is more harm than good as they are the causes of most of the incompatibilities among Blu-Ray world. As mentioned, the unit does not decode HD audio, which is good as I don’t want to pay for something I don’t want or need. As long as it can send raw HD audio bitstream to the receiver, I am happy. The player is also a very good upscaler for regular DVD. In fact, some of the good DVD looks far better than those poorly made BD!
By looking inside the player, I would say there is more room to cut cost and yet made the player even more reliable and possible performed better. I would not be surprised to see the next generation of this player lower the price by another $10 or even $20. But if you don’t want to wait, $98 is a good deal.
$1.99 10’ HDMI Cable at Fry’s
Fry’s this week has a generic 10’ HDMI cable for sale at $1.99! Granted, this is a sales price and the regular price is $7.99 at Fry’s. Although at $7.99 this cable may no longer be a bargain compares to the cable by Monoprice but this is still a good price if you look at the $50; $80 even over $100 cable from shady companies like Monster.
For $1.99, this cable is reasonably well made. The two ends are wrapped with foam sheet and inside they are further protected by plastic caps. The connectors are gold plated.
When compares to Monoprice’s $4.74 (qty 1) 10’ HDMI cable (white one on the right), it is quite obvious the Monoprice’s cable is superior, but does the $1.99 works?
I have tried to use the cable with several different devices with various audio and video settings all works WITHOUT any problem!
This $1.99 came packaged inside cheap plastic bag. While it is certainly not the flashy $50-$100 cable packaging, do you want to pay up to 50x just to have a pretty box to look at? Some people brought the propaganda of the shady companies and retailers into a false thinking the more expensive the cable, the better they are. While it is true we can make better cable than this $1.99 or even Monprice’s $4.74 cable and it probably will cost a little more but at $100? HDMI cable is NOT a high tech thing that some companies has “black art” secret to make it “better”. Further, shady company like Monster is just a marketing machine. Although I never believe their marketing gimmick, a few years back when a retailer was going out of business, they sold they inventory cheap and I brought couple Monster RCA cables at Radio Shack prices. Unfortunately, both of them failed in the first and second year of use. When I opened them up, I was shocked to find out how poorly those cables were made! Those Monster cables were not even worth what Radio Shack’s prices. Don’t be fooled.
Monoprice HDMI Switcher HDX-401E
HDMI has become more and more important. Not just because HDMI simplified A/V connections, equally or even more important is the evil HDCP DRM. Without HDCP, the DVD players are not allowing to upscale video beyond 480P; even I have paid the full price for the DVD movie. Without HDCP, the Blu-Ray players are not able to output HD audio.
Anyway, in order to get upscaled video for my old Mitsubishi VS-60111, I used the HDFury gizmo to convert DVI to RGB. The problem is HDFury only has one input and I have more than one HDMI devices. Since my old Pioneer AV receiver does not have any HDMI connection, it is obvious I need a HDMI switcher. After searching on the web, I settled on the Monoprice HDMI switcher. At $20+tax+shipping for a refurbished unit, it is a low cost option with very low risk.
When I receive the unit, the packaging is better than I expected. Although I brought the refurbished one, it came with retail box. Package came with the following,
- The unit itself
- Power supply
- Remote
- Remote battery
What was really surprising is the unit is made of metal casing instead of plastic that is common to device at this price range.
Setup and connecting the unit is straight forward. Connect all the input and output HDMI and then the power supply and it works! I have tried Toshiba A3 HD DVD; Magnavox NB530MGX Blu-Ray; Oppo 980H DVD and LG RC797T all works without any problem. While some people may prefer auto sensing switch, I prefer the manual remote way of the Monoprice unit as I may have more than one device on at the any given time.
It is very important to note that this Monoprice is a powered switch meaning the input is buffered and amplified. Since some HDMI devices are very picky, a none powered HDMI switch may fail to work. Case and point is after I got the Yamaha RX-V665, I thought I can remove the Monoprice HDMI switch from the signal chain, I was wrong. Apparently HDFury is so picky that the output stage of the Yamaha RX-V665 does not have enough driving capability to drive the HDFury and the TV was not able to get stable video signal to lock on. As soon as I put the Monoprice switch in between Yamaha receiver and the HDFury, the TV picture came back as good as ever.
Bottom, this unit is an excellent value. Even right now I am only using the switch as powered buffer, it is well worth for the price just for this function alone. If you are looking for a HDMI switch, this unit should be a top choice.
$98 Magnavox NB530MGX Blu-Ray Player (3) – Inside the Cover
Out of curiosity, I opened up the Magnavox NB530MGX Blu-Ray Player. I was surprised for a low end unit; there are more screws than a Yamaha RX-V665 receiver that need to be unscrewed to open the unit. They probably can cut 1/3 of the screws without affecting performance or rigidity of the casing.
Once open up, I am more surprised to find how the unit is assembled. As shown on the pictures, the unit has two large circuit boards, the green one below the Blu-Ray drive should be the digital control board and the brown one has the power supply and analog output connectors. Behind the front panel is the display control board. What is surprising is normally a low end or even not so low end player has the disc drive on one side and the control boards next to it, instead of two large control boards with one beneath the disc drive. By so doing not only add to the cost but may also lower the reliability as now they need more connectors. The only logical reason I can think of doing this way is the disc drive and the control board below it are actually a set that is made by someone else or shared with other models. Regardless, it does not appear to be the most efficient way to mass produce a unit low cost or otherwise.
Because the way the disc drive and the control board seems intertwined, I did not want to take the risk to break anything, I was not able to see most of the components on the board that is covered by the drive. What is visible is a Panasonic chip which I am again surprised to find someone tried both physically scratch out and using a maker to cover the marking of the Panasonic part. Those people at Funai or whoever made this board for them must be the paranoid type!
Well, while I wasn’t able to see what the major components are, it is nonetheless “educational” to see how a supposedly low cost unit by a large high volume DVD player maker was made.
Sony Movie Staycation Coupon Good Until 10/31/2009
It is interesting to see Sony has a $3 coupon that is good until 10/31/2009 for some Blu-Ray movies. One would think they want to encourage people to buy their movies but on the other hand, Sony does not make these coupons easy to find.
Anyway, here they are,
Yamaha RX-V665 (3) – Inside the Cover Part 2, Digital Section
The digital section of the Yamaha RX-665 looks much much better than the power supply and power amp section. Let’s take a look from the input end.
The HDMI connectors are directly soldered on to the board. They are controlled by Silicon Image’s chips,
- Receiver: SiI9233
- Transmitter: SiI9134
These chips can handles up to 4 HDMI devices. I doubt Yamaha’s earlier model like V653 uses the same chip set as that unit can only handle 2 HDMI devices.
Up the stream, we find the ADI ADV7800 comb filter and 10 bit ADC. This is the chip that converts analog video signal to digital. What I was surprised to find next to it is the Anchor Bay’s VRS ABT1012 upscale chips. Surprised, because reading from various users’ comments on the web, Anchor Bay’s VRS chip suppose to be quite good but on the other hand, it seems RX-V665’s user did not feel the upscaled image is that good.
On the audio side, there is the TMS320 DSP chip. From the marking it is very clear it is used to decode DD, DTS etc. Since this chip has Ymaha’s “Cinema DSP” imprint, it is likely an ASIC that only available to Yamaha and no detail spec is available to public. Next to the DSP chip is the TI PCM1680 ADC chip. This ADC chip can do 8 channels at 192KHz and 24bit. Oh. BTW, Burr-Brown is now TI but I guess Yamaha still think Burr-Brown is a better name to list as “feature”. Notice the marker writing on the board? Doesn’t look very professional isn’t it?
Without doing any testing, just looking at this digital board, one can reasonably assume it can do a decent job as pre-pro.
Links to major components mentioned:
One thing need to be mentioned is that the HDMI output of the RX-V665 does not enough power to drive none powered external device such as HD Fury. As result, if you are plan to use this receiver with HD Fury, you need to power HD Fury with its own optional power supply.
Yamaha RX-V665 (2) – Inside the Cover Part I, Power Supply and Amplifier Section
While just by the weight we already know the Yamaha RX-V665’s power amp is not going to be that good, we are still surprised by what we found inside the cover.
First, the power transformer is unbelievably small for rated spec output. To make the matter worse, the capacitors in the power section are wimpy 6,800 µF ones. Just by the transformer and the capacitors alone we can concluded this receiver is not capable to drive high end speakers that typically are low ohm and inefficient.
But the worst and most shocking of all is this unit’s power amp is actually made of Sanyo STK series of hybrid power amp IC! Using hybrid IC for Hi-Fi equipment is already bad enough, using Sanyo? Yamaha does not even use its own power IC? Sanyo is really more suitable for boom box than midrange receivers. Luckily we only use this unit as pre-pro. If you are planning to use this unit to drive larger or low ohm speakers, you probably should pass this one.
If any cares, here is the link for Sanyo’s hybrid IC