$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.
Ghostbusters Blu-ray $7.99 at Amazon for 7/31/2009 Only
Well, Amazon decided to drop the price for Ghostbusters Blu-Ray to $12.99 on the last day (7/31/2009) of the $5 coupon. After the discount, the net price for the movie is $7.99!
The coupon code for Amazon is: GHOSTBLU
Reminder: Coupon expire TODAY!
EDIT 08/01/2009: The coupon has EXPIRED!
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
Yamaha RX-V665 Receiver (1) – Packaging
By all account, the Yamaha RX-V665 is a just another mid range A/V receiver. What made this unit attractive to us is it probably the lowest cost A/V receiver in mid 2009 that has pre-amp output.
Why is pre-amp output important for a receiver? This is because it will allow us to use it as preamp and/or processor and because otherwise all those A/V manufactures wants big bucks for their preamp/processors. We have been using receiver as preamp for some time now. First was a Denon 3600 which dies after years of services. The next one is Pioneer 2012 which still works great but outdated because it can not handle HDMI and due to the evil DRM do not allow higher bit rate audio through either coaxial or optical digital audio connectors, we would not able to enjoy the HD audio that come with HD DVD or Blu-Ray.
Although we had a HD DVD player for some time but we never felt there is any urgency to update the receiver because to us regular DTS or DD is good enough for movie and for HD music such as SACD or DVD-A, we can use the multichannel analog input of the receiver. By chance however, we find out Newegg has this receiver on sale for $349.99 and on top of it throw in a free set of Energy Take 5 speakers. While we don’t really need the speakers, it did make the deal irresistible.
The receiver packaged in the usual brown box. The UPS ship weight is only 21 lb and that is very light for a receiver and is one of the lightest receivers we ever owned. Upon open up the box, the packing has nothing special either. Because of the light weight, even the foams are very slim.
Aside from the receiver itself, there is a remote control, auto speaker setup microphone and cable, the user manual and addendum sheet plus flyers for satellite radios.
The front panel of the unit is rather plain. The back of the panel is more interesting with four HDMI inputs and two component video inputs that should be enough to handle most people’s needs. Besides the pre-amp output that is important to us, it also has the 12V remote trigger that is some thing we have to have to turn on/off the power amp along with the receiver.
Out of curiosity, we opened the unit up before we put in to the rack, but that is for the next article.
Belkin F1PP010EN-SK Skype Phone
We have been using Skype for some time now. The biggest problem with Skype is lack of choices on stand alone phones. Most of the so call Skype phones really are no more than USB mic plus speaker with a keypad. While there are a hand full of Wi-Fi phones and may be two or three cordless phones that are stand alone Skype phones, most of them have rather poor user reviews. It seem for some unknown reasons, there is no Skype stand alone phone adapters like some other VOIP services offers that allow user to plug a standard PSTN phone to the box.
Having to have the PC on for Skype is a major annoyance. Besides, if PC is running other programs while using Skype, the call quality can be low and gets cut off often. For this reason in addition to Skype, we also have another VOIP service call iTalkBB. iTalkBB gives you a gizmo like the above mention adapter that let’s you connect a PSTN phone and the network without the need of PC. The Box will convert PSTN to digital and to internet packet. The advantage is you can hook up any corded or cordless phone you like and change phone any time you like. For people like us who do not needs a phone number for people to call in, they only charge $1 per month and pay as we go on each call we made. Since the beginning of this however, iTalkBB begin to charge additional $2.99 per month for the so called “applicable regulatory recovery fees, charges and taxes”. While the government may demand them to collect some fees, I find their policy charge every one regardless the plan from the same amount of money outrages as we don’t even have a phone number assigned, we want to terminate their service but need to find some thing convenient than the USB type of Skype devices.
Besides of the basic type of USB Skype devices, we also used some thing like the D-Link DPH-50U. This type of device will allow you to connect a regular PSTN phone on one end, and the USB to PC on the other. While this type of device allow you the free dome to use a regular PSTN cordless phone, the driver reliability is not that good the say the least. We tried two variations of this type of devices and each has its own issue. The biggest one is they still need a PC to work.
The next solutions are the stand alone Skype cordless phone or Wi-Fi phones. The problem is they are all rather expensive and the battery lifespan is limited. We are not just talking the talk time of the batter but the battery itself typically only last about two years. There is no assurance when the battery went dead, a replacement can be brought. It is more likely to replace the whole expensive phone. Not a real solution to say the least.
Then by chance we found Fry’s has a sale on this Belkin Skype phone. The MSRP is $99.99 and normally Fry’s is selling it for $79.99. But when it was on sale for $59.99 plus a $20 rebate, we decided to give it a try; even it is a corded phone.
Setup the phone is easy. Snap the stand to the bottom of the phone body; connect the cord to the handset and body; connect the phone to the network and plug in the power. The phone has a LCD screen that will light up when the power is plug in. After booting up the phone start to search for a network. If your router is set for auto DHCP, the phone by default will get the IP address from the router and connect to Skype. After it found the Skype server, the screen will ask you to sign on. The user interface is very similar to normal cell phone in term of entering data. After signed on to the Skype, the contact list will be automatically downloaded to the phone.
Dialing from the contact list is easy and similar to cell phone. But if you need to manually dial out, you need to dial the full country code and area code and for reason unknown, you also have to dial 00 in front of the country code. For all the intelligence already built in to the phone, I feel Belkin could have easily had a menu item to set default country code and only require dialing 00 when dialing outside of default country.
Anyway, once setup, the call quality is pretty good. Far better than the USB/PSTN adapter type like the D-Link DPH-50U or even the USB Skype devices. Call quality when calling regular land line is very good and stable. Calling Skype to Skype is depends some what on the other calling party’s quality. The speaker phone’s quality is also quite good.
Since this phone is a network device, one feature I would like to have is to be able to do management from PC on the same network. While I don’t want to use PC to run the Skype program as it put quite a demand on PC resources, be able to do cut and paste phone dialing is some thing I missed with this phone.
I also wish they have a PSTN port that allows me to connect a cordless phone to it. But as a standalone Skype cost $40 after rebate is a good value.