Paw Paw Dog

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 The next one is Pioneer 2012 which still works great but outdated because it can not handle HDMI and due to the evil DRM do not allow higher bit rate audio through either coaxial or optical digital audio connectors, we would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.

Setup for a basic player like the NB530MGX is simple and straight forward enough one probably does not even need to look at the manual.

In my setup, for video, I connected the HDMI port to a powered HDMI switch, which in terms connected to a gizmo called HDFury that convert HDMI to component video and it is connected to an old Mitsubishi VS-60111 using RGB input. Since the Magnavox has component video output and my old  TV and receiver both has component video input, why do I want to go through the trouble to use HDMI switch and converter? The answer again is due to the evil empire of the studios and their HDCP DRM scheme. If the content of a DVD disc is “protected”, which probably include over 99% of the DVD sold in US, the player cannot upscale it through component video. 480P is the max. resolution allowed. This means if you only have an old HDTV that was manufactured before this evil HDCP day; you would not get the full function of this player that you have already paid for. If you think this is bad, the same evil empire is working even to eliminate 1080i component video output even for Blu-Ray playback.

Since my old receiver does not have HDMI connection, I have to use the digital output from the player to the receiver. Again, this means I will not be able to enjoy the full function of even the basic player because the player will downgrade the sound track before it sends to the digital output.

After everything is connected, power the player and the TV screen is….jumping and fuzzy lines. Have no fear. This is only due to the HDFury is telling the player it can do 1080P while as the TV can only do 1080i. No big deal. Just use the “HDMI” button on the remote with the display on the front panel of the player to cycle through and resolution selections and the player is ready to play.

From standby to eject the tray is surprisingly fast. It only took 15sec from the time I hit the eject bottom on the remote till the player wake up and eject the tray. This is much faster than the Toshiba A3 HD DVD player and on par with many low cost DVD players. It is certainly not the snail pace of even high end early Blu-Ray players.

Video quality for Blu-Ray is probably as good as can be expected from an old RPTV. What is surprising is the upscaling quality of the regular DVD. We have three players has upscale capabilities, a Oppo DV-980H DVD player, Toshiba A3 HD DVD player and this Magnavox NB530. Both the Oppo and Toshiba have good reputation on their upscaling. In my setup, I think the Magnavox is just as good as the Toshiba and better than the Oppo. But here is the problem of HDCP again. If you do not have HDMI, you will lose this great upscale capability of the player even you already paid for it. The image quality of a carefully mastered recent DVD upscaled to 1080i is very good. Depends on your TV and viewing distance, one may be hard pressed to see the difference between regular DVD and Blu-Ray. Can I see the difference? Yes, I can. Would I pay more for Blu-Ray movie? Well, if it is $1 or $2 yes. But I certainly will not pay 50% more let alone 2X or even 3X more for Blu-Ray movies.

This player does have an annoyances issue on playing old 4:3 “full screen” DVD and that include those fake none anamorphic “widescreen” DVDs. The player will not automatically adjust the aspect ratio and the video image is stretched. You have the manually goes into the setup menu to change the aspect ratio. 

Audio wise, since I don’t have HDMI capable receiver and the player does not have multi channel analog output, I would not be able to test out the lossless sound tack on some of the Blu-Ray disc. As far as regular DVD quality level playback, it is about the same as most average DVD player out there.

This is a Blu-Ray profile 1.1 player which means it does not have network connection for BD Live. Personally after reading all the horror stories on the web about the stupid BD Live, I think I will miss that junk function.

Overall, I would think at $98 is a worth well purchase and I am happy about it. In fact, I feel pretty good I passed Fry’s $199 one day special for the Sony S360 and waited for this one instead.

p.s If you need HDMI cable, don’t wast money on those retail stores want to sale one to you  for $49 or worst. Good quality cable does not mean you have pay high cost. I use one from monoprice.com and only paid $4.74 plus shipping for a good 10ft HDMI cable. You can choose diffent cable color that make cable management easier.

Although I have some passing interest in Blu-Ray, I am not so crazy about it. For starter, I HATE the regional protection scheme. If I paid for a movie, why should I be limited to allow to play it anywhere in the world?

Second, it seems the same greedy studios want to keep the Blu-Ray movie prices high to make extra profit. While I can see the Blu-Ray disc may cost a little more than regular DVD, it should not cost us the consumer 50%, 2X or even 3X more than DVD for the Blu-Ray. Yes, the Blu-Ray pictures may be shaper than DVD with better color too. But, with a decent upscale DVD player that cost as low as $70, average people will be hard pressed to spend more than $1 or $2 per movie for the difference.

Then there is the audio thing. While Blu-Ray supporters will point out that with Blu-Ray not only has better pictures but also has better sound track. While this claim may be true, for most of us it also means we need to spend more in order to “enjoy” this “improvement”. Why? Because most if not all the entrant to mid level Blu-Ray player does not have multi channel analog audio output and they will downgrade the quality before they send out to the optical or coaxial digital audio output. They will only output the “new and improved” sound track over HDMI output, which means unless you have a recent AV receiver at home, you are out of luck. Prepare to spend either for a $300+ player that has multi channel analog output or spend more to get a new receiver. To me, the HDMI or the HDCP DRM behind it is the most evil consumer electronics pushed to the public in recent years.  It is designed to squeeze more money out of consumers.

Good thing is prices for both Blu-Ray, player and movies started to drop more significantly lately. Just last week Fry’s was selling Sony S360 Blu-Ray for $199 plus two free movies for the July 4^th one day sale. I gave it a little thought but decided to pass as even at $199, the price is still too high, not to mention it does not have multi channel analog output and my receiver does not have HDMI input.

As recent as 7/7/2009, the cheapest Blu-Ray player my local Walmart was selling is a Magnavox Blu-Ray player for $168.  This is a lousy price to say the least for a very basic player. But to my surprise, two days later the price for the same player is dropped to $98! Even the sales associate at the Walmart was surprised. Well, at this price point I finally broke down and thought I will give it a try. Although this is one more victory for the evil Blu-Ray alliance, the same Walmart associates commented he is waiting for the price to be $50. Take that.

Many CRT based HD Rear Projection TV(RPTV) such as the Mitsubishi VS-60111 were make before the HDMI days with only component video inputs. The problems is those stupid and greedy studios are not allow DVD player makers to upscale the video content sending out through component output. Anything more than 480P has to go through the HDMI output with HDCP handshake! While we believe these greedy studios have infringed our rights as customers to view what we have been paid for with best possible result, the reality is those of us with old component input only HDTV are out of luck. 

One solution of course is to buy a new TV but this is a waste when the old TV still works ok. We also have seen some people claimed that since the DVD contents are 480P to begin with and the TV has built-in upscaler so taking 480P output via component video is no worse than getting upscale output from the DVD player. Well, to some TV with good built-in upscaler, that may be true but not for ones like the Mitsubishi VS-60111. We have tried a few DVD from oversea that are without the stupid HDCP restrictions, the 1080i upscale result from either the Oppo 980 or the long discounted Toshiba A3 HD DVD player are far superior than viewing the 480P output on the VS-60111.

 In search of a solution, we came across this HDFury. The original HDFury will take a DVI input and convert it to RGB output and also provided the needed HDCP handshake to allow up to 1080P signal to pass from the player to TV. A newer version called HDFury 2 takes HDMI connection instead of DVI and output to either RGB or YUV instead of RGB only. The HDFury 2 supposedly also has a whole bunch of new features over the original version but also cost about $100 more. Reading posts from various forums seems clear that people from the main reseller of HDFury or HDFury 2 here in US subtlety and not so subtlety implied that one not only should buy HDFury 2 but more importantly should but either one from them, the curtplame.com.

 The problem is at $199-$299 price tag that people at curtpalme.com wants for HDFury 2, it is about 1/5 of new 52” LCD  TV’s price. One has to wonder about demising returns. Is it worth it or better save up for a new TV. Upon further search on the net, we found another retailer monoprice.com for the HDFury. Their price is about $50 cheaper than curtplame.com. While people at curtplame.com will more than eagerly to point out that their version of HDFury 2 came with power supply adapter while others don’t. But extra $50 for a $5 power supply?  Now people at curtplame.com will also point out the extra service they provide, but the bottom line is at $299 or even $199, they have priced themselves out of consideration.

Even after we decided to give monprice.com a try, we still have to decide which version to order. monoprice.com was selling the HDFury for $58.90 and the HDFury 2 for $148. Although from the price stand point of view, HDFury is a no brainer, but they are other considerations. If your TV only has YUV component video input, then the piratical option is limited to HDFury 2 only. But since the VS-60111 has both RGB and YUV input option, the RGB output is actually preferred and so this is not an issue for us. The most important factor in making the choice is the compatibility between the Mitsubishi TV and HDFury. It seems Mitsubishi TVs are very picky about timing signal and was sent from HDFury. Many people have suffered an image left shift problem. A few even suffer both lift and up shift problem and HDFury 2 claimed solved this problem.

A second issue of the original HDFury is the output signal is not strong enough to drive long cable and may require bigger power draw from the DVI connector and thus more likely needs the external power supply than the HDFury 2.

 With these considerations, we thought just on the safe side may be we should try the HDFury 2. But just when we are ready to order, mononprice.com ran out of HDFury 2! While we can wait for the new supply to come in, we thought since monoprice.com has a 21 days return period, we might as well try out the HDFury. If it works great, we saved a bundle. If it doesn’t, we can also return it for the HDFury 2. There are three variant of the HDFury with different type of connection cable. For the VS-60111, we need the “Green” version with VGA to 5 BNC RGB connector cable. Since the Mitsubishi VS-60111 has RCA connectors instead of BNC, we also ordered five BNC to RCA adapters from monoprice.com at only $0.55 a piece. Although we already have a 10ft VGA to 5 RCA RGB cable, since it was stated HDFury can not drive cable longer than the included one, we decided we should stick with the included one using BNC to RCA adapter connectors.

In order to connect multiple HDMI players to HDFury, we also need a HDMI switch. We got a refurbished monprice.com has a store branded 4×1 powered switch for only $20. Because the HDFury need to draw power from the HDMI devices, it is important to use powered switch. To connect the HDMI switch to HDFury, we need a HDMI to DVI cable and got a 28AWG 10 ft one from mononprice.com for $4.92. The two HDMI devices, the Toshbia A3 and Oppo 980 came with their own 6 ft. HDMI cable so we don’t really have to order HDMI cable but since monoprice.com has several choices at good prices, we order two different color ones just to see the quality.

 Monoprice.com fulfilled and shipped the order in about one hour which is better than expected. When the package arrived is well packaged. The cable is of very good quality and one can easily spend 10x at BestBuy for the same type of cable. The HDMI switch almost looks like new and also packaged well. The color HDMI cables are about the same quality as the one included with Oppo, better than the one with Toshiba.

The same can not be said for the HDFury. It is packaged in the plastic blister package as shown on curtplame.com but what really surprise us is there is NO manual! The only instruction is at the back of the pack! Further more, there is NO sign of manufacture origin, NO regulatory such as FCC, CE approval AND there is even NO manufacturer’s name, NO phone number and NO address on the package!! One really has to wonder what kind of company is making this product and how safe it is or can it be legally sale in the US in the first place!

 To try out, first connect the Toshiba A3 without the switch directly to HDFury and HDFury to TV. And it works! Add the HDMI switch in between the players and the HDFury, it still works! While the image does have a slight left shift, it is more like left side over scan than sift as there is NO black bar on the right as some people has seen. Without telling, most of people would not even notice such overscan so we will just going to leave it as is.

 Switching between the two players using the switch’s remote is easy. The TV’s screen will flash a second or two as it needs to re-sync with the source but that is expected. There is NO need to use external power supply. If you need one, the mini plug is the same size as some Samsung Bluetooth headset’s power supply.

Image quality is good and about the same as using component upscale for none HDCP DVD and we are happy. Total cost of the project is $86.57 plus tax and shipping. Not bad to give the old TV a few more years of life.

Buy HD Fury from Amazon

• HDFURY - DVI TO BNC(RGB) CONVERTER *GREEN EDITION* (BNC EDITION)