sacrilege

I need to know if anyone has been able to modify Yamaha DVDS520 dvd players for multi-regional coding. Customer purchases a lot of discs in Europe and wants to play them on his DVDS520's. Only need coding for Europe and North America.

Gracias in advance for any help

Nope.

An economical idea is to purchase an APEX 1500 or Daewoo 3700,5700. They are from $70 - $150 and can be modified by a remote control or downloadable CD to play all regions and will satisfactorily convert the European PAL DVDs to an NTSC signal for your TV.

The be all end all is an HTPC (build it yourself) or a 996/520 ($275+).

I own the 996 and can play any DVD in the world (as well as VCD, SVCD etc)

sani-wali where do i get an htpc or a 996/520. (These look like yamaha model numbers). The 996 you own sounds like a modified yamaha. Is it, or is it a kit and where do i go get one.

Malata 996 from nbtelectronics.com (from Canada)
They discontinued the 996 early this year, but it has more features than the new model called the 520.

They are not kits. They are full-fledged DVD Players that so far are the only DVD players with a special chip that does perfect conversion from PAL to NTSC.

It's also a progressive player. It's the best there is currently. It also can independetly scale x and y and can zoom into four pixels.

The downside is that it is made in China. I've had mine almost a year and am very damn happy!


HTPC = Home Theater Personal Computer. You basically build it yourself, a computer, video out card, DVD ROM hacked to play anything then you just feed the signals to your TV and Digital Receiver. Usually only an option for geeks like myself.

The prices on the site are Canadian so in US Dollars it's about $282 shipped to the U.S. (wait.. where are you)

The Malatas have a great feature set, but how is the picture quality and build quality?

MtK

PQ is excellent in interlaced. You can go to Secret of Home Theater for their shootout. Check any player with a Mediamatics chip inside for a comparison of PQ. They aren't the best on dealing with poorly done progressive flags, but they look great otherwise. The Malata is one of the best of these players, if not THE best. And, of course, it can play many things that most players can't.

Build quality, well....it ain't a Denon 3800!! Be nice to it, this isn't a reason to purchase this kind of player. I've had no problems with mine, but I won't say it feels like the most solid piece in my rack. The remote SUCKS. And I've heard reports of remote failures. None of that bothered me, I have a different remote.

I looks like, form this:

[Link: hometheaterhifi.com]

that the Malatta did rather poorly as a progressive player.

So I guess buy it only if you're happy with interlaced and need the flexibile feature set?

MtK

Do not buy the Malata if you are simply looking for a standard DVD player. I'd probably go with a Panny RP-82 or something like that instead.

But, if you need scaling, want to see non-R1 DVDs, or have PAL discs, the Malata is unmatched. Note that this is for the 996/520 only, they have a 900 which is not as good.

Take those bad tests with a grain of salt, they don't apply to the majority of DVDs. Many of the spots they test are in extras anyway, not the actual movie. For instance, the Skyworth (another all-region player) was rated much better for deinterlacing with its Sage chip, but people who use non-R1 DVDs generally prefer the Malata for its other capabilities. Kotches and pals have only truly denigrated one series, the Pioneer 434/444.