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Are you certain that your TV does not support 1080/50i content? If so, then would you go ahead and try to play MY NIGHT AT MAUD'S which is, according to dvdbeaver, in 1080i? Also, if you can, please give some details as to the quality of the image. Stutters? Any other anomalies? This should tell us all we need to know about what this Sony region free player can do.

Will do! I'll move the player to my Panasonic Viera to make sure- i don't think they've ever made any TVs that are 50hz compatible. Currently it is hooked up to a ~6 year old Vizio, who do make some 50hz TVs from what I've heard.

Great. Thanks a lot!

jindianajonz wrote:Will do! I'll move the player to my Panasonic Viera to make sure- i don't think they've ever made any TVs that are 50hz compatible. Currently it is hooked up to a ~6 year old Vizio, who do make some 50hz TVs from what I've heard.

The newest batch of Panasonics do 50->60 internal conversion. This is not the same as natively playing it. I am currently looking for my best option in terms of a multiregion native TV. This forum will argue endlessly about various other anomalies in image, but not PAL/NTSC converstion, which to me creates an unpleasant strobing effect. I watch a fair amount of PAL content, so this is a concern for me.

I'm using a TC-P60ST50, which doesn't mention anything about a 50>60 conversion in the specs

It does work on the US models though. They accept 50hz via HDMI and show it, sort of.

David M. wrote:It does work on the US models though. They accept 50hz via HDMI and show it, sort of.

So are you saying that running the Rohmer disc on the player hooked up to my Viera wouldn't necessarily be indicative of anything?

shaky wrote:Are you certain that your TV does not support 1080/50i content? If so, then would you go ahead and try to play MY NIGHT AT MAUD'S which is, according to dvdbeaver, in 1080i? Also, if you can, please give some details as to the quality of the image. Stutters? Any other anomalies? This should tell us all we need to know about what this Sony region free player can do.

I just tried out Night At Mauds, watching a couple random minutes of the movie on each TV, and both TVs showed it just fine without me altering any of my normal TV settings. The image quality looked great to my eye (though I'm no expert on this sort of thing)- the only "flaw" was an occasional slight shakiness to the image, but considering the subtitles never wavered I'm guessing this was due to the camera moving during filming as opposed to a problem with the playback.

The back of the digipack only mentions that the image is 1080; it doesn't mention the hz or whether its interlaced or progressive. If you'd like me to check anything else out, let me know!

Also, for what its worth, changing the region on the player is a snap: Just remove any disc, power the thing off, and on the remote hold the number corresponding to the region you want (1-A, 2-B, 3-C) for a couple of seconds, and it switches over for you.

One other consideration: The player has a digital coaxial audio cable, not an optical audio. To connect it to my sound system, I had to get a converter.

jindianajonz wrote:the only "flaw" was an occasional slight shakiness to the image, but considering the subtitles never wavered I'm guessing this was due to the camera moving during filming as opposed to a problem with the playback.

Shakiness is what I would call the obvious conversion byproduct. The Rohmer set is a good test for this. On the 50hz discs, during the Films Losange title screen the words will shift up and down minutely if they are being converted.

Which cheap model can I find in London and where ? I'll be in March there.
Gracias

Thanks so much, jindiana. But I'm completely ignorant to the difference between digital coaxial and optical. This doesn't at all present any strange audio problems, does it?

shaky wrote:Thanks so much, jindiana. But I'm completely ignorant to the difference between digital coaxial and optical. This doesn't at all present any strange audio problems, does it?

No, it's just two different formats, like having your video through HDMI or Component Video. I was mildly annoyed to find I had to get an adapter to get sound to my sound system.

You know the classic Red/White/Yellow composite cables? Digital coaxial looks identical to those, but is colored orange and delivers a higher quality sound. Optical audo has a square shaped plug. Usually these sockets are labeled on your devices, so it's easy to see what you have.

Then again, you could just do everything through HDMI if you have an HDMI in and HDMI out on your sound system.

The adapater I got works fine for me. I'm even less qualified to speak to audio quality than video, but everything comes through clearly and never cuts out or features any irregularities.

Ahh yes, how silly of me. My sound system has an HDMI in and out. Of course, I'll just run the HDMI cable from the blu-ray player to the audio system, and from the audio system to the TV. I don't know what I was thinking.

Edit: this is the one you snagged up, correct?: http://www.220-electronics.com/sony-bdp ... layer.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

shaky wrote:this is the one you snagged up, correct?: http://www.220-electronics.com/sony-bdp ... layer.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Yep, that's the one. Although it was $65 more when I bought it, grumble grumble....

Want to give a strong recommendation to 220-Electronics. After my last region free player went kaput a few months back, I've been in the no man's land of region lockeddom. But I ordered the LG BP33 region free Blu-ray player and even though I selected the cheapest shipping and no extras, they threw in the volt-changer and HDMI cables gratis and bumped me up to two day shipping. Machine works like a beaut so far as I can tell too.

domino harvey wrote:Want to give a strong recommendation to 220-Electronics. After my last region free player went kaput a few months back, I've been in the no man's land of region lockeddom. But I ordered the LG BP33 region free Blu-ray player and even though I selected the cheapest shipping and no extras, they threw in the volt-changer and HDMI cables gratis and bumped me up to two day shipping. Machine works like a beaut so far as I can tell too.

They are great. I got the same player from them last year (a rather cheap looking/feeling player but that's not 220's fault) and it's been working great for me so far. I have a region locked Sony 5100 that I may replace with the same model mod'ed by 220 though. It's a much more solid player and I do actually use Amazon streaming. Hats off to 220-Electronics in Illinois though, they're a stand up shop.

Only word of caution for 220-electronics- they are the ones who shipped the package I was whining about in the Amazon shipping thread that required a signature at the door. If you have a tough time meeting FedEx in your town, you may want to email them first to see if they can send through a different carrier or drop the signature requirement. Other than that little annoyance, everything else has been great!

Fantastic. My BDP S5100 works like a charm. I can now play 1080/50i content with the push of a button. Surprisingly, I've noticed zero problems with the HD PAL content in terms of visuals. The UK UNCLE BOONMEE looks glorious as do these region B Dreyer blus. Thanks so much, jindiana.

Domino Harvey,

I absolutely did. Is there anything I can do or will I have to send it back to the factory or, worse, get a new one?

Shaky: I have no idea, I just remember seeing on the slip thrown in with the order to not update the player and I know my primary player, a regular version of the Sony (non-region broke from Amazon) was just pestering me about upgrading, so I can imagine a disaster might have just befallen you. Hope that's not the case, though! This is why I picked up a less fancy region free player-- I didn't even bother to hook the unlocked player up to the Wifi so I'll never have to worry about updates.

Spoke to 220. They're sending new software to my email which I'll upload onto my now "updated" region free player. Should be fine! Never again will I make that mistake.

Is it just me, or does some of the conversation appear to be missing here?

Shaky deleted his initial post while I was responding, then I deleted my response and then Shaky commented on my deleted response and eventually all was well

220-electronics were very confident on the phone that all would be fine. Just worried about the PAL playback/50hz to 60hz conversion stuff. I'm assuming that's all software-based as well though....

I thought the 220 mods were hardware mods and shouldn't be affected by firmware. I did get a slip with mine too and have been neglecting the update on my LG for the past month but I almost want to try and see what happens.