Lidl high end DVD Player

laoisfan

hi

just wanted to get people views on this dvd player being offered by lidl from next monday (2nd april).

http://www.lidl.ie/ie/home.nsf/pages/i.home

it states that it plays divx format, which is great.

however, i have noticed that a lot of the torrents on isohunt and torrentspy are of .avi format. obviously one can download transcoders/converters which will convert from .avi to divx format.

does anybody know if the dvd player from lidl will play .avi? it does not state it so i am assuming it will not. i think they had this exact dvd player on sale before but i am not sure.

thanks for all potential replies!

--laoisfan

Kevok

AVI is just the wrapper, the actual video content will be encoded with divx or xvid(both of which should play) so you needn't worry.

laoisfan

Kevok wrote:

AVI is just the wrapper, the actual video content will be encoded with divx or xvid(both of which should play) so you needn't worry.

thanks kevok - much appreciated.

hamsterboy

Just picked one of these babys up here in Galway, As my Pixmania troubles have annoyed me soooo much, I decided to just write it off as a loss and start fresh.
On thing tho, all the units in the shop were taped up, as if they'd been opened. I was bringing the one I picked back to the stand when I realised they were all taped up.
They can't all be returns, as they only went on sale today.

Anybody shed some light?

laoisfan

hmmm not sure.

father-in-law picked one up for me in portlaoise, he picked one up for himself too.

question. i have a film in divx/xvid format (i forget which) but which has .avi extension, so as to previous replies to this thread i am assuming the .avi is a wrapper.

can i just burn the .avi file straight to a dvd disc. i burned it using nero. i chose the following option from nero

Click Data -> Make Data DVD

i thought it best just to make an exact copy of the .avi file on my PC to the DVD disc.

the dvd player from lidl should play the disc ok, yes/no?

thanks.

hamsterboy

Hey liosfan.

That disc should play no problem in the player.
All you do is keep making data DVD/CD'S and the player will read the files and display the content...

Enjoy

laoisfan

hamsterboy wrote:

Hey liosfan.

That disc should play no problem in the player.
All you do is keep making data DVD/CD'S and the player will read the files and display the content...

Enjoy

sweet! nice one! this dvd player was too much of a bargain to pass up. missus was not impressed even when i showed her the tech-spec/price versus other brands. women!!

hamsterboy

Just a quick post to say that this player is the dogs' you know what.
Plays anything....and I mean anything.
Found a hack for it to so now it's region free
Can see why there were so many posts announcing it's arrival.
Anyone who was thinking about getting one and didn't.......I feel bad for ya.
It'll be back no doubt, until then......happy dayz fer me!

laoisfan

hamsterboy wrote:

Just a quick post to say that this player is the dogs' you know what.
Plays anything....and I mean anything.
Found a hack for it to so now it's region free
Can see why there were so many posts announcing it's arrival.
Anyone who was thinking about getting one and didn't.......I feel bad for ya.
It'll be back no doubt, until then......happy dayz fer me!

do you mind telling me how you made it region free? i will check some of the other threads but if you do not mind sharing that would be great!

burnt a .avi file last night to dvd disc and player played it no problem. happy days!!

just have to check out the usb tonight. it says it will ready 512Mb usb storage but i have the following

--1Gb usb stick, FAT32
--80Gb external HD, FAT32.

will it reads both or at least the 1Gb stick?

thanks.

8T8

As long as it's FAT32 it should read it, also to those that have one does it have a HDMI port as that probably means it's the Silvercrest 6516 if so.

ethernet

I found this online. I haven't had a chance to try it out on a non-region two DVD, however.

* Open the tray
* Key in 9 9 9 9
* Enter 9 [region free] or 1 [region 1], etc.
* Reboot

It even played my giant 5 GB mpeg4 DVD. It took around ten second to load [before it started playing]. Well impressed.

DeadParrot

laoisfan wrote:

do you mind telling me how you made it region free? i will check some of the other threads but if you do not mind sharing that would be great!

burnt a .avi file last night to dvd disc and player played it no problem. happy days!!

just have to check out the usb tonight. it says it will ready 512Mb usb storage but i have the following

--1Gb usb stick, FAT32
--80Gb external HD, FAT32.

will it reads both or at least the 1Gb stick?

thanks.

the external HD mightn't work as it'll take an age to read

hamsterboy

ethernet wrote:

I found this online. I haven't had a chance to try it out on a non-region two DVD, however.

* Open the tray
* Key in 9 9 9 9
* Enter 9 [region free] or 1 [region 1], etc.
* Reboot

It even played my giant 5 GB mpeg4 DVD. It took around ten second to load [before it started playing]. Well impressed.

That hack worked for me! Sweeter and sweeter!

ethernet

hamsterboy wrote:

That hack worked for me! Sweeter and sweeter!

AND the remote glows in the dark!

hamsterboy

ethernet wrote:

AND the remote glows in the dark!

Really?

ethernet

hamsterboy wrote:

Really?

Well the buttons do, not the remote's casing.

laoisfan

hi

just wanted to ask this.

i download some film (xvid format with .avi wrapper). if i copy them to my 1Gb USB storage and plug that into the lidl dvd player it plays the film ok from start to finish without any problems.

however i burnt the file(s) to DVD-R disc and i keep getting delays or pauses throughout the playing of the films. nearly every 5 or 10 mins the screen pauses. it is like the dvd player has to read from the disc again.

i can play origional dvds without any problems from start to finish.

anyone got any ideas or is this kind normal when playing .avi from dvd disc? i thought it could be the quality of the disc. but i burnt 2 different movies (each to a DVD-R disc) and same problem. my father-in-law was able to watch a film (on one of these DVD-R disc) without any pauses.

help?

laoisfan

also i got the DVD-r (5pack) in lidl for €3.99. i guess it could be the quality of the discs? i did burn another film to DVD-RW (Verbatium) and it played ok (film was xvid, .avi).

ethernet

Can you recall at what speed you burned the DVD? Aim for 4x or slower if you can spare the time. I would imagine there would be more of a bottle-neck using a USB key than reading from a DVD.

laoisfan

ethernet wrote:

Can you recall at what speed you burned the DVD? Aim for 4x or slower if you can spare the time. I would imagine there would be more of a bottle-neck using a USB key than reading from a DVD.

i am nearly certain that i burnt it at 4x though i would not swear to it. i burnt another one there today, i will give it a go later on.

thanks.

Conor108

Also who saw the 2m gold-plated HDMI cable for 8 euro! And why is this HDMI? Does it upgrade standard DVDs to Hi-Def? Because that would be great

8T8

Conor108 wrote:

Also who saw the 2m gold-plated HDMI cable for 8 euro! And why is this HDMI? Does it upgrade standard DVDs to Hi-Def? Because that would be great

HDMI is a digital cable connection for video/audio connections found on most HDTV's it's intended purpose is for HD material but any old device can actually use it.

If you use the HDMI link it will upscale the DVD to a HD resolution but you cannot add detail to something that isn't there in the first place so upscaling may just make it a little sharper or magnify the flaws in the source material all the more.

Sparky

Does this player actually upscale to 720p 1080i/p ?

Because if it doesn't you will still get your SD content via HDMI c/w sound, only that now it's a digital connection.

8T8

If it's the Silvercrest 6515 or 6516 then it upscales over HDMI.

You have to go into the menu video section where you will find a HD resolution option (when using HDMI) and set it to the desired setting only does 720p,1080i though.

Smurfpiss

Dvd R's work fine for me but I'm having issues with a 1gig usb stick and a 4 gig SD card.
I know the manual says it has a 512 limit...(love how it doesn't say that on the box)
but i see people are playing off 1 gig sticks no problem.

is there a particular way of going about this?
eg formatting?

EDIT: Fat 32 seems to do the job. takes forever to play tho.
still now i'm very happy

BFassassin

Has anyone used a large external hard drive successfully with theirs yet. I havent had time to try mine out this evening but i was wondering if anyone else had thiers working.

8T8

As long as it's formatted in the FAT32 file system the external HD should work.

laoisfan

my external hd was not picked up and it is formatted in fat32.

my 1Gb usb stick works fine (fat32 as well).

8T8

Did you try removing the partition and creating either a primary or logical/extended partition not sure if it's picky on that.

There was some talk in the German forum about this player & some said certain brand external HD's were a bit odd in working with the player but mostly anything FAT32 should work.

ethernet

I connected a 500 GB external HDD and it was detected. Just took a while to load everything. I have since reformatted it [from FAT32] to ext3 as I'm using it for something else. No longer detected, as I had expected.

Conor108

Ah well, I missed it! Partly because I did have school at the time Anyway, think this will be back anytime soon? And why are all of Lidls tech stuff Silvercrest? Just cheap brands is it?

8T8

Sort of Silvercrest are big in Germany naturally where lidl operate they are no different from the other brands out their (they are all powered by a few select chipsets) in fact you can get just as capable players off Pixmania like the Sigmatek branded models.