Review of Bravo D2?

[mallu2u]

Folks,

With so many new technology lovers out there, has anyone received the new Bravo D2 player? If yes, could you post your first impressions/review on the player? Reading manuals/company literature is no replacement with the real experience with the product. It would help a lot of us.
Personally I am keeping a close watch on D2, Samsung 841/941 and Momitsu for my next purchase. Leaning towards Momitsu after reading so many threads due to its 'open acceptance' policy and features. But I am open and in no hurry. Would like to make the right decision.

Your comments would be appreciated.

[jbrinegar]

I have a 61inch sammy dlp. I went through a sammy 931 and a toshiba sd5960 before I finally found the Momitsu. The Momitsu is awesome on my tv, excellent pq. I connect via dvi and havent been happier. Mine came with the march firmware and Ive had no problems. I understand a new may firmware came out yesterday, but Im not sure what it does. The remote isnt great, but that doesnt bother me. I just want an awesome picture. Jerry

[jbrinegar]

Forgot to say I use a monster dvi cable. I dont know product numbers on it, but I got it from Ultimate Electronics for about 100$. I think I overapyed, but the pq is excellent. Jerry

[mallu2u]

Jerry: Thanks for ur replies. I am just waiting for Samsung to come in the market and get some opinions and make the decision. So far, I have heard all good things abt Momitsu except the loader issues.

This thread talks abt whats new in the new firmware update : http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=406324

As for Monster cables...ur right..u might have overpaid a bit...but in the end...if ur happy with the picture..its OK coz the experience is worth it.

[jfischer]

Originally posted by jbrinegar
Forgot to say I use a monster dvi cable. I dont know product numbers on it, but I got it from Ultimate Electronics for about 100$. I think I overapyed

Yep, by about $75 or so :)

[gwsat]

Originally posted by jbrinegar
I have a 61inch sammy dlp. I went through a sammy 931 and a toshiba sd5960 before I finally found the Momitsu. The Momitsu is awesome on my tv, excellent pq. I connect via dvi and havent been happier. Mine came with the march firmware and Ive had no problems. I understand a new may firmware came out yesterday, but Im not sure what it does. The remote isnt great, but that doesnt bother me. I just want an awesome picture. Jerry

Mallu2u -- I didn't get my Momitsu until last Monday so my experience with it is still quite limited. Nevertheless, based on initial impressions, I do have a few observations that might be useful.

I echo jbringer's comments both about the Momitsu's awesome PQ via DVi and about its poor remote. The remote's weaknesses are exacerbated by the way the player handles IR signals -- or doesn't handle them sometimes. I might add that others have had trouble with the loader and the March 2000 firmware but I have dodged that bullet.

I think that a sophisticated universal remote will go a long way toward solving the Momitsu's IR problems. I have a Harmony 768 remote, which with Harmony tech support’s help has pretty much solved my problems with the Momitsu’s IR quirks. But the bottom line is still PQ. On my 50" RCA DLP the image projected by a modern movie DVD such as "Master and Commander" is simply stunning. It's not quite HD but it is certainly the next best thing. Oh, and I use Extremephono’s $20.00 DVi cable. I highly recommended. the Momitsu.

[mallu2u]

Hmm...so is Momitsu not coming up with a player that resolves these issues? IR issue seem to be hardware issues (placement, actual device) and dont know how the firmware will every resolve the issue. Same thing with loader. And therefore how did switching to a different remote like Harmony resolved the issue!
I shall look into one such remotes later anyways....is Harmony one of the best companies out there or there are better too? Im sure dealing with one, you might have looked at others too.
And BTW, maybe Monster Cable might even give you even better PQ? In component it does...Im glad u guys are liking the player.

[gwsat]

Originally posted by mallu2u
Hmm...so is Momitsu not coming up with a player that resolves these issues? IR issue seem to be hardware issues (placement, actual device) and dont know how the firmware will every resolve the issue. Same thing with loader. And therefore how did switching to a different remote like Harmony resolved the issue!
I shall look into one such remotes later anyways....is Harmony one of the best companies out there or there are better too? Im sure dealing with one, you might have looked at others too.
And BTW, maybe Monster Cable might even give you even better PQ? In component it does...Im glad u guys are liking the player.

The Momitsu remote's smaller buttons tend to stick. Worse, I found that it was often necessary to press the middle of a button with my fingernail to make the player respond. The Harmony remote solved these issues. The difficulty with turning the player on seemed to stem from a several second delay between the time the Power Toggle IR code is sent the the player and the time the player responds. This was what the Harmony tech worked on. I wish that I could describe what the magic was that he worked but I can't. All I know is that he finally went into the XML code to get it to work.

Based on posts I have read on AVS Forum and on Remote Central, Harmony has quality control issues of its own, although my 768 has worked flawlessly for nearly two months. Harmony's telephone technical support is wonderful.

I like Harmony's scheme because it is ativity based. That is when you tell a Harmony remote to Watch a DVD it knows to turn on the TV and a/v receiver, set them to the correct inputs and turn on the DVD. If you have been watching a DVD and want to watch TV instead, you simply change the activity to Watch Television and the remote knows to turn off the DVD and only re-set the imputs on the TV and a/v receiver because it remembers that the TV and receiver are already on. Harmony remotes are really smart.

[jimmykce]

Did any of you try using the component cables with your V880 on your DLP? I would like to know how it looks using components because I thinking of using it because I am aready using my DVI with my STB.

[dstroot]

How does a "Review of Bravo D2?" thread morph into a Momitsu V800 discussion?

C'mon guys...

[jbrinegar]

I have used component on my tv with the v880. It also was an outstanding picture, not much different than thru dvi. I think dvi is slightly better, but not by much imo.

[mallu2u]

Folks: Someone just posted some comments on D2..not detailed but enough to spark the dicussion, Im sure: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?s=&postid=3856949#post3856949

[Hi Deaf]

Originally posted by jimmykce
Did any of you try using the component cables with your V880 on your DLP? I would like to know how it looks using components because I thinking of using it because I am aready using my DVI with my STB. From Keohi.com: "The V880 produces a great image. The image produced from the component terminal is very good. But if you really want to appreciate the V880, you'd have to see the picture through its DVI output. Not to diminish the picture from component out because it is very good, but compared to the picture from the DVI terminal, the digital output is so much better."

[BajaFishin]

Is this thread a "Review of D2" or 'Review of V880" ??? :D

[mallu2u]

Folks: Lets try to keep the post to reviewing D2 and then comparing to D1 and/or Momitsu and Samsung. The objective for us is to get the best DVI-based DVD player.

[mallu2u]

Anyone out there?

[BillP]

I've seen one post so far on a brand new D2. It was very negative since it did not work OTB.

[WynsWrld98]

I'm surprised the "quality control" department of V Inc. didn't catch the problem (ha ha ha). Can you please post a link to where this review is?

[BillP]

It's called "Bravo D2 is a BUST!!!" (you can't miss it).

[BajaFishin]

Originally posted by BillP
It's called "Bravo D2 is a BUST!!!" (you can't miss it).

That just one person experience and his got a bad unit. So can't base on that.

[PooperScooper]

So far, one person with a dud, one person with a (apparently) working unit. The D2 could be "make or break" for Vinc wrt DVD players. If the D2 has as many problems as the D1 did, they can probably forget about the D3. "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me". :)

larry

[mallu2u]

Yup...few more bad reviews abt this player and Im not purchasing this as well. Right now I am just lurking....reading to find one among Momitsu/Samsung/Vinc/Zenith

[BillP]

Don't forget about Sony HDMI player, due out in Sept. Personally, I'm sticking with the well-known brands that you can buy at a local store, based on all the problems posted with both the Bravo and Momitsu.

[WynsWrld98]

BillP: you have a link to info on the Sony you describe?

[KPlummer]

news.sel.sony.com/pressrelease/4422 is a link to a press release with some info on the Sony unit.

[Rijax]

Couple of brief initial impressions, one with pics, of the D2 near the bottom of this (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=399906&perpage=20&pagenumber=10) page.

[bollingm]

post reviews to gearviews.

[mallu2u]

Folks: With so many owners of this DVD player, could you please take some time out and review this DVD player in the Gearviews? It would really help a lot of us when we are looking to buy a new player and to compare it with the competition such as Zenith, Samsung and Momitsu. Some pros and cons on the player would really help us.

Thanks.

[microhof]

Here is my review after day 1. I will post it on gearviews too if I remember -- right now the site isn't working.

-

The Bravo D2 has, literally, landed in my living room.
Now here's is how it's been going so far.
Things to know are that I am using a Sony KP-57WS510 rear projection CRT television, 57". My old DVD player was an interlaced GE 1101P from 3-4 years ago. My Bravo D2 firmware reads 1.1.9.
If anyone can call out anything I've done stupidly, please do so.

This is pretty long and contains a lot of subjective opinions on this player vs. my old one. To cut to the chase and find my complaints, look for the words QUIRK ALERT. Quirks, bugs or features, call them what you wish VInc. :) There are some biggies, and I put the worst in the summary at the end.

Also the following review is from an Average Joe, who loves movies, and who just got the money to put together a low-end home theater. I'm a computer engineer, but not a true videophile (maybe a videophile in training). I love movies enough that I realize that good movies do not require great sound or superb video to be enjoyed and to have a profound effect on a person, but at the same time I am able to tell when my equipment is acting at below a certain level of advancement that one expect out of the year 2004.

SETUP
-------------------------------
First I had to plug it into the S-Vid port on the TV because that's the only way to see anything right off the bat, but we already knew that would happen. Colors looked a little strange but I didn't care too much at this point, I just wanted to see the sucker on 1080i DVI.

Well, I had already popped in a DVD. Here's the bad news, and first QUIRK ALERT -- you cannot access the setup menu unless there is no disc loaded. So, to flip settings, you have to eject your disc. You can do it with the tray still open though. When the disc is still in, pressing setup does not bring up the menu. It cycles through the brightness/contrast/saturation adjusters.

//edit: By someone else's correction/suggestion, this is not true. The disc just cannot be playing in order to enter the true setup menu -- it must be stopped. Does not have to be out of the player, or ejected.

Then (QUIRK ALERT) to re-inject your disc and start playing it, you have to exit the setup menu. Otherwise, all play-related buttons (and the eject/load button) are disabled within the setup menu.

//edit: This is still true but of less importance.

So this was annoying, but I dealt with it.

Next (QUIRK ALERT), I realized that I was right - something was horribly wrong with the color. FORTUNATELY, the problem was just that my contrast setting was up on the highest level, while the brightness and saturation were all mid-range. I'm sure the experts among you can imagine just how bad this messed with me. And if my mom had been the one plugging it in, she would probably have just crapped a brick and returned it to the store, so this is something that should be fixed.

Then I had several things to determine. First, is the color right? Second, is any upscaling beyond 480p really worth it?

COLOR/VIDEO ADJUSTMENTS
-------------------------------
Since I am not a true videophile I can't really provide much color info. I don't even own AVIA, yet, and wouldn't know how to use it.

I don't see any indication of "green push" but that may be because I am not using a projector that is expecting the VGA DVI levels. And nothing looks off-color to me, so no problems that are perceivable to the average guy. But, there WAS that whole out-of-the-box contrast setting problem I mentioned.

DVD TESTS
-------------------------------
Is the DVI, upscaled DVD signal worth it? One thing to note is that I have no audio on while performing these visual assessments. I find that a good soundtrack can often divert your attention from visual flaws.

DVDs I used initially, and why:
The Hudsucker Proxy - Obtained during 99 or 00, I already knew several places to look on this DVD's opening sequence to detect jagged edges, twitter, and the blockiness that result from either interlaced playback or from the televisions very basic "line doubling". I would bet that it has not got anywhere near correct progressive flags, and was not remastered in any way before going to DVD.
Sling Blade - This is a non-anamorphic DVD that I have also had since 99 or 00. Thus it has one of the worst resolutions of all my DVDs. I wanted to see how the D2 handled non-anamorphic, and how the upscaling would help this DVD.
Star Trek: First Contact - There are lots of things early on, like in Hudsucker, that show the problems of my crappy old DVD player. And lots of places that show the result of poor "upscaling" on my TV. Also the scene that zooms out from Picard's eyeball and out from inside the Borg vessel has a lot of blacks and tons of detail that I wanted to see the D2 "draw out".
Dinosaur - I figured this Disney DVD featuring a mix of live-action landscape footage and CGI was put out more recently, and from better (perfect) digital sources. I figured it would have more accurate progressive information. Also, I had noticed several places on my old interlaced that were problematic -- all of the CG textures on the dinosaurs and all of the tiny twittery and jagged-edged hairs on the monkeys (lemurs?). I figured that if there was anything I had that *should* look AWESOME on the D2, it would be this one.

I like to think that these four DVDs are a good test set. Then to follow up, tonight I had a friend bring over LOTR:ROTK to test my sound system and also a VERY newly released DVD. First, I watched a handful of test areas on each DVD on the Bravo. Then, I watched them in my old player. Then, I watched them on the Bravo again.

QUIRK ALERT - Whenever I hit "next" I am dropped out of any Zoom mode (used while watching non-anamorphic Sling Blade) on the Bravo. Come on guys, what's this all about? Fix this in the next firmware?

After the first three DVDs, I can honestly say that the quality I was slightly above what I tend to observe on "upconverted" movies broadcasting on Shotime HD. However I can still tell that the world would be even better if my DVDs were true HD. I did see minor miracles performed on Hudsucker and Sling Blade. And all three of them definitely look MUCH better when they are fully utilizing my TVs 1080i mode. Jagged edges and twitter disappear, and blockiness in things like facial features seemed to disappear or become almost impossible (but not entirely) to discern.

Then, I popped in Disney's Dinosaur. Might I add that all this time I have not encountered any loading trouble. Walt Disney pictures logo - very smooth. This is beautiful, no joke. Dinosaur looks amazing. All the monkeys (lemurs?) and their little hairs are vibrant and jag-free. And all of the non-CGI landscape shots remind me of the best HD I have ever seen -- an HDNet documentary on the animal kingdom. When there are up/down pans accross horizontal objects in the distance such as branches, or monkey hairs, I can see "jags" and some form of "twitter" on my interlaced, regardless of what my TV is set to do (it has progressive and CineMotion 3:2 processing), but those are absent on the Bravo.

Finally, Lord of the Rings: Return of the King was amazing. I venture to say that putting in that DVD will impress anyone who knows anything about the reason we love upscaling DVI players for our HDTVs. As far as anyone who doesn't know about that goes, I imagine all they will take away from it is that your home theater looks awesome. This in itself is good enough, and is the whole point -- because when I played my first DVD on this HDTV via my 480i player, it did NOT look awesome, and I realized that DVD kind of sucks. But this player fixes all that, so it will fool anyone, no matter what their knowledge of the subject, into continuing to believe that DVD is the best.

QUIRK ALERT -- Something VERY strange happened. A scene cut out to black for about 1 second or so while I was watching Dinosaur. Was it the Bravo? Was it my TV? Will it happen more? Did it have something to do with the air conditioner powering up (at that point I did not have it plugged into my surge device yet)? Will we ever know? I will watch for that. Anyone else seen it?

QUIRK ALERT -- I unplugged the player while it was still on (this was still after its first boot-up ever out of the box), then plugged it back in. All my setup was gone. So I did more testing. When you use the remote power button to go into "standby", your settings last. When you hard-power-off the player using the button on the player itself, you just erased all your settings. This means you will have to go set up your audio, picture, TV type, etc settings ALL OVER AGAIN. What a pain in the butt, is this normal for DVD players? Can't it store that somewhere? Heck my universal remote can remember things when you take the batteries out.

MISCELLANEOUS
-------------------------------
Let me make some other fun observations about the "Bravo experience"... I opened the box to find that whoever put it in there left a nice hair for me on top of the manual. I guess that's ok, since I'm not going to eat it.

The remote is comically huge. That picture that is circulating on here of it makes it look small and manageable. This thing is the same size as my gargantuan URC-8910 universal remote, only what's worse is that it's just a huge blocky brick instead of a curvaceous piece of eye-candy. This remote and it's buttons came out of the 80's. Good thing I'm going to be creating a JP1 device upgrade so I can use my universal instead. :) Also, not all of the buttons are glow-in-the-dark. An odd selection of them are.

The player itself? Very nice. You know how sometimes those loaders for which the front cover is hinged seem flimsy as all-get-out? Nope. This is sturdy. The silver shiny part does indeed have a plastic film over it so you have to peel that off if you really want it to look sharp.

The IR receiver reads my signal fine every time, so no problems there. LEDs are lime green for power, a more subdued pale green for display, and blue for playback control. I would have preferred the same color everywhere, but oh well.

I tried the Momitsu secret key sequence while no DVD was loaded. No secret menu, sorry guys.

One last weird thing is that the player itself (or mine anyway) is slanted. I mean it tilts downward from front to back. The front feet of it are still perfectly flat on the surface below, however. I can only assume it is designed this way, but I have to wonder...why?

SOUND
-------------------------------
So, now you want to know how it sounds -- since I left the sound off for all the video tests above, I will now conduct some sound tests to see if I can verify any of these anomalies that have been reported w/rt popping.

I did see this interesting bit in my Onkyo receiver manual:

"When listening to DTS material, using the pause, fast forward, or reverse functions on your DTS-compatible player may produce a short audible noise. This is normal."

Very interesting. So I popped in Pulp Fiction (DTS). Yeah, on next/prev there is a little "pop". It's more of a bassy thud than a high pitched pop. And it's very, very hard to hear. Then I put in Star Trek VI (Dolby Digital). Same noise. If this is coming from the DVD player, oh well, it isn't bad at all. If it's just my receiver, then it's not a Bravo issue. So I doubt there's cause for worry on this one.

QUIRK ALERT - While watching Star Trek VI, I believe it is 1.85:1, so of course there are very tiny black bars. But it looks like it put all of that at the bottom. Or rather, that the image is not vertically centered. My TV has no set-up for adjusting this and neither does the Bravo. Anyone care to comment on this?

CONCLUSION
-------------------------------
The major problems:
- Player forgets all settings when the device is unplugged or powered off using the button on the player.
- Cannot enter setup menu unless you put the tray in the open position or the player is empty. (//edit: Not true - disc just cannot be playing)
- Cannot retract the tray or use playback buttons until you exit the setup menu.
- Terrible out-of-the-box contrast setting.
- Navigating chapters drops out of zoom modes (bad for non-anamorphics)

Putting these minor problems aside, after the first night with it I am very happy. DVD now looks like I feel it should look on my HDTV. My viewing experience has been significantly enhanced, and all for a considerably low price. Yes, I can tell a difference between 480p and 720p and 1080i. I cannot really test the difference of component vs. DVI very well as only 480p is available on component output. However I imagine it would be very difficult to perceive the difference. But hey, DVI cables are cheap if you find them in the right places, so why not make your connection as purely digital as possible - yes, even for your CRT rear projection. I was never sure how much of the combing/jaggedness I saw was due to my interlaced player (since my TV always tries to compensate for that) and how much was due to the fact that the TV wasn't getting a full 1080i signal before today, but now that this player is here, it's pretty much been eliminated. But I cannot say entirely. But I can say almost entirely.

Basically, unless something very bad happens after today, I REALLY LIKE IT!

[Cameron_Y]

"Player forgets all settings when the device is unplugged or powered off using the button on the player."

If this had been the case with the D1 it would have been the biggest PITA given the frequent need to hard power cycle that unit. Let's hope this won't be the case with the D2.

The drop out of zoom with chapter skip remains from the D1.

That set up quirk sounds like a pain too, but you shouldn't have to mess with that once it's set.

[microhof]

Maybe my unit is missing a little watch battery or something? I should probably call in about this, or see if Jim Noyd (sp?) says anything.

[Alex Bischoff]

Originally posted by microhof
Next (QUIRK ALERT), I realized that I was right - something was horribly wrong with the color. FORTUNATELY, the problem was just that my contrast setting was up on the highest level, while the brightness and saturation were all mid-range. I'm sure the experts among you can imagine just how bad this messed with me. And if my mom had been the one plugging it in, she would probably have just crapped a brick and returned it to the store, so this is something that should be fixed.


I've just ordered a D2 and I don't have a DVI-compatible display yet (though I plan on buying a Panasonic PT-L500U later this year). So, for someone using an already-calibrated tv via component inputs (27" WEGA, calibrated w/ Video Essentials), do you have any suggestions for setting the D2's brightness/contrast settings so that I only have to do minimal re-calibration on the tv?

[Jim Noyd]

Microhof-
Thanks for the comprehensive review.

We're looking into the quirks you spoke about.

You may get rid of the Onkyo receiver's popping noises by hard selecting DTS on the receiver before starting a DVD with that audio format. When the processor is in an "auto" mode some still provide a few milliseconds of noise as it senses and then begins processing the bit-stream.

***
Alex-
Joe Kane has a Bravo D2 demoing DVE and his PJ at INFOCOMM, he recommended placing all settings at their mid-points and then adjusting those levels within the display. But, if you have more than one DVI source, calibrate the other with the display and then the Bravo's levels to balance.

[mallu2u]

microhof: Thanks a ton for the great, detailed review!! Such reviews go a long way in making the right decision for the rest of us.

Jim: Do you think that the issues noted by microhof would be fixed in one of firmware updates by Bravo? What is Bravo's policies on firmware updates? Does it release these updates often?

[tomrhyne]

microhof,

Thank you for your detailed review.

- Player forgets all settings when the device is unplugged or powered off using the button on the player.

I've experienced this also. The settings are obviously in volatile memory and reset to factor defaults when powered down and back up. Unfortunately, this will most likely require a hardware change to correct.

- Cannot enter setup menu unless you put the tray in the open position or the player is empty.

I do not experience this. If the DVD is playing and you select Setup you go to the B/C/S settings. If my unit is playing a DVD, all I have to do is to depress stop (haven't checked if Pause works) and then depress setup to go into the Setup Screen. I then exit Setup and hit play to resume the DVD.

- Cannot retract the tray or use playback buttons until you exit the setup menu.

Tried this and mine works the same, but since I don't have to put my tray in the out position it is a mute point for me.

- Terrible out-of-the-box contrast setting.

I agree. All my settings were at minimum and it generated a terrible picture initially. It appears that your default settings are different from mine. Wonder why? What is your Firmware version? Mine is 1.1.9. My loader number is EPD-LDR DR-306A. What settings are you using for B/C/S? I guess the best way to communicate this is by the number of bars visible!

- Navigating chapters drops out of zoom modes (bad for non-anamorphics)

Since I use my SIM2 projector for aspect ratio adjustment, I don't use the zoom command and haven't checked this on my unit.

I assume you have to have quick fingers on your unit to adjust the B/C/S before the "bars" disappear. Also, I don't like the fact that the remote doesn't send continuous IR signals when adjusting the B/C/S.

Having said all this and having suffered through a D1, I am very pleased with my D2 so far.

Tom
<><

[jayjay139]

hooked up my shinny new for 1 1/2 weeks to sammy hln50 via dvi thru geffen dvi switch.
looked great on the one dvd (commercial) it played. all of a sudden everything i put in commercial or burnt cd or dvdr comes up with "no CD" message on lcd. waiting for tech support response. :(

[tomrhyne]

jayjay, too bad! I assume you unplugged it for 15 to 30 seconds and then plugged it back in to see if rebooting would solve your problem.

Tom
<><

[jayjay139]

DOY...
i will as soon as im home for lunch (right after I unplug my brain and reboot, for not thinking of that):)
thanks,
Jack

[microhof]

Originally posted by tomrhyne
I do not experience this. If the DVD is playing and you select Setup you go to the B/C/S settings. If my unit is playing a DVD, all I have to do is to depress stop (haven't checked if Pause works) and then depress setup to go into the Setup Screen. I then exit Setup and hit play to resume the DVD.

Ok. This might be true. I must confess I did not try full-stopping the DVD that was loaded. I will try when I get home and if it's true for me, I guess I should update my review to stop people from getting the wrong idea.

Originally posted by tomrhyne
I agree. All my settings were at minimum and it generated a terrible picture initially. It appears that your default settings are different from mine. Wonder why? What is your Firmware version? Mine is 1.1.9. My loader number is EPD-LDR DR-306A. What settings are you using for B/C/S? I guess the best way to communicate this is by the number of bars visible!

Hmm. Yours started all at a minimum? I wonder why the variance in initial setup. My firmware and loader match yours.

As I said I do not own any video calibration tools. My approach was simple. Get a non-anamorphic widescreen DVD so that there will be D2-added black "void" bars on the left/right. Then go pause it somewhere that has got a lot of color and that you are familiar with how it should look. Then adjust brightness/contrast so that the top/bottom letterboxing actually in the DVD frames are as close as possible to the same black as the programmatically-added left/right black bars, making sure not to lose any of the color fidelity in the rest of the picture.
The fact that this works seems to suggest that the D2 is not applying its BCS settings to the black bars it adds on the sides, just to the actual picture being processed. Either that or my TV is the one adding the black bars, which I know is not true.

Nevertheless I followed that procedure. Basically I ended up with all three right in the middle, and contrast maybe 1 bar above brightness. The resulting picture looks fine to me.
I can hear everyone groaning at my methods. However in watching LOTR and Futurama, the colors looked great to me. Maybe one day I will buy AVIA and learn how to use it.

Originally posted by tomrhyne
I assume you have to have quick fingers on your unit to adjust the B/C/S before the "bars" disappear. Also, I don't like the fact that the remote doesn't send continuous IR signals when adjusting the B/C/S.

I didn't really notice this. That probably means it just didn't bother me. Their ranges are short enough and I was in a mode where I was wanting to analyze what happened after each button press.

[tomrhyne]

Avia would be a good investment. I just calibrated my SIM2 300+ with Avia through the D2 using Colorfacts. I thought my set up looked good, but what an improvement the calibration made. The color temperature and RGB was way off.

Good luck with your D2.

Tom
<><

[mallu2u]

Thanks for your input tomrhyne

[byellin]

microhoff,

I noticed many of the same quirks as you did. The loss of settings at hard poweroff even tho the unit is plugged in is going to be a nightmare as my wife INSISTS on turning off anything that glows when leaving the home theater.

I found a little trick that gets around the need for having a composite video connection for initial setup. This is nice for those of use who don't want to get up on the ladder to plug a cable we don't have into the PJ. I went upstairs and took my kid's TV down to the home theater until I "found" the easier way. This is actually in the manual under "helpful hints", but it contradicts earlier setup advice in the same manual. When you first power up, simply repeatedly hit the TVMODE button on the absurdly large remote, and the unit will go through its video output settings which are displayed on the unit. Then just stop when you get to the desired video output mode and hit SETUP on the remote. It will display the SETUP menu in the output format that is displayed in the unit window. Now here's the non-intuitive part - unless you ALSO go into the SETUP menu after this and set the same VIDEO outputs and hit ENTER, the settings you did with the TVMODE button will be lost and it will default to NTSC composite next time. In other words, the SETUP menu is the only way to have it remembered. That is, until someone manually powers down the unit (oh well - let's hope this is firmware fixable - I hope there's some non-volatile memory in this thing).

I was also able to get the secret "9713" menu to work on mine. You have to be in the VIDEO out menu without selecting anything on the right hand side when you hit the numbers. You'll know when CUSTOM DVI is in effect when the unit window displays DVI, but doesn't display 480p,720P, or 1080I). BTW, 1024 X 768 pixel setting is already entered when you get there. I just had to hit ENTER to get it to work.

Now I want to add a new quirk to the list and see if anyone out there is experiencing the same thing. When I hit STOP, the splash screen (the gray BRAVO screen) does not come up, and the projector (NEC HT1000) displays "DVI-NO-INPUT SIGNAL)" If I turn the thing off and on again the signal comes back. Nothing else works. This also happens when I EJECT the disk - signal is gone and I get the "blue screen of death" once again. I am going through a Geffen switch and I will experiment to eliminate the switch from the path temporarily to see if it is the culprit. I don't know how I will eliminate the PJ from the list of suspects tho. Is anyone else experiencing a loss of DVI signal when EJECT or STOP is hit? Someone with a different PJ. It's the only way to know who's guilty. Oh yeah, it also loses the DVI signal after changing the DVI output settings, but picks them up on restart. Very annoying.

The PQ is excellent, but the granularity of the contrast, brightness settings on the D2 really stink. It badly needs smaller steps and a numerical readout. I kept everything in the middle and adjusted the PJ - it was easier and it was the only way to get the Avia screens to look right.

Another pain - there aren't discrete on and off IR functions that I could find. Anyone?

Bottom line is that the D2 works, and the PQ is beautiful, but it has some severe usability glitches. I can't put the old DVD player and my component cables and my video switcher (the old one, not the Geffen) on eBay until these are worked out. With the loss of settings, the alleged signal dropping (yet to be pinned on the D2) , and the lack of discrete IR functions, I can't idiot proof it with a Pronto remote. This is hard requirement in my house. I just can't step out of business meetings to explain to a 10 year old over the phone how to get Sponge Bob back on the wall.

I am hopeful that the quality of the hardware and loader will hold up, and that Vinc will get the programmers working on that firmware. For 250 bucks - it's still an awesome value.

I will run the old DVD player and the Bravo in parallel until things are fixed.

[mallu2u]

And you noticed the issue too the if u are watching in zoom mode and press next, the picture is thrown out of zoom mode?

[tomrhyne]

When I hit STOP, the splash screen (the gray BRAVO screen) does not come up, and the projector (NEC HT1000) displays "DVI-NO-INPUT SIGNAL)" If I turn the thing off and on again the signal comes back.

I don't experience this. When I stop the DVD, the gray Bravo screen comes up along with the window indicating you will start at the last position when restarting (or something to that effect).

I couldn't agree more about the poor adjustments and readouts, but I'm just setting them and adjusting everything through my projector.

I couldn't find any discrete IR codes either so I used the learning function on my Pronto to capture the codes in my ccf and most things are working well.

Tom
<><

[byellin]

Tom,

I also "taught" my Pronto the codes that are on the remote, but a discrete OFF and ON would be really nice.

I got the splash screen message - once and only once, then I never saw it again. I will first take the Geffen out of the loop and see if I can recreate the splash problem. Then, if that doesn't tell me anything, I will reboot (and re SETUP argh!), and see if the splash screen comes back. Vinc tech support tells me that this shouldn't be happening to me. But, they also claim that a hard poweroff without unplugging should retain the settings. I am skeptical about that one, as too many people are experiencing the issue. Maybe is was designed that way, but the execution falls a bit short. They confirmed the easier setup scenario I offered up in my earlier post. Apparently a documentation glitch. I wish I knew that before I dragged my kids TV down the steps :)

BTW, for the doubting Thomas' (no pun intended here Tom) out there about the company, Vinc tech support was remarkably responsive, and was forthcoming in offering to replace the unit if I could not fix the splash problem. At least that was my experience.

I forgot to ask them about "super secret" discrete OFF and ON codes. Shucks! Maybe someone who has no life will dicker with the hex codes and discover something to post on remotecentral someday.

[microhof]

Originally posted by byellin
microhoff,

I was also able to get the secret "9713" menu to work on mine.

Now I want to add a new quirk to the list and see if anyone out there is experiencing the same thing....

Another pain - there aren't discrete on and off IR functions that I could find. Anyone?
What does the 9713 menu do? The secret Momitsu code I tried was some down-up-down-up-right-left combo.

I have not experienced that quirk. Like tomrhyne (although mine is just a TV, not a projector), I see the expected message about stopping and Bravo splash screen. It has never cut out of DVI abnormally on me yet like that.

What do you mean about discrete on and off IR functions?
//edit ok now I figured out what you mean
I would guess there are no discrete on/off functions available. I believe the power button is one of the toggle sort which is in one position when on and springs to another when off. I think this switch basically disconnects the entire incoming power line from the circuits, and is dependent on that physical position of that switch. Thus I have never seen a DVD player with that type of switch that also has a remote button for doing the total shutdown. That doesn't mean that there isn't some special code that somehow triggers some sort of relay inside or something to do the same thing as the switch. But I am guessing it's highly unlikely. My old player had this problem too, but what's more was that it didn't even have a "standby" mode.

[byellin]

microhof,

The 9713 gets you into the custom DVI settings menu. I used that to get a one to one pixel mapping with my PJ. I think the Momitsu and Bravo use the same chip and have the same customizations. The instructions are in the manual - but it isn't clear that you have to be on the "left" side of the selection - in other words - on the category (VIDEO OUT) and not the selection option (480, 720....).

Discrete ON and OFF functions are used to program macros in remote controls like the pronto. Rather than have a toggle switch on the power button (turn it off if on, turn it on if off), its like having separate buttons for off and on. If you hit ON when it is already on - nothing happens. If you hit OFF when it is already off - nothing happens. Voila! It is the preferred setup for home theater components because the control is deterministic and not dependent on the current state of the device.

[byellin]

microhof,

It isn't the physical switch that has the discrete function, but the remote codes that turn the player to on or standby. Loads of players and other devices have this capability even though it is sometimes unpublished. The Remotecentral website has a library of them various devices for use on Prontos. I use them almost every component I have so that there is one magic button on the Pronto that turns everything to standby regardless of if it was on in the first place. Nice to have.

[jayjay139]

Ok...:rolleyes:
I hard rebooted my D2 (which after talking to support is wired to the power switch, so unplugging is unnecessary), everything plays fine, and looks great.
Pushing stop, while a dvd plays indeed lets me go to menu. Its nice while playing that it goes to b/c/s.

thanks,
Jack

[David Darnall]

Originally posted by jayjay139
hooked up my shinny new for 1 1/2 weeks to sammy hln50 via dvi thru geffen dvi switch.
looked great on the one dvd (commercial) it played. all of a sudden everything i put in commercial or burnt cd or dvdr comes up with "no CD" message on lcd. waiting for tech support response. :(

jayjay
I have the same problem. My machine worked for 30 minutes. When I put in another disk it came up "no cd". Every disk I tried did the same thing.
This is very frustrating. Let me know if you find out anything, please.
thanks,
David Darnall

[cliffk]

I received my D2 today. Contrary to the following information I was provided, unfortunately, a simple volume adjustment to my Pioneer Elite VSX-47TX receiver over half the time results in the D2 opening the tray, skipping to the next chapter, or whatever else it feels like doing.

On 5/28/04 I wrote:
I tried the D1 with my Sony HS-10 when it first came out. Loved the picture, but experienced freezes and lock-ups some. But the real deal killer was the the D1 responded to Pioneer remote codes, so I sent it back.
Can Jim or anyone else confirm that the D2 has fixed the IR code problem (changed to a discreet set of codes)?
Thanks,
Cliff


Jim Noyd quickly replied:
All new remote codes and commander for the Bravo D2.

Well, they may be all new, but the D2 still responds to my Pioneer volume IR codes. I think this issue, while it doesn't affect many of you, says it all about V, Inc.'s product, their commitment to quality, and how much hands-on involvement they really have with their products. The company through my e-mails to tech support prior to returning my D1, my RMA reason, and many posts on this board was well aware of the problem. Yet, they didn't test to see if they solved this known issue.

Take care,
Cliff

[microhof]

So far I have still had no loader problems or anything else, even after playing tonight. Also I edited my review to correct where I said a disc cannot be in the player to access setup -- it just has to be stopped, I was just too stupid to try that. :)

After playing Pleasantville just now, and Fantasia 2000 earlier, I have to say yet again -- this player makes my DVDs look stunning.

cliffk --

I understand your complaints. Did you tell them exactly the model of your Pioneer that is having the problem? The Bravo D2 uses the NEC1 remote protocol with a device code of 165 and then some simple 1-byte (presumably fairly standard) codes for the various buttons. As far as I have seen, the Bravo D1 used a device code of 0. I believe the primary purpose of the device code is to significantly reduce the chance of overlap. The fact that the first one overlapped some Pioneer device seems to suggest that both VInc and Pioneer were complete idiots in choosing device code 0.

If the device code is now 165 and it is still overlapping with the Pioneer, then I really don't have a clue what to say... How would that happen? Surely someone who knows more about the remote business can answer that for us?

However on VInc's behalf, in a rapid development environment, its often tough to decide what is worth spending time on, and also testing resources can be limited. They obviously did change the IR codes, but apparently not well enough. However as you pointed out, they were probably aware it only might affect a small portion of the market.

Also, VInc made the firmware source available on their site for the Bravo D1. If they do the same for the D2 firmware, maybe the more computer engineering inclined among us could actually hack it and change the IR codes (and other problems), and compile an all-new firmware? I might look at the D1 source and firmware update procedure one of these days and see how much trouble anyone who tried this would be getting themselves into.

[gesundheit]

Originally posted by cliffk
I received my D2 today. Contrary to the following information I was provided, unfortunately, a simple volume adjustment to my Pioneer Elite VSX-47TX receiver over half the time results in the D2 opening the tray, skipping to the next chapter, or whatever else it feels like doing.


I read through this and the other D2 threads again today looking for this exact info. I was expecting to post a question about it, since I remembered Jim's statement from a few weeks' back, and wondered if any other Pioneer owners had received a D2 yet. So what a disappointment for me, and obviously all other Pioneer owners (and that would be quite a few potential sales lost for a programming deficiency that I've never heard about with any other DVD player). Obviously I can't use the D2 :mad:

[wsiler]

I just got my Bravo D2 yesterday and despite trying 15 DVDs, a handful of CDs, nothing will load on the screen other than the setup menus. great setup menus. Glad to know that if ANY DISK in my house would just load, I could get a really good pic on DVI or Component vid. We will see how the RMA process goes I guess..

W

[Beaker1024]

Originally posted by gesundheit
I read through this and the other D2 threads again today looking for this exact info. I was expecting to post a question about it, since I remembered Jim's statement from a few weeks' back, and wondered if any other Pioneer owners had received a D2 yet. So what a disappointment for me, and obviously all other Pioneer owners (and that would be quite a few potential sales lost for a programming deficiency that I've never heard about with any other DVD player). Obviously I can't use the D2 :mad:

It is dis-hearting to hear that the D2's IR still receives commands from the Pio Elite remote. I happen to have a Pio Elite 45tx (The remote is awsome.) and this puts the figurative nail in the coffin on my D2 vs. V880N debate. Yes the V880 had the same IR issues as the D1 and now D2 but I wrote Momitsu directly asking specifically about this issue and if it's addressed in the V880N. They said they did change the IR and that they actually tested it with Pio equipment and the V880N has no IR conflicts.

Now I am just hoping one of the first AV members to get a V880N has a Pio Elite AVR and does a through review of the player. Any volunteers?

[David Darnall]

Originally posted by wsiler
I just got my Bravo D2 yesterday and despite trying 15 DVDs, a handful of CDs, nothing will load on the screen other than the setup menus. great setup menus. Glad to know that if ANY DISK in my house would just load, I could get a really good pic on DVI or Component vid. We will see how the RMA process goes I guess..

W
wsiler,
If you feel like opening up your unit which could very likely void your warranty, try this. I believe that the laser head is not in the proper position to read the disk. Remove the outside case and then remove the plate attached with 4 screws from the dvd assembly. Take your finger and move the laser mechanism just a little toward the front of the player. Be careful not to touch the laser. Put the plate back on and plug it up to see if it loads a disk. The only drawback to this is that if you move it too far movies might freeze up near the end.

[EHHoffman]

Originally posted by Beaker1024

Now I am just hoping one of the first AV members to get a V880N has a Pio Elite AVR and does a through review of the player. Any volunteers?

I'm in the same boat, and have been following the threads related to both players. While the IR problem would certainly be the killer for me on either DVD player, I think I've decided against getting a D2 anyway. The quality control still seems to be lacking substantially. I've had enough cheap DVD players go bad after a year or so of use.There is know way I would want to get a $250 player that is likely to do the same thing, no matter how great the PQ.

Bummer, I was really hoping to hear good things about this player this time around.

--Eric

[David Darnall]

Originally posted by EHHoffman
There is no way I would want to get a $250 player that is likely to do the same thing, no matter how great the PQ.

Bummer, I was really hoping to hear good things about this player this time around.

--Eric [/B]

This is the only player so far that would mate to my Sharp 10000 pj because of the picture controls which the sharp doesn't have. I would have to say that the picture quality improvement is amazing, definitely worth the money regardless of the quirks. The image has really been opened up, it has taken on a much more 3d appearance,detail in the background is more visable than before, and the black levels are better because of the extra detail; well it appears that way. Don't count this machine out just yet.
David

[byellin]

Well, the D2 saga continues:

I eliminated all other possibilities (I think) from my signal path like the Geffen and long cable runs and the D2 still drops it's DVI signal when STOP or EJECT or SETUP exits. I can get it back by cycling through the TVMODE sequence until it lands on DVI again (even thought it said DVI to start with). Now it won't even start up correctly after a soft power down.

The player is going back as soon as I get an RMA. I will give Vinc the benefit of the doubt and try a replacement on for size. They really have been responsive.

The variety of early symptoms among the reported problems in the forum are beginning to concern me. Too many flaky issues like things that work and then magically don't ,and vice-versa after rebooting, or after a certain amount of time. The fact that ALL the machines drop their settings on hard powerdown, when tech support says ,"It shouldn't do that - the D1 didn't" is worrisome. A flagrant manufacturing (or design) flaw like this should not have gone unnoticed. There are always minor glitches with new software which are understandable. This goes beyond that.

I have no idea how many defective units there are or what the failure rate is, but the ones that fail and the ones that work appear to be evenly represented at this point in the forum. The sample may be too small to draw a conclusion, but the failure rate that it implies does not bode well.

I will be sure to post my delight when a working player arrives. I like what this company is trying to achieve in making superior imagery affordable and want them to succeed. The ball is in Vinc's court to deliver on that goal.

[egomaniac]

Well, at least I'm not the only one.

Got my D2 yesterday. After plugging it in, hooking it up to the TV, and turning it on with no disc in, it got as far as "HELLO" and froze solid. No image, no response to any button on the remote or front panel.

I power-cycled it, and this time it got past HELLO and told me NO CD, as it should have. I pressed eject, put in a brand-new, perfectly clean DVD, and was told... NO CD.

Hmmm.

I ejected the disc and put it back in. This time it found the disc and (after fiddling with the TV Mode) gave me a picture. The color was unbelievably horrid -- imagine turning the brightness down all the way, and the contrast and saturation all the way up -- to the point that I thought something was in the wrong mode. After realizing that it was just the color settings, I tried to tweak them, only to find that the steps are far too granular. The saturation options, for instance, are more or less "ridiculously saturated", "way too saturated", "too saturated", "not saturated enough", "way undersaturated", and "black and white". You'll note that I didn't list "exactly right" anywhere in that list.

I was unable to correct the color using just the DVD player's settings, and eventually had to adjust the TV color settings to fine-tune the DVD player's coarse adjustments.

At this point I said "Wow". The picture through DVI is truly amazing, head and shoulders above my older DVD player. No comparison.

Ok, so now that I had the settings all right, I pulled out the old DVD player and moved the D2 into position. Of course, I had to unplug it to do that, not realizing that that would make it forget all of its settings and make me spend another couple minutes trying to get the color dialed in. It was around this point that I began to curse. Then I found out that turning the unit off from the front panel has the same effect, and I stopped cursing and began to seriously consider physical violence directed against the player.

This morning, my wife called me into the room because the DVD player wasn't working. "NO CD", it said. She had already tried ejecting the disc and putting it back in, and then tried a different disc. I checked the discs, they were both perfectly clean and scratch-free (brand new and never before played, as a matter of fact). After ten or twelve tries, it finally recognized the disc and began playing it.

Needless to say, I am very, very disappointed. The picture is amazing, when it works. But a brand-new DVD player failing to recognize a brand-new, perfectly clean disc ten times in a row is extremely worrisome, and judging from the other posts in this thread, I'm not the only one experiencing this.

I haven't even mentioned all the minor annoyances I've encountered. I hate to say it, but I would say that this ranks among the worst consumer electronic devices I have ever purchased. It feels very unfinished (just check the manual -- it actually contains reminders about things that they intended to change before publication!), and worse yet, very unreliable.

I'm holding on to the hope that they can fix these issues via firmware, but so far I think I just wasted my money.

[byellin]

I must have really pissed of my D2 while cursing through trials and tribulations attempting to get it functioning. It won't even say "HELLO" to me anymore. I feel so unwelcome! Talk about adding insult to injury.

[mandarax]

Well I have a slightly different story to tell... I was awaiting a HD1 to demo and review... in the box arrives a D2.. I have some boxes of boxes of the D2's that I was waiting on too actually.. but no cigar.. In any event since it was a demo unit I thought that possibly they packaged the HD1 into a D2 box... Nope ... it was a D2..

So I fire the sucker up ... and nothing... then remembered that the units come with the composite video active and you have to setup for the DVI .. I do this and voila... great pic... I was actually reading this thread when the D2 arrived.. I have put in and out a DVD several times... shut off and on the video again several times.. and no problems like you guys have been having at all albeit... only a limited number of times.. With the BenQ 8700+ it looks gorgeous... and definitely will be a keeper..I do not have the audio plugged in yet but don't have great expectations for this end of the equation in any event..

Will be trying it out with the Epson Cinema 500 later on tonight... and again will try and give some feedback on it..

Try and remember that you have to go into the setup to revise the video and turn on the DVI or other input sources when you get it.. Again my first reaction was oh oh..wtf.. and some other verbiage that I can't state...

If I ever do get the HD receiver HD1 I will put this in an alternate thread along with a review of the antenna from one of the sponsers here..

Robert

[mallu2u]

Makes me wonder now abt buyer this player at all! Maybe momitsu might still be a better choice, given the fact atleast they keep releasing firmware updates by listening to their customers.

[wsiler]

David,

I am no stranger to cracking open a box and doing a little cleaning or repair but in light of the fact that it is less than 48 hours old, i cannot even begin to consider opening it and fixing it. That would be like driving a new car off the lot then having to realign the drivetrain to make it work. The simple principle is enough to get me a little steamed to be quite frank. How the hell are these guys sending these off the production line with so many construction flaws? I received a response to my email to tech support simply stating that they would replace it and requesting that I send my order number and the serial number on the unit. The only concern I have right now is, how much will this cost me in shipping (will they pay it?) and what happens if me second unit is dead or dies as well? Everyone interested in this unit wants one simple thing. The best picture quality they can achieve at a reasonable price. With so many of these not able to read a disk properly, I cannot understand how the design even made it past the drawing board.

If someone out there has a D2 or D1 that works flawlessly, please post to this forum. I would like to see how many people are getting these without functional flaws and problems.

Wiley

[David Darnall]

wsiler,
Well mine is less than 24 hrs old and I am too curious sometimes to find out what is going on inside that little box. I'm no technical genius and I am certainly not rich but I figured WTH so I decided to open her up.Having had a computer for 9 years I realize some things require a little tinkering.
One thing that made me want to open it was I heard something rattling around in it when I moved it. Upon opening the case I found a little piece of black plastic. Not knowing what it was I sat it aside. I noticed when you put a dvd in it the laser cartridge was too far back to read the disk. Lo and behold the little piece of plastic had broken off the left side of the cartridge therefore allowing the laser to go too far back. I removed the piece, glued it together, put it back in, put it back together and now it is working great
Maybe Vinc won't be too mad at me since I saved them money not having to send it back. At least now I can watch my DVD's the best way you can for now. If something happens later I will just have to deal with it.
David

[wsiler]

David,
Sounds to me like you have probably found the design flaw then. The guide for the laser module is too weak to survive ether a) shipping or b) constant use. I haven't given mine a shake but I will check it for rattles when I get home. Like I said, capability or desire really don't play a part in my choice not to crack it open and fix it. I have had to re-solder connection points in my digital camera before and that was MUCH hairier work I can assure you. It is just a matter of being a picky consumer. I really think you should be able to expect that a product new in the box will work just like the manufacturer says. The fact that the D2 cost 50 bucks more than the D1 did makes me wonder where the cash is going. They are charging 50 bucks more for a supposedly better product yet the build quality has not increased along with the price. I hope your machine works our for you and that you don't get a delayed death later down the road. I have seen a few posts here and there for people whose D1 or D2s just gave up the ghost entirely due to volatile memory or bad power supply. Regardless, I am shipping mine back and getting my money back. The only question remaining is will VINC try and screw me out of a restocking fee despite the fact that they sent me a dead player. We shall see... Post to follow.

Thanks,
Wiley

[mallu2u]

wsiler: Well they should not be charging you for the return shipping since it is a defective unit. In fact, not even charge you the restocking fee coz ur returning for their fault, not urs. from what I have heard on these boards, Zenith and Momitsu seem to be better choices. I started with Samsung, Bravo, Momitsu and Zenith and now I am down to Zenith and Momitsu for my purchase.

[wsiler]

mallu2u,

I have my fingers crossed that V INC is a scrupulous company but you know it is a crap shoot. Some companies will try and get as much from you as they can despite being at fault. Hopefully, V INC is not one of them. I have seen lots of complaints about their customer support so I am a little dubious about what I can expect. Regardless, I could not agree with you more that DOA products constitute a failure of the manufacturer to deliver on their end of the bargain and that the costs need to remain all theirs. Now we just have to wait and see what they think... 8)

I would be interested in finding more info on the players you have mentioned. Do you have any links for the Momitso and Zenith players?

Thanks for your reply,
Wiley

[mallu2u]

Keep us posted on what Vinc says.

Zenith: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=328403

Momitsu: Being one of most popular DVD Players, has tons of threads on the DVD Players forum. Just do a search on it and you shall see them.

Now both of them are not 'perfect' but both have strong followers due to their positives far outcompete their negatives.

[ReeseG]

Personally, I'd just like them to respond to my RMA request...now 3 days old...

[mandarax]

The unit I received seems to do everything it suppose to... I will be getting in a large box full of them early next week or tomorrow so will advise how many are good... You may note that most people come on to complain whilst most others just sit back and enjoy... The box I received had a serious ding in it... Since it was in another exterior box the ding did not happen during shipping.. at least to my location and it survived the crash..
Yet I don't think a customer would want to receive a box in that condition..

Robert

[ReeseG]

Originally posted by mandarax
TYou may note that most people come on to complain whilst most others just sit back and enjoy..
Robert

I wish I could agree with that statement, but you put it out there, so, let me offer this as counterpoint...I just can't agree.

I think most people come on to AVS to learn as much as they can about a product and use the forum as a resource to make informed purchase decisions.

Personally, I've used this forum's info as a resource for the purchase of two FANTASTIC projectors (The NEC HT1000 and Infocus 7200), multiple DVD players over the past three years and pre/pro and speakers as well. Most, if not all, of the product I purchased got overwhelmingly positive posting support from this community...and the last thing I wanted to do was to post a negative review of V's new player.

I love the image quality of the D1. But, I think that others have a right to know what mine, and others' personal experience with the new D2 player is...even if it results in a negative result.

Before I get flamed for my comments and for going off subject, I hope you'll understand that I only took issue with your specific statement that most people come on this forum to complain...as I said, with that, I can't agree.

[maxvengeance111]

Got my D2 finally today. Setup was a breeze. Started playing Extended LOTR after 50 minutes, it locked three times. Rewind, played the same scenes, stuck only once. The disc is clean, nothing on it, scratches or anything. This is a little frustrating to me. Hopefully, it won't happen again. I will test it for the next two days. If more movies lock up, then its back to Vinc. I just don't understand why this is happening. The D1 locked all the time. Returned it. The D2 locks, but instead of what the D1 did, lock and have to be rebooted, the D2 just locks for like a second or two, then keeps playing. Anyway seeing this yet? I really want this D2 to play movies without a hitch. The picture looks great but its not worth it if the player can't play movies properly.

[mandarax]

ReeseG... I am only talking about the first couple of weeks of the release...
Then the dust settles...

I havent had the unit running as of yet other than some clips so the verdict is still out...

When I sell pieces if something is wrong I find out immediately. When everything is perfect I usually dont hear from people for a few weeks ...sometimes not until they want to purchase something else..

If you are stating that everyone that received a D2 and had no problem with it would write on the forum in the same numbers I would disagree with you.. but then I wasnt at all saying that people come onto AVS just to beotch like you infer..

There is nothing wrong with beotching... I hope everyone that has a problem does so at the top of their lungs... I just don't think that enough time has passed to make a judgement... I don't want customers having any problems..

Here is what I don't truly understand. Given the opportunity for the market I fail to understand why another 60.00 worth of parts in cost wasnt thrown at the product... Would we really care if it was 310.00 vs 250.00 if all of the QC problems were gone.. Even if you had to break even on the product for a tenure of an entire year just to get the volume and confidence built up it would be worth it over the long term... I am baffled to even hear of the problems some of you guys are having with the unit and now feel compelled to put in at least 8 hrs on the unit that did arrive before I would even risk giving one of these to a customer..

When writing I can see how the context was taken to mean something totally different.. and that it was more my poor writing without giving some of the context to explain it..

Hopefully they will not send another incorrect package.. and I start hearing more good stuff..

Robert

[ReeseG]

Originally posted by mandarax
Here is what I don't truly understand. Given the opportunity for the market I fail to understand why another 60.00 worth of parts in cost wasnt thrown at the product... Would we really care if it was 310.00 vs 250.00 if all of the QC problems were gone.. Even if you had to break even on the product for a tenure of an entire year just to get the volume and confidence built up it would be worth it over the long term... I am baffled to even hear of the problems some of you guys are having with the unit and now feel compelled to put in at least 8 hrs on the unit that did arrive before I would even risk giving one of these to a customer..
Robert

Amen. You've hit the nail on the head.

[microhof]

Good new and better news:

I just decided to hammer my Bravo D2 with media to see if it had a breaking point. I fed into it every DVD I own, plus some CDs, totalling in at just over 100 pieces of media (95 were DVDs).

Every single DVD loaded just fine, no problems. Some faster than others, but, nothing took longer than a few seconds.

Then I about wet my pants with glee. I had always wondered if these DVD players that can read MP3s on CDs also extended that to include MP3s on DVDs. So I popped in some DVD-Rs I had made to back up my CD-gone-MP3 collection. Magically, the fancy ISO CD menu came up for my DVD-R and let me play the tons of MP3s on it with a nice little navigation system.

I also then tried a couple audio CDs.

Then I shut it off and turned it back on and put in some more DVDs.

Nothing broke, everything loaded flawlessly.

Here's my theory on what happened to you guys with bad loaders. You got your order in right away, and somewhere in there they swapped loaders on us. The first stack of orders got either (A) the same loader as the D1 because they had some leftovers :) or (B) some other piece of trash. Or, maybe it's just that little black thing one guy mentioned that broke off in shipping or assembly.

My loader version from the Firmware menu is "EPO-LDR DP-306A, 8X6M".
What is it for some of you who can't load media?

New behaviorisms I observed while doing this are:
- When you insert the DVD, the DVI signal will drop out for a second as it figures out what kind of media it is and then comes back.
- When you eject the DVD, you can't load the next one until the splash screen appears on the display again, the button is unresponsive until then.

Also I just have to say this, but I don't want to start a flame war. :p What tune would those of you with the remote IR code problem be humming if you had bought the D2 first, then you bought your Pioneer and brought it home and its remote started operating your DVD player?

[maxvengeance111]

Ive played about 3 hours of movies...So far I've only had the three 1 to 2 second hicccups with extended version of LOTR. No permanent locking up though. I have only turned it off though with the remote power button. Doesn't turning off the machine with the hard button make you use lose your settings?

[tomrhyne]

Had mine since June 2. Still no problems. Some things I don't like, which I have documented previously, but so far I'm very pleased with the operation and the picture quality.

Tom
<><

[fendesj]

Just got my Bravo D2. It conflicts a lot with my Pioneer receiver. Not happy about this as Jim Noyd had stated this would not be a problem. Jim, can you fill us in on this and let us know if there might be any resolution to this problem. I don't want to return this but I will have to if the IR conflict can't be resolved. Thanks.

[maxvengeance111]

Ive played about 3 hours of movies...So far I've only had the three 1 to 2 second hicccups with extended version of LOTR. No permanent locking up though. I have only turned it off though with the remote power button. Doesn't turning off the machine with the hard button make you use lose your settings?

[microhof]

Originally posted by maxvengeance111
Ive played about 3 hours of movies...So far I've only had the three 1 to 2 second hicccups with extended version of LOTR. No permanent locking up though. I have only turned it off though with the remote power button. Doesn't turning off the machine with the hard button make you use lose your settings?

Hmm. Three 1-to-2 second hiccups? Is this similar to what I was talking about, where one time my DVD just went black for a second? Yeah that's annoying. I have not seen that since I plugged it into my surge strip. If I start to see that more, I won't stand for it.

Yes, turning off the machine with the hard button makes me lose my settings. When I said I turned it off during my testing, I meant "standby" -- sorry.

[Rijax]

I've had mine since June 3rd. Took awhile to get the picture properly adjusted, on the DVI out to my Sammy DLP with Avia. Keeping the D2's picture adjustments at their midpoints, I ended up with the white level (contrast) a couple of numbers higher, and the black level (brightness) 9 numbers lower on the Sammy than I had them with the D1.

Haven't had any problems, though I've not really pushed it hard. I have firmware 1.1.9 and the same loader as microhof. I suspect they all are the same loader, at this point.

So far, so good.

[Jerry Pease]

I dont know if anyone posted this, but I will do it anyway.

Living in the capital world of lighting "The Tampa Bay Area" we loose power or the lights will flicker every afternoon. Everytime I loose power or flicker the D2 looses all settings.

What a freaking PITA. This is just plain wrong.

[maxvengeance111]

Actually Micro, the scenes just stuck, like froze, then started again. Not go to black. Really weird...I have hooked into a line conditioner/power strip as well. I have same firmware and the loader is the same.

[maxvengeance111]

By the way, what exactly is the midpoints, there are 13 bars....so 7? What does volume setting do by the way?

[microhof]

Originally posted by maxvengeance111
Actually Micro, the scenes just stuck, like froze, then started again. Not go to black. Really weird...I have hooked into a line conditioner/power strip as well. I have same firmware and the loader is the same.

How many DVDs is LOTR extended version on? Are you sure it wasn't just the normal layer change delay? I did notice the layer change was fairly long while watching LOTR:ROTK, regular edition....fortunately it lined up with something that it didn't affect much.

[Rijax]

Originally posted by maxvengeance111
By the way, what exactly is the midpoints, there are 13 bars....so 7?
Yup! 7 bars. 6 bars on each side of the 7th bar, so you have 7 bars showing.

[WynsWrld98]

Has anyone played a video-based DVD (e.g., music video) vs. film-based DVD on the D2? On the D1 video-based DVDs stutter due to D1 not recognizing it's a video-based DVD and frames per second being different between video and film-based sources resulting in dropped frames.

[maxvengeance111]

Unless the layer change occurs in three different places within 10 minutes of film, and then on repeat isnt there anymore, I would have to say it was a weird glitch. I am going to watch the same scenes tomorrow. It hasnt happened with anything else yet.

[maxvengeance111]

Are featurettes video based? I have watched some behind the scenes and stuff like that for movies without any problems.

[shadowbox]

Add my name to the list of disappointed D2 owners. I opened mine up yesterday, installed it and it worked fine for about 30 minutes. I entered the custom setting for my HS20 projector and did a quick adjustment on my projector for brightness and contrast and it looked amazing. (I left the D2 contrast and brightness in the center position.) I tried to load the AVIA disc for more exact calibrations and it said, "NO CD." So I tried to load Video Essentials, "NO CD" flashed again. I tried to load SW:Ep2, which I had been playing eariler and it too said "NO CD." I switched the power unit off and on and Voila, all of the discs loaded fine. But after resetting my custom settings, I hit play and the player locked up on the AVIA disc. Powered off and on again, and it was fine. Reentered the custom settings a THIRD time, started up AVIA, calibrated the projector, and put in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Played several scenes, skipped forward, backward. No audio glitches, no drop outs, no lock ups. So for now everything is ok. But I can't continue to re-enter the custom settings over and over. If i continue to have loading problems, its going back to vinc. I don't quite understand. This isn't rocket science. I have had a cheap $99 DVD player for a couple of years in my guest bedroom. It hasn't locked up once and it never has any problems loading any DVDs, CDs, CD-Rs, etc.

[mallu2u]

Originally posted by microhof
Hmm. Three 1-to-2 second hiccups? Is this similar to what I was talking about, where one time my DVD just went black for a second? Yeah that's annoying. I have not seen that since I plugged it into my surge strip. If I start to see that more, I won't stand for it.

Yes, turning off the machine with the hard button makes me lose my settings. When I said I turned it off during my testing, I meant "standby" -- sorry.

Why does the players have a 1 or 2 sec hiccups? Is there a technical reason for it? These players do not have a memory where they load the movie and play from...so why this issue. I had once noticed this with my Pioneer 563A as well. Could not figure it out why.

[shadowbox]

Originally posted by WynsWrld98
Has anyone played a video-based DVD (e.g., music video) vs. film-based DVD on the D2? On the D1 video-based DVDs stutter due to D1 not recognizing it's a video-based DVD and frames per second being different between video and film-based sources resulting in dropped frames.

I noticed while playing the AVIA calibration DVD that the opening title graphics stuttered as they panned across the screen. The introduction video seemed to play smooth, I think it might only be noticeable when objects pan across the screen.

[wsiler]

Originally posted by ReeseG
Amen. You've hit the nail on the head.

I agree with you both but I submit that if the price DID go up by 50 dollars from version D1 to version D2, wouldn't that supposedly cover the exact part upgrade you have suggested? It seems to me that the D2 should be leaps and bounds above the D1, and admittedly for some it seems to be so.

My experience so far has been downright horrible. Nothing could pi$$ me off more than spending my money for something that arrives dead in the box. I got a response to my first email regarding my problem with the player (I had not asked to return or anything) from VINC tech support and they asked for my serial number which I responded to by saying that I would send it to them when I got home that night. After thinking about it for an hour or so (and reading these forums) I decided I really did not want the D2 if it wasn't going to perform exactly like it should so I requested that they process my return for a full refund and not charge me any fees or anything. What was the only reply I got??? A terse response of "Serial number?"... What kind of customer support is this? Sorry to "beotch" (to quote another forum user) but this just burns me. Send me a broken player AND fail to show even a modicum of simple email ettiquite??? I had questions in my email that no one even bothered to answer. You need my serial number before you can treat me like the customer (meaning the person who makes your business possible)? Come on VINC, get your @#$% together!!!!

My two cents,
Wiley

[ReeseG]

I think patience is the best policy at this point.

I agree that the V customer service is a bit curse, (when I called, I got the same type of experience) but if our problems are representative of the product release overall, their team is probably under a lot of pressure to find the source of the problems and remedy them.

WSILER, you might save yourself some stress by not pressing "2" and emailing them instead.

If it were me, I'd issue a blanket RMA for anyone who wasn't satisfied (for ANY reason) to use for product replacement and issue a statement regarding their commitment to customer service.

I know how difficult that can be (hey, I've been there). I also know their PR guy hangs out in the forums, so I know management at V read these threads... so between the feedback they're picking up on the forum and the RMA requests, it must be blatently obvious that we're beyond the standard .0000X %.

Being a small company, perhaps they can't afford to do a blanket RMA.

Back to the subject at hand. Wsiler, you're words also hit a strong note. We might expect the uplift to be fixes, but it could have been as simple as Sigma passing on increased chip costs so we can't assume there.

The real question is, after a year plus of either hearing or putting up with not so respectible QA/QC/Build quality, do we have the patience to continue down the same ole' road.

Whether you get off at the next offramp is up to how much patience you have for a product that can blow away (in image quality) pretty much anything else out there...when it works.

[wsiler]

LOL - Good points all, ReeseG.

I can imagine that these folks are inundated with return issues as you suggested so a little slack may be in order on my part. I also realize that this is a niche market as far the product goes. Most consumers are pleased with the $30 brand X DVD player from Wali-world and never even know that there is much much more than can be gotten from DVD as a digital source. So be it. I got myself into this with my greedy little desire for higher image quality... I just would like the process to be a little easier.

I think you may have pointed out the source of my angst perfectly. A slightly less terse reply to my email and some form of "Hey, we appreciate your patience and are working on it" statement from VINC would have been greatly appreciated. How about a simple explanation? What is happening, why is it happening, and what is their return/replacement policy in this case. They told me they will replace it but I want to know about a full refund. The RMA policy is outlined on their website and says the following....

---------------------------------------------------------------------
V, Inc.’s return policy allows for Products purchased directly from V, Inc. to be returned by you after obtaining a V Inc. return authorization number (RMA) during the thirty (30) day period following the date of purchase for a refund of the purchase price actually paid less a ten percent (10%) restocking fee per item returned?

{....}
This return policy does not apply to defective product please see V, Inc.’s product warranty policy for warranty terms and conditions.
---------------------------------------------------------------------

Alright, I will bite. Warranty information for the D2 is not posted on the website. The D1 warranty is there and pretty much states the normal junk though it does say they are not responsible for fixing damage incurred in transit (from a direct order site? They package it and ship it don't they??) .

So far, my impression of VINC is...
Great marketing team (got people's attention and their site looks really professional)
Great image quality if it works.
Terrible customer service.
Terrible quality control.

Sure, we could cut them a little slack but this is a consumer market where even companies with great products perish because they cannot get the implementation right. If I am going to shell out $250 (and rising from the current trend) for anything, I expect it to work and I certainly don't want to have to buy another one in 6 months because mine dies and the company has gone belly up due to backlash from their poor implementations.

Regardless, thank you to all the people who posted their positives on this player. It gives me a little hope that this could be a good product if/when they iron out the QC problems. If they take mine back (like they should) I am going to hold out for the D3 revision or a product from another company that brings a similar product to market (with better service and implementation).

[mandarax]

Had it running late into the evening ... unfortunately I wasnt able to watch any longer ... but no glitches reported... after about 5 hrs.. Maybe I got a good one since I am a dealer but given that it was the wrong product.. as it was labelled a HD1.. I kind of doubt it..

I didnt have time to dial it in yet ... just in case something did go wrong I didnt want to waste my time.. and therein lies the problem... time ... what is more precious than this??

The support problems are obvious.. too many issues for too few people to handle... take call after call of issues all day and one can become pernickity.. Take Credit and Collection people for instance... dealing with negative crap all day can have an effect on how they treat people..

I get a good reaction pretty much all the time when I give a pleasant response and try and understand what some of these people are going through in a day.. Like I mentioned in a prior thread albeit poorly written.. How many people are going to phone these people at V Inc and tell them that they are tickled with the video images being fed by this low ticket item to their projector... when there is no problem...

There is still no need to be pernickity...and there should be some kind of knuckle smacking if you get a response that you think is inadequate the only way it will improve is to speak to a the persons supervisor.. You will be doing the company a favor... If the supervisors attitude sucks... speak to their supervisor... Someone will eventually take notice and take some action compelling steps to correct it.. Its a pain, but if you want to assist a little company like this that is attempting to put out a great niche product it will eventually get corrected... No company executive wants to get the aforementioned review repeated over and over that their customer service and quality control gets an F.. Trust me someone will care...

[David Darnall]

After fixing my loader problems(gluing that piece of plastic back on), I am still experiencing lockups galore, don't know how much more I can take.
I was watching Timeline last night and it locked up at chapter nine. It took about 1 minute to respond. The only one that worked was the open command. I started the disk again and went to the chapter selection screen and chose 9-13 and it locked up again. I finally had to watch the rest of the movie on my denon 2200, man it was terrible after having watched it through DVI. I've had my theater for 6 months and I can't believe what I was missing not having DVI. I guess I will just have to send it back to Vinc.I will miss it while it's gone.
Are there any other dvd players with dvi and picture controls that I could get instead?
David

[maxvengeance111]

Send it back...give it one more shot, maybe yours got damaged in the shipment. If the new one is crappy, I would say adios to Vinc and get your money back.

[shadowbox]

Last night, I turned my Bravo D2 on, and loaded "The Last Samurai." Guess what? No loading problems, no glitches. Played the entire movie without problems. It looked great. Hopefully my "no CD" incident from the previous night was just opening night jitters. :)

[David Darnall]

Shadowbox,
What kind of display do you have? Don't you love the picture quality from dvi? The D2 has rendered the scaler on my Yamaha rx-z9 useless as tits on a boar hog.
David

[microhof]

Here are my latest experiences...

So far it has played through LOTR:ROTK, Pleasantville, two different television shows, The China Syndrome, and Phenomena. Also I did that test I discussed where I hammered it with 100 pieces of media.

Only now did some of the freezing happen to me, while watching Phenomena, at about the 1 hour mark. They were hiccups as have been described, 1-2 seconds, not layer changes. Video/audio locks up for a second and/or stutters momentarily.

It happened once, then several seconds later. So just to make sure it wasn't a DVD problem I rewinded and played it again. Didn't happen in the same spots. However once it gost past those spots, it happened again, and this time it even seemed like it may have dropped me out of Zoom 1 mode when it happened (although I *had* just been using rew/ff, so maybe that's what caused the drop out of zoom, my memory is hazy and I find it impossible to intentionally reproduce).

Then the movie finished after that point with no more trouble. I went over at the time it stuttered to see if the player was abnormally warm or something, and I didn't think it was.

I still have some more films to watch this weekend so I'll keep looking for it. If it happens once or twice for a couple seconds once in every 9 hours of viewing, I think I can live with it. After all, sometimes comparable stuff happens in the real theater anyway, around reel changing time...

When this player is working like a charm, which for me it has for at least 32396 out of 32400 seconds (99.988% of the time), the picture is, as I have said before, fantastic.

Now, sometimes on DVDs if there is a scene cut, I can sometimes swear that I see a brief combing effect all of a sudden, for a small, small fraction of a second. I can't tell if it's just me or if it's really happening, and it doesn't happen on all scene cuts or on all DVDs. Perhaps this is one of the things that the DVD shootouts tests for -- bad progressive processing on poorly executed (either by actual digital editing or by bad flags on the DVD) scene cuts? Anyway, to complain on this matter for very long makes it sound worse than it is. I honestly don't give a crap that it happens, as even if it were perfect, the human eye will still continue to play tricks on you anyway during scene cuts. And maybe that's all I'm seeing anyway.

Hopefully I won't see these hiccups increase in number and frequency as I complete the "break-in" period. But I guess I am watching as many films as possible right away so I can uncover these while there is still time to complain. I will keep you posted.


And to answer someone's question about how these hiccups can occur... When the player is reading the DVD I would be nearly positive that it is buffering the data somewhere. Meanwhile, the top of the buffer is being fed into the chips that make and output our beautiful picture. If anything happens to be slown up for whatever reason in either the buffering side of things (which would involve the loader and the circuit that reads and buffers it), or in the processing side (the REALmagic chip and supporting hardware), then a hiccup could occur. Depending on which side of things is lagging, there are a myriad of different possible remedies. For example, if it is a case of the buffer sometimes being filled too slowly, the best solution would be to make the buffer a lot bigger, but, sometimes that may not be possible for any number of reasons -- maybe one of the chips they are using to read or store to the buffer only has enough addressing bits for so much buffer space. Or maybe a bigger memory chip would have required a more delicate manufacturing procedure that would be passed on in the form of a $20 price increase, or who knows what else... And we also know that it's highly likely V Inc doesn't even have control over most of this as they are getting larger components from elsewhere. So, I venture to say, only if you are willing to pay thousands of dollars for your DVD player (and not always even then) are you going to be getting equipment for which a bunch of people sat around perfectly and flawlessly matching every hardware component up accross the different interfaces as to provide real-time performance that rivals the performance which something like a pacemaker or flight controller must provide...

[DiscounTech]

A little history:
I was one of the users who was willing to power cycle my D1 every time it crashed, and play cat and mouse with the unpredictable loader. Since I use a DLP front projector with a DVI-D input, the pure digital image was just too good, not to work around the DVD player's quirks. The D1 superceded my Denon DVD-2800, which you may know is a fantastic analog progressive scan player. However the 2800 looks like crap compared to the upconverted DVI output from the Bravo (even though the $800 Denon was the =best= image I could find for under a grand). Clearly this was the way to go, I just wished I could have the build quality of the Denon with the DVI-D capability of the Bravo.

We are a reseller of V Inc products, so I may be biased. However I am first and foremost an audio/videophile, which is the reason we started carrying the V Inc products in the first place.

The good news is that our stock of the V Inc Bravo D2 arrived last week. We have not had any DOA players as reported by users in this forum. I will stay abreast of our RMAs and report if the DOA rates seem high.

Of course I immediately replaced my D1 in my home cinema with the D2. (BenQ PE8700 DLP, native 720P, 16x9 @ 110"). First action, use Video Essentials to calibrate the display. Super happy to now have brightness contrast control on the DVI output. It is not a particularly fine control, so I used it to get into the right range, then fine tuned from the display. Much better black levels and contrast (without clipping highlights) than I could get on the D1. Still would have liked to have seen a gamma adjustment (as on the Denon 2800). The new remote is much larger and has luminous labels on the most common functions (nice touch). It's not exactly stylish (looks like a Sony remote circa 1988). However it is comfortable to use, and has excellent range. The D2 does EVERYTHING I tell it to...no delays, no lockups. I have watched 5 films on the Bravo D2, all flawlessly. The front of the D2 is mirrored and the rest silver. Better looking than the D1, but to me still looks like a cheaper player. But I remind myself it =is= a cheaper player!
On the D1 the price was great ($199), but the player had so many issues, I really felt one got what one paid for. However in the D2, I think it's just great value. You won't mistake the build quality for a Denon or Pioneer Elite, but for a savings of $500-2000, I can live with basic wrappings, as long as it functions well. So far the D2 has lived up to my optimistic hopes that V Inc would get it right on the second generation. The only quibble I have is that on the main menus, it still causes an audible click/scratch noise when selecting some items (are you listening V Inc?). No other brand that I've tested does this. Fortunately it has no impact on watching films. V claims to have improved the analog component out on the D2 also. I have not tested this, however I strongly suspect that if you have a =large= analog-only display, you are better off with a much more expensive player (e.g. Denon or Pioneer Elite). However if you do have a display with DVI capabilities, especially an LCD, Plasma or DLP, this is simply the closest image I have ever seen to film. Until they release HD DVD content, I don't think there will be any substantial image quality improvement. With a great display, the limit is now the actual source material!

The Bravo D2 is available from us for just $234.95 ($15 less than MSRP) from our website.

Feel free to contact us with any questions!

[DiscounTech]

I am amazed, concerned and intrigued by all the problems being posted about the V Inc Bravo D2. Our customers tested about 20 units in the first week of shipping of the D2 and had no out-of-the-box problems.

Could there be bad batches? Or pallettes that got dropped on their heads by shipping companies??

V Inc handles direct sales returns themselves. However if you buy from a reseller (like us) we handle returns. We offer no restocking fee for defective items, and can offer advance replacements. Sorry to self-promote, but since many of you sound disgruntled, remember what VAR stand for "Value Added Reseller". Ironically we're cheaper too.

Anyway, I will continue to keep my pulse on these units, and will report our experience of failure rates with these units.

Has anyone tried all the different types of recordable/rewritable DVD media on the D2?

[DiscounTech]

My thoughts on power:

I've been reading about people with power problems. e.g. Regular brown-outs causing loss of settings, glitches etc.

I have three words for you: Uninterruptable Power Supply

Uninterruptable Power Supplies (UPS) are basically batteries with power smoothers. So electricity is stored for when it is needed, and the output electricity is very clean. They also act as very effective surge suppressors. All computer servers use them for the same reason.
You can buy a used small UPS (e.g. 400VA) for as little as $100. You should have one on your entire A/V setup (excluding a CRT TV, which requires too much load). Most people with front projectors will report brighness variation unless they use a UPS. (it's a light bulb inside!). I use two UPSes, one for the audio & video sources/components and one for the projector. Electricity is the life blood of your home cinema, I can't recommend more strongly using UPSes to provide the best conditions possible for your expensive and sensitive equipment.

The only thing you really need to know when shopping for a UPS is not to overload the unit. Buy one with a high enough VA rating to support the equipment you plan to run off of it.

[mandarax]

Jesse..

I appreciate your comments on the unit.. but also since you only have 4 posts you should know that the self promoting on the sale of the units is a blatent violation of the rules here..

Robert

[maxvengeance111]

Micro, everything you said, I agree with and has also happened to me, like I mentioned before. I went back and watched FOTR extended and it didnt stick at the spot it had the hiccup at. I watched three movies in a row...no hiccups. The picture is fantastic. If it doesn't lock up then yes maybe I will live with it if it happens again. That Discount guy should be kicked off the forum and his posts should be removed. This forum is not about all that crap he wrote...sorry. Micro or anyone else, do you think the audio for DD and DTS sounds as good and loud as other DVD players you have used? I swear I have to turn it up more with this player.

[Jim Noyd]

Max-
Every source device will have different audio ouput levels, good to hear your Bravo is behaving.

[maxvengeance111]

Hey Jim, do you know what these hiccups are that Micro and I ae talking about? I thought if you adjusted your audio levels with your receivers pink noise, then it was set for everything you hooked up to it....so I should use pink noise with a DVD like DVE?

[Jim Noyd]

You can use the pink noise to set the relative levels for all channels and distances. Then all source's channel levels will be balanced.

Not only are source levels different, but also different movies and CDs.

[fendesj]

Jim, whats up with the IR conflicts on Pioneer receivers? My D2 conflicts quite a lot and much more than the V880. Can this be fixed?

[microhof]

max - I have not really played around with my one other DVD player's sound since getting my 6.1 system (it arrived just a few days before the Bravo). However I deliberately tested my system using the scenes in Moria immediately before and during the Bridge of Khazad-Dum, as I heard it really tests the bass output of your system. I enjoyed the sound, however, you're better off asking someone who is more picky about audio than I.

Jim Noyd - any reason you seem to be ignoring our questions about the video/audio freezing hiccups? :)

[byellin]

Is anyone out there using the D2 with a Gefen switch/amp? When I run the D2 through the Gefen switch, the DVI signal drops whenever I hit STOP or EJECT (when the splash screen should appear). I can only get a picture back by a soft power down and up, or by cycling through the TVMODEs until I am back on DVI where I started. When the signal is gone, I can cycle the switch or the projector and it doesn't help. Only cycling the D2 works. If I hook the D2 up directly to the projector, it works perfectly. It's a mystery. Seems like the D2 is either getting something it doesn't like from the Gefen, or not getting something it is expecting. Any insights?

When the signal is there - it works flawlessly. No loader problems. No lockups. Great image.

[WynsWrld98]

The Gefen is a piece of junk as far as I'm concerned. I own a Bravo D1. I returned the Gefen and bought a Dtronics DVI switcher and couldn't be happier! So far it blows the Gefen out of the water on every level from IR response, all DVI connections on back of unit and costs pretty much the same as the Gefen, works everytime, etc.

[maxvengeance111]

Jim - Do you mean the pink noise that is in my receiver or use a disc like DVE? I know movies have different levels.....thanks. :) What about those hiccups? I guess me and micro can keep asking until someone responds...lol

[Jim Noyd]

We're looking into the IR conflict with Pioneer receivers.

The Gefen switch may be related to how your display is finding the signal from the switch. What display do you have and is it HDCP compatible? It may need to be told to find the source again. Try switching the Gefen back and forth or the display input selector.

Can't really quote about audio/video freezing as it can be attributed to many factors in the playback chain. If you think it is from the Bravo alone, get an RMA. Just know these reports have been limited in number. Their QC testing is finding very few failures.

[Jim Noyd]

Originally posted by maxvengeance111
Jim - Do you mean the pink noise that is in my receiver or use a disc like DVE? I know movies have different levels.....thanks. :) What about those hiccups? I guess me and micro can keep asking until someone responds...lol Either pink noise or DVE or Avia.

[microhof]

Originally posted by Jim Noyd
Their QC testing is finding very few failures.
I am curious, as I'm sure a lot of people around here are -- what can you tell us about their QC testing procedures?

[Jim Noyd]

No

[maxvengeance111]

Esh...well..there you go...no on QC. If the hiccups keep happening then i will give a new D2 a shot. Thanks for the audio help.

[maxvengeance111]

Can't really quote about audio/video freezing as it can be attributed to many factors in the playback chain. If you think it is from the Bravo alone, get an RMA. Just know these reports have been limited in number. Their QC testing is finding very few failures.

What factors could it be? If its something simple like that, maybe I can fix it without having to send it back....But it would be strange if both Micro and I were having these problems...we would have to have similar setups I guess? Samsung 43 DLP, bettercables DVI straight to the set. Marantz receiver...

[microhof]

Haha, "No". Well no wonder they are finding few failures if they have no QC testing procedures. ;)

Yeah, it's got to be from the Bravo. However I don't really fault the Bravo for it. One other thing I did realize is that it could still be a flaw on the DVD that causes it, even if it doesn't occur in the same place every time. It could be that there is a surface flaw on the DVD that the loader is trying to compensate for, as some can/do using error correction (although I hear DVD error correction info is not as abundant as on CDs). Perhaps in a rough spot, sometimes the hardware can't keep up with the buffer -- this sounds feasible to me. It wouldn't even necessarily be likely to happen every time you pass the spot on the DVD. It's like how if you have a messed up CD, some players can still play it fine, and those that can't still have no predictable pattern as far as when they finally crap out goes (an audio track might play halfway in one time, maybe a few seconds before/after another)....

This is just another theory. But anyway I'm sure whatever happened in my hiccups was inside the Bravo, as there's nothing between it and my TV. But I guess I can't totally dismiss the suggestion that maybe my TV is using some hiccupy circuitry in it's DVI-to-CRT conversion... (My display is Sony CRT rear pj)

Maybe I should burn a DVD, deliberately deface it somewhere, and play over that spot a few times to see if I see similar behavior. That or play the spot I found it in a ton of times over, except, it's already been mailed back to Netflix. :)

[maxvengeance111]

Well I could keep watching that movie...though the second time i watched it the entire movie was fine...all 3 hours and thirty minutes. I don't think there is anything wrong with that disc. It worked fine on three other DVD players. I can't imagine the the lasers to be different in each player. I think Jim was saying no to telling us about QC....i wonder if its an audio thing...what digital output are you using? I am using a coax.

[microhof]

Yeah, I know what he meant. Just thought "No" was a little curt and wanted to give him a hard time. =]

I didn't mean to suggest that the lasers are different. Just the loaders themselves, and their own implementations of error correction. And I was just suggesting yet another of the many things which could be a possible explanation, none of which we as end consumers can easily test/verify. Now, if we were in the lab we might be able to do something about it.

Seriously, though... if V Inc. can slap some circuits and a loader together, custom-modify some firmware, and screen their logo onto some leftover remotes from the 80's, then why can't we? Maybe we should form our own company and bring the world the true value upscaling DVI player.

I am using the coaxial output as well. I suppose it could just as easily be an audio thing as it could be a video, but I figured the audio tasks that the player must perform are much simpler than the video tasks. But it would make sense that, whichever gets stuck, the Bravo still would hold up the other one too as it has to make sure they stay in sync. Either way we're just shooting in the dark. If we had the instrumentation we could slam each component separately and see what was the bottleneck.

V Inc. looking for US-based engineers, Jim? :)

[byellin]

WynsWrld98,

Thanks for the advice. My Gefen is behind the wall with an IR extender plugged directly into it, run by a Pronto. It works ok with my HDTV receiver, and I have no IR problems. But I am pretty unhappy about this D2 incompatibility thing. Did you have any compatibility issues with the Gefen and the D1? I've tested a couple of D2's this way and the failure to display at splash screen time (don't know who's fault it is) is consistent.

Are you using the Dtronics switch successfully with the D2? I don't want to do experiments if I can help it.

Does anyone else have a successful switch configuration on the path from a D2 to an NEC HT1000 projector to share?

[WynsWrld98]

byellin: I had many problems with the Gefen but can't say any were directly related to the D1 (I have multiple DVI devices). I don't own a D2 (will likely wait for the D3). I hated the Gefen period. The D1 and D2 seem VERY similar so since the Dtronics is working so well with the D1 I think there's a good chance it will work well with the D2.

[byellin]

Wayne,

Thanks for the help. I think I'll wait a small amount of time to give Vinc tech support and Gefen tech support an opportunity to work this issue out. Then, if no luck, you'll see the Gefen on eBay. I have the two way (only have a HDTV tuner and a DVD). I don't like the way the Gefen defaults to input one when there is no signal on input two. What a PITA! I have enough trouble explaining how to operate the equipment without arbitrary sequencing of commands. "Okay now, make sure the DVD is on before hitting the DVD button." With no discretes on the D2, and the retarded default to input one on the Gefen when the signal is missing, this is what I have to do.

Gee, I think I just talked myself into selling it anyway.

Does the Dtronics require a signal to be present in order to obey your selection? How long is your run downsteam of the switch? I need 45 feet to get through the obstacle course to the projector. Do you know if the Dtronics amplifies sufficiently to handle this?

[WynsWrld98]

"Does the Dtronics require a signal to be present in order to obey your selection?" Nope, just tried it and worked fine! I have the 2x1 model of the Dtronics and had the 2x1 model of the Gefen as well. I have multiple DVI DVD players but don't use them all at the same time so a 2x1 switcher is fine for me. My HDTV tuner is the Zenith HD-SAT520 that I do have attached to the DVI switcher at all times.

[maxvengeance111]

Remember...D2 reviews and stuff...not Dtronics...:)

[byellin]

Thanks Wayne. I don't want to tie up this forum with any more non-D2 questions. I guess it is supposed to be about the D2 afterall. I'll send you a private message about this. I appreciate the patience of the forum members.

[DiscounTech]

I did not mean to irritate anyone with my experiences of the D2. Indeed I threw in some promotion of our services, however I actually feel very uncomfortable not being forthright about our relationship with V Inc.
i.e. Don't you have a right to know that although I am trying to be objective, I do have an affiliation to the subject matter?

I certainly read pages and pages of posts before replying. I truly believe that my input was in response to other users comments, so I am not clear how "This forum is not about all that crap he [I]wrote...". I agree that the title is "Review of the Bravo D2", hence I focused on the D2.

On the topic of the Pioneer/Bravo IR issues. Has anyone tried polarizing their IR receivers and remotes. I was thinking that you if you put a polarizing filter on each receiver offset by 90 degrees, and one on the remotes to match, couldn't you effectively block one from the other? Just a thought.

Otherwise you could use the RF-IR multi-device universal remotes. (the ones with the little dongles that sit just in front of the units).

The quickest solution with a front projector would surely be to mount the Bravo D2 in a different location to the other equipment, and just run a long digital audio cable back.

[DiscounTech]

Does anyone know of a multi-region hack for the Bravo D1 or D2 players?

I've checked the major hack sites, but none have a listing. There is one for the D1 if you're willing to replace the loader. I'm hoping for a firmware or keypad trick.

Thanks in advance for any help you can offer!

[shadowbox]

Originally posted by David Darnall
Shadowbox,
What kind of display do you have? Don't you love the picture quality from dvi? The D2 has rendered the scaler on my Yamaha rx-z9 useless as tits on a boar hog.
David

I have a Sony HS20 projector. Yes, the picture is amazing. I have the custom setting to match the Sony resolution. Well, almost match. The HS20 resolution is 1386 X 788, the closest you can get is 1366 X 768. But I wish the Sony was a regular 1280X720 projector. The higher resolution of the Sony doesn't really add much, and if there is a glitch with the D2 requiring a power cycle to reboot, you have to re-enter all the custom settings. That was a problem the first night I had the D2 but I haven't had any loader problems since then.

[WynsWrld98]

shadowbox: if the HS10/HS20 even had the standard refresh rate of 60 Hz DVD players such as the Sammy HD841 and HD941 might have worked in their 768p mode with the HS10/HS20.

I have a D1 and know I've lost power and don't lose the 1366 x 768 custom settings I have in it. That's weird that V Inc. went backwards and put this into volatile memory vs. non-volatile with the D2. So much for improvement. I hope they put these settings in non-volatile memory with the D3.

[maxvengeance111]

Thats a good question for Jim, and I am sorry if you answered this already. But why is it when you turn the player off, with the actualy button on the player, all of the settings for the D2 are lost, and you even have to turn it back on for 720p? Is this or can this be fixed with firmware? Thanks.

[PJfan]

Originally posted by WynsWrld98
"My HDTV tuner is the Zenith HD-SAT520 that I do have attached to the DVI switcher at all times.

Off topic - Wayne, are you using the HD-SAT520 over the air in Anaheim Hills? I'm thinking of getting one for my HS10 as well but was concern about the reception since my part of Anaheim Hills does not have line of sight with Mt. Wilson. I'm near the Running Springs school.

[wsiler]

Originally posted by Jim Noyd
We're looking into the IR conflict with Pioneer receivers.

The Gefen switch may be related to how your display is finding the signal from the switch. What display do you have and is it HDCP compatible? It may need to be told to find the source again. Try switching the Gefen back and forth or the display input selector.

Can't really quote about audio/video freezing as it can be attributed to many factors in the playback chain. If you think it is from the Bravo alone, get an RMA. Just know these reports have been limited in number. Their QC testing is finding very few failures.

So Jim, let me see if I have this correct. Despite the fact that the problems being stated in this forum (and others) are identical for each user despite having completely different setups (secondary equipment), VINC is finding a low number of failures in its QC process and there could be "many factors" regarding the hiccups with these players? Where does this QC process occur? At the factory prior to any shipping? It seems that there are several factors here that are having an effect on your player quality.

1. Either shipping from factory to distribution to end user is causing damage
2. There is a design flaw in the loader due to weak laser mount
3. Bad memory buffers are being used on the board and causing "hiccups" in play
Or
4. All of the above

Regardless, your responses seemed informed and genuinely concerned right up until the point that you simply responded with "No" to a users request for validation of the QC process. It is precisely that type of response from VINC that has been infuriating me from the start. Don't get me wrong, I don't need you or any other company to hold my hand and make me feel OK about my purchase. However, a simple explanation and less terse response would be a simple matter to accomplish and goes a long way to show that your company can be customer oriented. One might think it would even be good exposure for VINC considering your company has a tech support team that does not have 30 seconds to make their email responses even remotely customer friendly.

So, if VINC is not seeing these problems in THEIR QC pocess, answer me this. How many units are you getting returned via RMA? If it isn't very many, then why are your tech support people so busy? Seems to me that they are overwhelmed. That seems to be the consensus since no one is getting timely or friendly service from them. Furthermore, if this is such a rarity, why did the tech support person immediately tell me they would replace my player without trying to find any background information at all? They had no questions for me. Just a response of "we will send another player". I know that this is not because your tech support team just cares about me as a customer and you have a policy of returning every player when a customer has a problem. Seems like maybe he had heard of this problem before. Furthermore, if this forum is pretty much exclusive to just 10 percent of the people who purchase these players (enthusiasts), wouldn't a failure rate of 1 in 5 for people who have posted be a little excessive? Even it was 1 in 20 wouldn't that be much? How about an answer sans the whitewash...

So what is it...

1. Are the tech support people not scurrying to deal with these issues?
2. Are there not a lot of these players getting returned?
3. Is there a design problem with the box and what is it?
4. When will it be fixed?
5. When is your technical support team going to get retrained to treat it's customers like people instead of just RMA numbers?

Your customers deserve honest and DIRECT answers. I have given you several questions in this post. Now let's see how many VINC will actually answer.

Regards,
Wiley

[byellin]

I was wrong when I reported earlier that I have ruled out the DVI switch in causing my D2 troubles (loss of signal when splash screen is put up). Turns out that the combination of the Gefen and the D2 is a problem that the folks at Gefen have seen before. I can recreate it anytime I want to. It occurred on my first D2 and on the replacement. One of the tech support guys at Gefen told me that the problem first occurred at the CEDIA show. I still don't know who the guilty party is. Maybe it's both of them. The D2 is definitely "loosing it's brains" from something the switch is or isn't doing. I want to warn anyone out there, before they knock their brains out (as I did), trying to solve this one. I'm going to have to wait for the tech support guys to fix it. There's got to be a lot of common users out there. Once again - anyone else having this problem? I'd feel so much better knowing I am not alone.

[DiscounTech]

We just received our first RMA request for a D2.

The user reported:

1) Spiderman and The Italian Job DVDs (both bought at BestBuy) caused a Region error upon insertion (I'm confident that Bestbuy sells Region 1 discs). Can anyone else corroborate this?

2) Player would sometimes not eject (fixed with cold reboot).

3) Pioneer Elite IR problems (known issue, not much to discuss)

4) Unit loses settings such as DVI mode upon loss of power. Is this typical? It wasn't on the D1. I've heard other users mention it, but is this by design??

In my unit, I'm having none of these problems. I'd really like to know which of these issues are ubiquitous in D2s and which could be symptoms of a defective hardware.

P.S. Are there any other resellers who can compare failure rates with us?
(Our players we delivered to us on a pallette by truck, such that UPS wouldn't have been able to drop them from a great height). However we ship to customers via UPS. It would be worth associating failures with shipping method.

[mallu2u]

wsiler: I stand with you on this. If VINC can reply to this and work on this issues..then it is a company worth buying from, otherwise....we have other worthy options for our purchase.

[microhof]

Originally posted by DiscounTech
In my unit, I'm having none of these problems.
Are you saying that you also are not having the problem (#4) where settings are lost during a full reboot/unplugging?

//edit : Shoot, I caused a new page. Now Jim will never see all your questions. :(

[Rich4av]

Originally posted by DiscounTech
Does anyone know of a multi-region hack for the Bravo D1 or D2 players?

I've checked the major hack sites, but none have a listing. There is one for the D1 if you're willing to replace the loader. I'm hoping for a firmware or keypad trick.

Thanks in advance for any help you can offer!

Well, you can check Videogon where someone is selling the hacked D2 for list or less. I bought a D1 from him last year and it was new with the multi-region capability as well as 1080i component output. Maybe you can buy your region free D2s from him direct. I believe that this seller is connected with V-Inc. somehow.

[Jim Noyd]

Wiley-
Like I said we have very few failures for the new D2's.

As far as the memory settings issue you spoke of engineering is looking into the issue. When I have a complete answer for you you'll hear more.

I try to give accurate information and help in this forum. That includes giving properly complete answers.

Hope this helps you-

[microhof]

Honestly, how long does it take for engineering to answer that sort of question? First, they have to reproduce the problem. Well that should take about 2 minutes while they grab the nearest D2 and try it, since from what I've heard EVERY unit exhibits this. Then, they need to plug in their development tools and/or examine the design to see if this is expected behavior or if it is a bug they somehow missed.

Is V Inc.'s DVD player department a bunch of 17 year old kids who realized they could purchase momitsus dirt cheap and toss their parts into a new case? Honestly, it shouldn't take that long to get an answer about something like this.

All of you should realize one thing. Jim Noyd's signature says "Advertising". Tell me why any of you thinks this means that he has some sort of direct line to ask Steve in engineering why the hell the unit can't store it's settings somewhere non-volatile? And even if he does have that close of communication, he doesn't want to get into details here because anything he says has the potential to bite him in the butt if the wrong person reads it and takes some sort of legal action.

[wsiler]

Originally posted by mallu2u
wsiler: I stand with you on this. If VINC can reply to this and work on this issues..then it is a company worth buying from, otherwise....we have other worthy options for our purchase.

I am glad to hear someone else feels the same way. I have felt a little like the lone complainer in some ways. I know many people are so happy with their improved picture quality that a few hiccups don't bother them that much. I suscribe to the thinking that if someone sells me a car and it is supposed to be a Ferrari, it doesn't matter how little I paid for it (in relative terms). It matters that it perform like a Ferrari and that it do so ALL THE TIME. I don't want a Ferrari that turns into a Pinto at random intervals (apologies to any Pinto drivers out there though from most peoples gear lists, it seems unlikely there are too many here :). I know some people are probably reading my posts and thinking "man, that guy is hard to please" but hey, being the customer means you should hold the seller to their word. Don't tell me I am getting a Ferrari and then give me something that won't start unless the moon is in alignment with Venus and a butterfly flaps its wings in Guam. It needs to work all the time, all the way.

That being my attitude as a consumer, my major problem then is the fact that I have a D2 sitting dead in my AV cabinet and the tech support people have done little or nothing to respond, noone at VINC will say what the problem is, and until about 15 minutes ago, no one has shown interest. I finally got a reply from someone at VINC after copying the sales@vinc.com address in my last status update request. Of course, after taking my serial again, I was told "I do not see any problem with returning the unit for credit". Well, I sure hope she meant a refund because that was what I explicitly asked for. I don't want a credit at VINC. That would be like lending them +250 bucks and letting them earn interest on it. I want a refund and then if they have this silly stuff cleared up by revision D3, I might give them another try. That is assuming some large company hasn't put them out of business by producing the same type of product but without all the defects.

Cheers all,
Wiley

[wsiler]

Originally posted by Jim Noyd
Wiley-
Like I said we have very few failures for the new D2's.

As far as the memory settings issue you spoke of engineering is looking into the issue. When I have a complete answer for you you'll hear more.

I try to give accurate information and help in this forum. That includes giving properly complete answers.

Hope this helps you-

Jim, put that in numbers. A count of how many D2s have failed would happen to be both accurate and complete in regards to my question. Do me a favor and just say you do not know if you do not know. Otherwise, your responses come off as nothing more than a thinly veiled attempt at pulling a collective CYA for VINC.

Very few = What?

Let me guess by very few you mean that the number is only 300 returned. Of course that is only a few. It is really a tiny number... unless the number of D2s shipped is only 2000. If you can say "we have very few failures" then you can tell me HOW MANY failures. If you are afraid of the PR backlash then just say so.

How many are failing? What is the ratio of D2s failed to D2s shipped?
1 of 5? 1 of 10? 1 of 100?
Again a direct question that can have only one answer.

Do you not know? Will you not tell us? Just say it out loud for everyone so we can sure where VINC stands on this issue. You have been nothing but coy in my estimation. Then again, maybe you really don't know. If so just say so. If you cannot answer these questions then maybe an engineer from VINC needs to get on this forum. Maybe someone like the product manager should be on this board answering questions. Jeez, get the president of VINC if you have to. Surely, someone can do better than your "we have very few failures" answer to my very specific question about the failure count.

The memory issue was raised by someone else as far as setting being lost but just for the record, my unit drops all the settings the moment the power button is pressed on the front of the chassis. So NO POWER = NO MEMORY = NO SETTINGS. Sounds like a design issue with settings being stored in volatile memory. However, I realize that you are unable to confirm or deny this at this time...

Microhof has it right in his assessment of your design team. I would like to know how a design win from the D1 suddenly disappeared in D2? From what I have seen, the D1 persisted settings correctly.

Just a word of advice for you to pass up to the VINC management. Making a mistake and saying "sorry, this is what happened and we will fix it" goes a lot further than just saying "here I will ship you a new one" or "we have very few failures". The facts speak for themselves. The failures exist and I for one would like to know why they are happening and how it is being resolved. The fact that you have yet to answer any of the questions I posted previously makes me think that the problem is worse than I thought. That makes me think that accepting a replacement D2 would be pretty dumb since the likelihood of it failing is so high. I recommend you either get some backup from someone corporate at VINC or just say you do not know... In the meantime, maybe someone at VINC will process my RMA and get me my money back.

Regards,
Wiley

[maxvengeance111]

Wow, people are really steamed...lol. I played Spider-man and it worked fine, so I am not sure what people are telling Discount...I would have to say that if every D2 loses settings if you turn it off with the button on the player then that would be a major flaw in design...is that something you can fix with firmware? I don't want to lose my cool just yet, but I think Vinc needs to address this right away.

[fendesj]

Well my D2 does not lose its settings when I remove power by pulling the plug or hitting the power button. I tested this last night and it still retained the settings of DVI 720P, Digital Audio, and 16:9 screen. Funny thing was I first hooked up via composite so the only setting change was 16:9. I then removed power and at the next power up the screen size went back to 4:3. I then changed to the final settings and they have stuck ever since. My problem is the IR conflict with my Pioneer receiver. If this can't be resolved I will have to return it. Jim Noyd, I appreciate the information you provide. If it wasn't for your input on the forum I would have returned it already.

[Alex Bischoff]

Originally posted by fendesj
Well my D2 does not lose its settings when I remove power by pulling the plug or hitting the power button. I tested this last night and it still retained the settings of DVI 720P, Digital Audio, and 16:9 screen.

Does your D2 also remember its brightness/contrast settings?

[maxvengeance111]

Thats weird that yours doesnt do that...I wonder what this means....I still think vinc needs to respond quickly on this.

[mallu2u]

Originally posted by wsiler
I am glad to hear someone else feels the same way. I have felt a little like the lone complainer in some ways. I know many people are so happy with their improved picture quality that a few hiccups don't bother them that much. I suscribe to the thinking that if someone sells me a car and it is supposed to be a Ferrari, it doesn't matter how little I paid for it (in relative terms). It matters that it perform like a Ferrari and that it do so ALL THE TIME. I don't want a Ferrari that turns into a Pinto at random intervals (apologies to any Pinto drivers out there though from most peoples gear lists, it seems unlikely there are too many here :). I know some people are probably reading my posts and thinking "man, that guy is hard to please" but hey, being the customer means you should hold the seller to their word. Don't tell me I am getting a Ferrari and then give me something that won't start unless the moon is in alignment with Venus and a butterfly flaps its wings in Guam. It needs to work all the time, all the way.

That being my attitude as a consumer, my major problem then is the fact that I have a D2 sitting dead in my AV cabinet and the tech support people have done little or nothing to respond, noone at VINC will say what the problem is, and until about 15 minutes ago, no one has shown interest. I finally got a reply from someone at VINC after copying the sales@vinc.com address in my last status update request. Of course, after taking my serial again, I was told "I do not see any problem with returning the unit for credit". Well, I sure hope she meant a refund because that was what I explicitly asked for. I don't want a credit at VINC. That would be like lending them +250 bucks and letting them earn interest on it. I want a refund and then if they have this silly stuff cleared up by revision D3, I might give them another try. That is assuming some large company hasn't put them out of business by producing the same type of product but without all the defects.

Cheers all,
Wiley

Wiley: Why don't you talk to their management/supervisors and strongly convey your need for getting a refund. I would even write a regular letter and write to the CEO of the company via email and snail mail to get a refund. This would help them understand the gravity of the situation and most likely might call u back. Good luck!

[Jim Noyd]

Wiley-
If you send back the unit back with the RMA and it is defective as you say, I'm sure you'll get a full credit.

[Jerry Pease]

Originally posted by wsiler
answer me this. How many units are you getting returned via RMA?
don't know what you have been smoking but, FYI, there is not a company in the world who is going to answer that question. Typically, that information is considered sensitive and proprietary in nature.

[maxvengeance111]

What about the power off/lost settings bug Jim?

[microhof]

Originally posted by maxvengeance111
What about the power off/lost settings bug Jim?

I think he said they're looking into that in one of those posts that gets lost among the rest. However, I think we really want to know about this. I just verified that mine still does it (thought maybe there was actually some trigger that finally stores it somewhere safe like maybe standby mode or something and I just hadn't realized it).

If this is abnormal and an exchange can be issued I might think about doing that. Especially if it also has the potential for eliminating the very very occasional hiccups.

But I'm afraid to risk a return for fear that I'll get some weird charges AND receive a unit in worse condition. In fact now I'm also afraid they'd "refurb" one of the crappy returns and send me one of those instead.

[Jerry Pease]

Originally posted by byellin
Is anyone out there using the D2 with a Gefen switch/amp? When I run the D2 through the Gefen switch, the DVI signal drops whenever I hit STOP or EJECT (when the splash screen should appear). I dont have that problem. FYI, I have the 4 x 1.

[PJfan]

Originally posted by mallu2u
Wiley: Why don't you talk to their management/supervisors and strongly convey your need for getting a refund. I would even write a regular letter and write to the CEO of the company via email and snail mail to get a refund. This would help them understand the gravity of the situation and most likely might call u back. Good luck!

I second that. If you go to their web site, you can find the name of the big kahuna under "About Us".

[wsiler]

Originally posted by Jerry Pease
don't know what you have been smoking but, FYI, there is not a company in the world who is going to answer that question. Typically, that information is considered sensitive and proprietary in nature.

LOL - ain't smokin' nothin' but I do think that if someone says "everything is fine" they should be willing to quantify their results and qualify the statement. Besides, like I said before, it is not so much the fact that there is a problem as it is that no information has been communicated beyond the very basic "we have very few failures for the new D2's" answer. How about something a little more definitive? Are you suggesting that just saying what is happening with a simple statement would in some way be giving away proprietary information? As you may have seen in my previous post, I just want to know what the problem is and why. I realize fully that some of what I am asking is sensitive information but that lack of any OTHER information just makes it seem like the little information we are getting is disingenuous. Go look at my questions and aside from asking for specific numbers, what have I asked for that is proprietary? A problem statement? So, if they tell us what causes the loss of the settings when the system is turned off via the front switch, they will have given us a trade secret? It was a simple question and one that I think could be answered simply without giving away ANY proprietary information or increasing any corporate risk to VINC. It would, in fact, increase their reputation and show that they are customer oriented. Are they a company that puts the customers needs at the center of their vision? Or are they just an impersonal entity that may give you a good product (when it works) but could care less if you have problems? The measure of a good company is how it deals with its problems, not with its successes. There are a several things that would have changed my particular attitude in all of this regarding this company.

1. Better RMA process
2. Better responses (timely and better worded) from customer service
3. A simple problem statement: "Dear customer, some people may experience problems with X. We at VINC care about the quality of our products and our customers experience. If you have this problem do X..."
4. Someone saying exactly why I and others received DOA players. I would have accepted "the pallet of players fell over in the warehouse". I would not have liked it much, but it would have been acceptable.

Oh, and Jim: I almost wet my pants laughing at your response regarding my return. You just repeated the same thing I already heard from my last email from VINC.

Wiley-
If you send back the unit back with the RMA and it is defective as you say, I'm sure you'll get a full credit.

Is that VINC speak for "you will get a refund"? Please define "you will get a full credit". Like I said, I am looking for a refund not a credit of any sort. The last time I checked my dictionary, the words didn't necessarily have the same meaning. Maybe you were just having a little fun sending me the same response. If so, good on you! 8) I assume that you are probably a little irritated with my posts (though you have been very professional) and possibly for good reason. I don't tend to give much quarter. Then again, as the consumer, I see no reason to. Regardless, I hope you have taken nothing personal. You just happen to be the whipping post since no other entities that represent VINC have even bothered to make a statement of any kind. For the fact that you posted some responses, I give you my thanks.

So to bring this all to a close (at least for my part in the discussion), I will let everyone know about my final resolution only. I will drop my further request for information as the horse is still dead and all the beating has tired my arm greatly... 8)

Cheers,
Wiley

[Jerry Pease]

Originally posted by wsiler
I just want to know what the problem is and why.
are you a shareholder?

[Jerry Pease]

Originally posted by wsiler
Are you suggesting that just saying what is happening with a simple statement would in some way be giving away proprietary information?
FYI: companies have policies. The bigger the corporation the more legal requirements are in place even for simple little statements.

[byellin]

Jerry Pease,

I am glad you aren't having the problems I am. Exactly what model switch to you have? Is it the obnoxious blue box "Extend-it" kit or the earlier model 4X1 DVI swtich. It will help when I call tech support back and tell them to look for differences.

[wsiler]

Originally posted by Jerry Pease
are you a shareholder?

No I am not.... Are you? What is this pointless drivel you are spouting now Jerry?

Telling a customer why their memory won't retain settings does not breach any companies corporate policies. I sure as helll should not need to be a shareholder to have someone tell me what is wrong with my player. The fact that you actually think that VINC should not tell anyone why they are getting problems is patently assinine. Are you one of those guilty consumers who do not feel they deserve anything better from the companies they deal with? Or do you have an interest in protecting VINC?

Regardless, your assertations are ludicrous. I asked simple questions that have simple answers. If you don't like them, then maybe you should follow VINCs example. Keep you mouth shut.

Regards,
Wiley

[maxvengeance111]

Lets all just calm down. Vinc will get back to us on the memory issues. Have patience. Just think Wsiler...if they don't and this becomes a huge problem, they wont be around anymore. :)

[wsiler]

Max,

I have no interest in seeing any company crumble. I would just like to know why my player is dead and when the process that lead to it's death will be corrected. Just for people out there who obviously may not understand my motivation, I make my decision on whether to get a replacement or a refund based upon whether the events that lead to the problem have been corrected or not. I don't want a refurb if I RMA mine back and I don't want to get another broken one if they send me a new replacement. So far, we have not been given any real information regarding this problem. People have posted their issues, VINC has failed to respond with anything other than their "we aren't seeing that many failiures" answer. Well, I still assert that even if they are not seeing that many errors, we are. Now tell us why and tel us how you fixed it.

Regards,
W

[maxvengeance111]

I don't want Vinc to crumble, but I do want to see this player work well. They are looking into it, I am sure we will get an answer soon.

[DiscounTech]

Max,

I have just tested my D2....

I tried changing brightness settings whilst in 720P mode, then:
- Turning off from button on panel panel - Settings were retained
- Unplugging from power in standby mode - Settings were retained
- Unplugging from power whilst playing DVD - Settings were retained

I would have to therefore conclude that the volatile memory issues being reported are failures of some kind (bad batches??), not inherent design issues.
It also sounds like I am not the only lucky user.

My unit still has not crashed, locked up or skipped!

Should we start comparing serial numbers or something?

[microhof]

Originally posted by DiscounTech
I tried changing brightness settings whilst in 720P mode, then:
- Turning off from button on panel panel - Settings were retained
- Unplugging from power in standby mode - Settings were retained
- Unplugging from power whilst playing DVD - Settings were retained


DiscounTech -

What you tested is not the reported problem. I, too, have my contrast/brightness/saturation settings retained no matter what I do to the power.
The settings we are seeing lost are within the actual blue setup menu system that you see if you push the setup button while no disc is playing (E.G. audio output type, video output mode, and TV Type 4:3/4:3 pan scan/16:9)...
Can you try this and see what happens?

[DiscounTech]

Sorry, should have been more explicit.

The whole time I had it set to 720P/16x9 which are not the defaults. At no time did they change nor were they lost. I suppose I should test again, changing these values, and seeing if they are not saved through one power down method or another. However this setting which I set the day I installed the unit, is being retained, whilst others are reporting that this is =always= lost, correct?

[DiscounTech]

I just tried similar permutations of powering off the unit having changed the output resolution between 480p, 720p, and 1080i and in all scenarios settings were retained. I even tried unplugging from wall, before exiting the setup menu, just after selecting the new value.

My setup values appear to be sucessfully writing to NVRAM.

My firmware revision is 1.1.9 and my loader is:
EPO-LDR DP-306A 8x6M

Does anyone have any different versions/loaders?

[maxvengeance111]

Yeah I wouldnt care if I lost my contrast, etc. settings because I leave mine on the default anyhow. But losing the 720p setting and audio setting everytime needs to be fixed. Did you read my post discount about Spiderman working fine?

[DiscounTech]

Max,

I did indeed read your response. Thanks for testing Spiderman. The customer was very certain of the origin of the DVDs, and has tested them in another Region 1 player. Hence it seems to me that this user had a defective unit. How or why there are so many different issues, I don't fully understand. The few people posting good results, seem to have almost entirely positive results, whilst the ones with problems have a plethora of issues:
Locking up / non-ejection
Loss of settings on reboot
Region Errors
Disc playback glitches

Not sure what the common variable is here....

Can you compare your firmware version and loader with mine?

[microhof]

Originally posted by DiscounTech
Can you compare your firmware version and loader with mine?
My firmware/loader version, as has been posted a few times in this thread (sorry, had to say it), match yours.

So you have the mythical flawless Bravo D2, then, from what it sounds like to me. You are correct, I am losing all those display and audio settings from the setup menu on pressing the button on the front, or on unplugging from the wall. Maybe I should ask for an exchange/repair? I'm so afraid to get a worse one!! Or maybe I should open it up and see if someone forgot to put in a watch battery.

[maxvengeance111]

Hey micro...I think we should wait and see what Vinc says. If t hey say we need to return it, just demand a brand new unit. If they say they cant do that, then ask for the money back. That's what I will do.

[wsiler]

Hello All,

I finally have some good news on my Bravo D2 return. I finally received an email and a phone call (which my wife received at home) from VINC today and they are sending me the FedEx ticket to return my D2 at no cost and refunding my purchase. Thank you Mark @ VINC for responding to my email with actual explanations! It was lacking in the other emails I received. Having my wife tell me you read her the email I sent you was a little strange but if that is what it takes to get the ball rolling, so be it.

As to the technical problems remaining, you guys are on your own as I have not received any new information regarding why the problem occured. I hope your experiences are better than mine both with the product and the customer service.

To be fair, there are MANY people out there loving their D2 and having great experiences. I am obviously just not one of them. Based upon others experience this still looks like a great product and their posts regarding image quality speak for themselves. I think it is safe to say that no one should be afraid of purchasing this product as long as they are willing to deal with some issues if there is a defect or shipping damage.

Thanks to those who responded to my posts with suggestions and helpful ideas.

Regards,
Wiley

[maxvengeance111]

Didn't say anything about the reset?

[maxvengeance111]

Did you ask for a brand new model sent to you and they said no? Or you just didn't bother and wanted the money back?

[wsiler]

Originally posted by maxvengeance111
Did you ask for a brand new model sent to you and they said no? Or you just didn't bother and wanted the money back?

Was this post for microhof or me?

Thanks,
Wiley

[maxvengeance111]

Sorry..for you Wsiler

[wsiler]

I started off seeking a replacement model. Then I saw other people having the same problems so I asked lots of questions (as many have noticed:)) to which I got few responses. So, I decided that rather than take a crap shoot, I would seek a refund instead and either purchase something else or try again for the D3 in the fall. All the while seeking answers to the technical problems that have occured. I couldn't get answers and couldn't get customer support really. Finally, someone responded to me and the ball is rolling. So, for me, just having a refund and not having to deal with the hassles is going to be a relief. The only question is how long will it take to process.

Cheers,
Wiley

PS. Yes, I realize I am a demanding customer... Then again, shouldn't we all be? :)

[maxvengeance111]

Well if my player wasnt playing movies then I would be just as upset as you. I am told that a firmware update is in the works to fix the power off/lost settings. If they don't come through on this then I will also ask for a refund.

[microhof]

max - where'd you hear on the firmware update??

[maxvengeance111]

From Vinc....

[Mark Lareau]

So Vinc says they "are working on" a firmware update for the power off/lost settings. Godd to know as this problem afflicts my D2.

When people are talking about IR problems with (was it Panasonic?) receivers, are they talking about the receivers becoming unable to accept commands from their respective remotes after being "exposed to" the Bravos remote? This has started happening with my Harman Kardon AVR7200, and I was going to get my HK remote replaced but if the Bravo is the problem, that is one shortcoming I don't think I'll be able to accept.

Any thoughts?

[Jerry Pease]

Originally posted by wsiler
No I am not.... Are you?
I am merely offering you how things work in the real world. You should learn how to manage your expectations.

What is this pointless drivel you are spouting now Jerry?
drivel? :) I am sorry you fail to understand my point. I should have taken your ‘10’ :rolleyes: post into consideration and been more to the point. Even though it has been already suggested a few times, maybe this will help:

Why dont you take your problem(s) to VINC. Last I looked; the url here says avsforum and not VINC. This is not VINC customer compaint and or whine website. We are here to read D2 reviews.

My final advice is with your unrealistic expectations don’t buy anything online. B&M purchasing usually cost more but should yield better customer satisfaction.

Good luck,

[Jerry Pease]

Originally posted by maxvengeance111
From Vinc....

In ref to the firmware update, I heard the same thing "late" last week.

[wsiler]

Originally posted by Jerry Pease
I am merely offering you how things work in the real world. You should learn how to manage your expectations.

[B]
drivel? :) I am sorry you fail to understand my point. I should have taken your ‘10’ :rolleyes: post into consideration and been more to the point. Even though it has been already suggested a few times, maybe this will help:

Why dont you take your problem(s) to VINC. Last I looked; the url here says avsforum and not VINC. This is not VINC customer compaint and or whine website. We are here to read D2 reviews.

My final advice is with your unrealistic expectations don’t buy anything online. B&M purchasing usually cost more but should yield better customer satisfaction.

Good luck,

Jerry,

You are a fool if you think that just because you buy direct you should not expect the same quality as B&M. Not like this was purchased on eBay. There should be fewer chances of product failure with direct purchase not more. You should learn how to RAISE your expectations. You obviously think that DOA players are just a fact of life. Sorry, that is failing by the company in my book. If it were a rarity then it would not be so big a deal. When it happens repeatedly, that is indicative of a greater problem.

Every one of my posts have been relevant to the D2, VINC, and its customer service. My questions have been relevant to the product and the problems at hand. You obviously don't want a review of the D2. You just want POSITIVE reviews of the D2. Otherwise, what are YOU whining about pal? Well, so sorry. I don't have a positive review for you. See if you can cope. For now let me suggest this... You don't like my posts? Don't read them.

Regards,
Wiley

[Jerry Pease]

Originally posted by wsiler
Jerry,

You are a fool if you think that just because you buy direct you should not expect the same quality as B&M. Not like this was purchased on eBay. There should be fewer chances of product failure with direct purchase not more. You should learn how to RAISE your expectations. You obviously think that DOA players are just a fact of life. Sorry, that is failing by the company in my book. If it were a rarity then it would not be so big a deal. When it happens repeatedly, that is indicative of a greater problem.

Every one of my posts have been relevant to the D2, VINC, and its customer service. My questions have been relevant to the product and the problems at hand. You obviously don't want a review of the D2. You just want POSITIVE reviews of the D2. Otherwise, what are YOU whining about pal? Well, so sorry. I don't have a positive review for you. See if you can cope. For now let me suggest this... You don't like my posts? Don't read them.

Regards,
Wiley
you got you RMA, go and get a life. TROLL !

[Jim Noyd]

Anyone say enough?

[maxvengeance111]

Dudes...chill out...no one on here is a troll...Wsiler talking about his problem with the D2 is fine on here. I would consider it helpful in a review. Any info on what Vinc is doing about these problems is good.

[mallu2u]

Guys: Take it easy. Sometimes difference of opinions does exist and we have to live with it. I do however agree that issues with a product/company should be brought out on such forums as others benefit from it as well. Product Issues can be faced by anyone in the world and knowing how a company does/does not repond is good information for us as it helps us make a right/informed decision. Lets try to keep the thread to report more reviews of D2. Good or bad.

[David Bott]

Play nice please or the thread will be closed.

Thank you kindly.

[microhof]

I'm interested in whether we can find a serial number pattern here.

SERIAL NUMBERS (FILL IN THE BLANKS):

Someone who had a DOA unit: ____________

Someone who had a unit with no problems but setting loss and rare occasional half-second freezing (me): SLDAASAE170935

Someone who has a unit and claims to have none of these problems so far (DiscounTech?): ____________

Anyone else, tell us the serial number and where in the spectrum of problems yours lies.

[paulbehnke]

WOW, I wonder how you'all analyze the cars you've bought or the spouses you have...such passions over a small black box!!!!!! I enjoy listening in.

[microhof]

Hi troll. Please return to eating children and goats under your bridge. Also, I see you are from San Antonio. Do you happen to be affiliated with that idiotic public access show, The Worst Show?

[wsiler]

Originally posted by microhof
I'm interested in whether we can find a serial number pattern here.

SERIAL NUMBERS (FILL IN THE BLANKS):

Someone who had a DOA unit: ____________

Someone who had a unit with no problems but setting loss and rare occasional half-second freezing (me): SLDAASAE170935

Someone who has a unit and claims to have none of these problems so far (DiscounTech?): ____________

Anyone else, tell us the serial number and where in the spectrum of problems yours lies.

My symptoms.....

Will load no disks whatsoever...
Settings not retained in memory on power off...
No idea about freezing, never got that far.... ;)

My serial: SLDAASAE170676

Thanks,
Wiley

[fendesj]

Mark Lareau - The IR conflicts are with Pioneer devices. For example when I hit PAUSE on the D2 remote, my Pioneer receiver changes to FM mode. When I hit the Audio button on the D2 remote the receiver volume level goes down one notch. When I change volume using the Receivers remote, the D2 will perform a next chapter. These are just some examples as there are other conflicts.

Jim Noyd - Any update on the IR issue yet?

[fendesj]

Originally posted by Alex Bischoff
Does your D2 also remember its brightness/contrast settings?

Yes, my D2 also retains its brightness/contrast settings.

[ReeseG]

Mine had...

- "NO CD" issue when loading discs
- Settings not retained in memory
- 1/2 - 1 sec. freezes (but only on the second day of use...hasn't happened since...go figure)

SN: SLDAASAE160098

And returned to V for swap.

[maxvengeance111]

Did you get a new one yet? Did you make sure they were sending you a brand new unit?

[byellin]

I gotta brand new replacement unit. Vinc said they are not sending refurbs - it's too early in the game for that. Unfortunately it had all the same problems (loss of settings, splash screen loss of DVI signal). The loss of setting is typical of what I am seeing here. The loss of DVI signal at STOP or EJECT appears to be unique to something in my environment as no one else has reported it, and my original and replacement did the same exact thing. The odds are that something in my setup is triggering it. Still scratching my head and waiting for tech support to figure it out. No loader issues or lockups here on either unit. I am encouraged that some of the D2's actually hold the settings. There's hope!

I am on the road now and don't know the serial, but I will post it as soon as I get back home.

[mandarax]

Great Gooogleee Woooglee guys ... Some of the responses are overly aggressive and given this I would not wish to get involved with an issue on a forum given the gaping hole created for any answer no matter how rational it seems to the individual. Sometimes you have to allow an action complelling response where the company can be left whole and intact. I don't see that possibility in some of the responses that are a bit too misanthropic in my opinion and only gives rise to additional risk in responding to someone that is or appears to be flailing body blows in every direction. An educated response to this is allow the flailing to continue... as "any" response will just give rise to possible kicking and scratching to be introduced,,, possibly someone biting an ear.

For what its worth, the settings on my demo unit are not resetting at all.

Also found out today that my units had shipped as promised and stated but that somehow Fedex in Memphis screwed up. Therefore guilty myself of assuming the worst but being a rational person I can apologize for my error and move on.. However my customers suffered from my lack of trust by awaiting for their units when I could have checked with my companies phone number and found out several days ago that something went astray and have been in a better position by being a bit more trusting.

The problem is a real problem that affects some of the units ...re losing settings on power down.. The issue as I understand it is that some of the units send out the reset code on power down.. This is being addressed by VInc. as a firmware fix. there is a trigger being the code sent to the unit to reset, and only on some units.. Most every piece of equipment that I know has some reset code to bring it back to the original factory setting. Unfortunately it seems that this has somehow been triggered in some units to send out the code on power down. V Inc is intimitely aware of the problem ... and I am told have been actively working out the remedy.

Given the nature of the problem as described I do not see it as a problem that cannot be fixed with a firmware upgrade. I was advised that this is being worked on and will be addressed shortly. My source at V Inc is reliable to date. She is aware that these products only represent a temporary eye candy solution to most of my customers and that I would prefer to make a complete exodus of the product entirely rather than send out units that cannot be remedied with an easy fix. So I am going to trust these statements made by someone I trust at VInc.. and move on.

It is better to treat every opinion and discontent with respect. The community here is very respectful of others and that is one of the reasons it is one of the best communities I have ever seen. One of the most sensitive areas I find is that when it comes to fun we all want everything to go perfect and every little glitch does take on more importance... but things do happen, especially on a early release. They cant test every unit ... no one does this... If you are Hugh Hefner and you just purchased an Infocus 777 it is a certainty that you will get a unit that is thoroughly checked out by Infocus. Hell I would go there myself to spend a few days checking it out... possibly weeks... Unfortunately we are not Hugh Hefner and have to settle for the vaguaries of being a normal schmo...

Not sure it is a good idea to start posting serial numbers... I wouldnt want my serial numbers for my gear on the internet.

Robert

[maxvengeance111]

Good post, and I agree, people need to chill out and wait. I trust my source at Vinc as well and will wait for the fix. The player has been great otherwise for me, except for it once having a weird hiccup, but it hasnt happened since.

[microhof]

Originally posted by mandarax
Not sure it is a good idea to start posting serial numbers... I wouldnt want my serial numbers for my gear on the internet.

I wondered about this too, but when I think about it I'm not sure I can come up with anything anyone could really do with that information. I guess someone could forge the serial number on a unit and send theirs in under my warranty. But seriously, is that really cause for concern? If so we can take them out. :)

[Rijax]

Had the power go out today for about 5 minutes. No loss of any settings. DVI stayed at 720p, video settings stayed just where I'd set them. Every disk has loaded properly. Haven't had problem one as yet. The only qualification I can make to that statement is that I haven't played it hard. One or two CDs a day. Two or three movies each week. :D

[N8DOGG]

Now my new d2 should be here in about a week. I live in canada and was wondering how would i get the firmware. would I have to send it back to vinc or take it somewhere, I dont have the connections or the know how to do it myself if i can a little incite please?

[maxvengeance111]

My girlfriend tried to play a pilates tape, dont laugh, I guess that would be considered video based material, it couldn't see the DVD. If thats the only disc that does that to, I could care less...but if all video based material is like that, then I would have a problem.

[WynsWrld98]

N8DOGG: I have a D1 and have been able to download the firmware upgrades from V Inc's website then burn the image onto an ISO CD and load it that way so I'd guess more of the same for the D2...

[microhof]

max -

I have played several TV series on DVD including Futurama, Family Guy, Red Dwarf, Simpsons. Does this count as video based content? Also I have put in the Queen Night at the Opera DVD-Audio disc and it was able to load up the menu system. There is a video of Bohemian Rhapsody on there somewhere, guess I could try that too, but the disc loaded fine.

Tonight I will try a DVD of my own footage obtained from a Sony DV cam, edited with Adobe Premiere, mastered with DVDLab, and burned with GEAR.

Still, not being able to play a DVD is kind of a pain in the butt. What if it happens in the future to one of your favorite movies?

[Mark Lareau]

Originally posted by fendesj
Mark Lareau - The IR conflicts are with Pioneer devices. For example when I hit PAUSE on the D2 remote, my Pioneer receiver changes to FM mode. When I hit the Audio button on the D2 remote the receiver volume level goes down one notch. When I change volume using the Receivers remote, the D2 will perform a next chapter. These are just some examples as there are other conflicts.

Thanks fendesj, for the clarification. Turns out my AVR's remote is toast & it's not the Bravo's fault. With the exception of the power-off/settings lost issue, it seems I have a good unit!:)

[Jasman]

Microhof - as far as not being able to play one of your favorite movies, of the 100 or so movies I've played on my D1, the only one that wouldn't play at all (even after all of the resetting, tray-opening and cursing) was Swingers ..and yes it's ONE OF MY FAVORITE MOVIES!

Jasman

[microhof]

max - My homespun DVD-R of all-original content also works fine on the D2, if you were wondering.

jasman -- That sucks. I have never run into a DVD that wouldn't play on my old GE interlace player. But, I have also never run into a DVD that wouldn't play on my Bravo D2 (and I have tried quite a few so far). I have, however, found one player that won't load my DVD-Rs, period -- another GE model (yet, MY GE does, go figure).

[mandarax]

VInc is supposed to be checking the firmware fix in the next day or so. Since the player only sends out the reset code on a power down and not hitting power on the remote they expressed some confidence that a firmware fix will remedy the problem....

Robert

[Jim Noyd]

Here is an update on the "Bravo D2 settings reset" issue that we have been discussing on the forum. From the time they were made aware of the issue the V, Inc. engineers have been working to isolate the conditions of this anomaly and recreate the condition in a controlled environment to assist in the development of a satisfactory resolution.

As you know, they equipped the Bravo D2 with a new "System Recovery" feature that was designed to provide an opportunity for the player to be reset to the factory default settings if necessary. We have determined that in some configurations, the Bravo D2 is inadvertently activating this System Recovery sequence when the unit is submitted to a "hard power down" (i.e. the system is powered off by either using the power switch on the front of the unit, or disconnected from a power source completely). In this situation, the system would appear to "forget" the user-defined settings that had been changed in the system's setup menu when the unit was re-powered. (Note that no reports of this situation have been reported when the Bravo D2 is submitted to a "soft power down" (i.e. the system is put into standby mode using the power key on the remote.)

At this time, they have identified a resolution to this issue, and are currently in the process of testing an updated firmware revision. This firmware update will be made available to Bravo D2 customers via the Support section of their website http://www.vinc.com/support. The exact availability of this firmware update is not known, but they anticipate it to be available for download within the next week.

Thanks again for your patience in this matter, we'll let you know when the new firmware is available for download.

[maxvengeance111]

Great jim...thanks for the response. Any news on that weird hiccup people are experiencing?

[Rijax]

Way to go Jim. So far my D2 has NOT experienced the loss of settings after a hard power down (The electricity went out yesterday for about 5 minutes, and my settings remained as they were). Should I download the firmware update anyway? Or should I just leave well enough alone? Thanks.

[Jim Noyd]

Originally posted by Rijax
Way to go Jim. So far my D2 has NOT experienced the loss of settings after a hard power down (The electricity went out yesterday for about 5 minutes, and my settings remained as they were). Should I download the firmware update anyway? Or should I just leave well enough alone? Thanks. Leave it the way it is.

As far as those hiccups, hopefully they were just from the disk you were playing.

[Jerry Pease]

Hi Jim, are there any other enhancements rolled in to this update? Looking forward in testing the "new firmware". Thanks for the update.

Regards,

[fendesj]

Jim, is there any hope for resolving the IR conflicts with Pioneer receivers? Thanks.

[Rijax]

Originally posted by Jim Noyd
Leave it the way it is.Thanks Jim. Doing nothing is one of the things I do best. ;)

[microhof]

Originally posted by Jim Noyd
As far as those hiccups, hopefully they were just from the disk you were playing.

Jim, I respect you and thank you a lot for your help and advice, but I have to take a moment to sound a little upset: if you have been reading anything we've said about this issue, you would clearly see that it is highly doubtful that it is the discs we are playing.

Or, at least, there are too many other possible causes to just randomly select "it must be the disc" and use that as the answer.

I reported this problem specifically in a polite email to V Inc. The timely response I got completely ignored the fact that I had mentioned it, and just told me about the upcoming power setting firmware fix. I clearly listed that I had two problems, and they clearly only acknowledged seeing one of them.

I would really like someone to indicate that this issue has been passed on to V Inc's engineering team, and that it is on some kind of list of things to investigate. So far you all seem to be ignoring it, which is not very professional.

Can you PLEASE confirm or deny that someone intends to look into this issue?

If they don't think it is reproducable, tell them they can fly me out there with my player and a bucket of movies of their choosing and if we sit and eat popcorn for about 10 hours, I'll bet the farm it'll happen at least once.

[Jim Noyd]

Even though the Bravo D2 remote operates on a different frequency than the D1, the remote conflicts with Pioneer receivers probably can't be addressed with this player model.

Microhof I'm not trying to side-step the playback errors you've seen, but as they are intermittment it is a difficult issue address. These errors can be created by imperfectly mastered media, dirty/scratched/finger printed media, incorrectly flaged scenes, or a player component that is defective. I can say that the loader and power supply improvements of the Bravo D2 model over the D1 has generally eliminated playback errors.

Please send me a PM with any of these as they appear with as much documentation as possible. We'll try to resolve it with another unit or a full refund if it continues.

[maxvengeance111]

Yeah, I am going to have to agree with Micro on this one Jim. I have only witnessed it once, which is why I am not making such a big deal about it. But, it happened with the extended version of FOTR, the disc is perfect, no scratches. Went back and watched the scene again. nothing happened. The next day I watched the movie, and nothing happened. So I am not sure what it is. I will say this, I have noticed some discs, like The Cable Guy never worked properly in the D1, or the Samsung players that upconverted. It didnt work right with the D2 as well. The movie is in fast forward the entire time. Also, my girlfriend put in a video based dvd for pilates, it the D2 never saw it. Is that a media problem that the D2 doesnt play certain discs?

[Jim Noyd]

max-
The Bravo D2 uses the Sigma Designs 8500 system-on-chipset which is like a HTPC which basically is flag-reading in nature. If the film or video material is flagged incorrectly during the mastering process errors can occur during playback. Fortunately for all of us, these mistakes and other oversites such as authoring wide screen material in a 4:3 frame, penned non-anamorphic, is less prevalent with new DVD releases.

As far as non-recurring, intermittent errors on playback of various content - if they continue to appear at unacceptable rates, then the player should be replaced.

[maxvengeance111]

Cool. Sounds good, I will post more about it if it occurs.

[microhof]

Thanks, Jim, for answering, and I will keep an eye out and let you know the details ASAP if it happens again. I will continue to view as many films as possible during these early stages of testing, however I am taking a break this weekend so will have no new information soon. Just viewed 1984 on DVD and had no problems.

To you or anyone more knowledgable, is it really true that improper flagging can cause max's DVD of The Cable Guy to play in fast-forward mode all the time? Also, at the risk of repeating myself, I wouldn't believe that improper flags are causing the brief hiccups as they aren't repeating themselves in the same frames.

[DiscounTech]

I noticed that V Inc doesn't make any claims in the product literature about which recordable/rewritable DVD formats the D2 supports. I just test DVD+R and DVD+RW, and they both work beautifully. Can anyone else test the other formats so we know what else works?

[kjack]

For those DVDs anyone has trouble playing, if you PM me the title, symptom, and if possible, where on disc the problem occurs, I'll pass the info along to engineering so they can get the title, confirm it, and see what it takes to correct it.

[microhof]

DiscounTech - As I've said, I've tested DVD-R. I think someone else already said they tried DVD-RW.

[Jim Noyd]

Originally posted by kjack
For those DVDs anyone has trouble playing, if you PM me the title, symptom, and if possible, where on disc the problem occurs, I'll pass the info along to engineering so they can get the title, confirm it, and see what it takes to correct it. Thanks Keith!

On the DVD+RW and DVD-RW, the Bravo D2 specs don't list these. Could those that have had success, list the software/protocol they've used for mastering and authoring?

[fendesj]

Jim - Thanks for being candid about the IR issue with Pioneer devices. To bad I will now have to return my D2. I have to ask however how this happened. With the same problem being well known with the Momitsu V880 and apparently also on the D1, why was this not addressed with the D2? Will it be fixed with the D3? Is there something non-standard the Pioneer devices are doing. Though none of my other equipment conflicts my Pioneer.

[Deniz Mutlu]

Has anyone posted the custom timings for the Sony KDF60XBR950 yet? Searching did not provide any results for me.

[kjack]

Originally posted by fendesj
With the same problem being well known with the Momitsu V880 and apparently also on the D1, why was this not addressed with the D2? Will it be fixed with the D3? Is there something non-standard the Pioneer devices are doing. Though none of my other equipment conflicts my Pioneer.

I ran into this during a demo yesterday with the V880 and Sony HDTV.

The first thing the remote control manufacturers will tell you is that it is now impossible not to get IR conflicts between devices. Too many devices sharing IR codes even among the major manufacturers. It is a real mess. It's not like Pioneer gets a block, Sony gets a block, DVD players get a block, TVs get a block, etc. Purposely not conflicting with one manufacturer increases conflicts with another.

Whole IR scheme needs an overhaul.

[jflegert]

Keith,

Please don't take this personal, but, in practical terms, I find what you are saying stretching it.

I've never personally encountered a remote conflict. I read of very few conflicts on these forums (the most notables being the momitsu/bravo-Pioneer and Zenith/tivo).

Regards,
John Flegert

[kjack]

Originally posted by jflegert
Please don't take this personal, but, in practical terms, I find what you are saying stretching it.

No problem! :)

I was just passing along what a couple of the major remote control design houses warned me about. They have the databases of the IR codes used by the most CE companies, so I assume they know a lot about this.

[tomrhyne]

I've had my D2 for a month now and except for the already reported annoyances, it has been working like a charm. I did notice something new today as I was watching Lord of the Ring - Return of the King. When displaying Info, the chapter number will not advance past 32. Since there are 61 chapters, it never advanced beyond 32. Obviously V, Inc. only alocated 5 bits for the chapter number. A minor problem that should be fixable with a firmware upgrade.

I also noticed an audio glitch each time I paused the DVD and then restarted it. Compared with the experience I had with my D1, the D2 is light years ahead.

Tom
<><

[ReeseG]

Since the reality is that NEC (IR signaling chip) that is used in the Pioneer (and I assume also in the Bravo) allows a manufacturer to choose the combination of each 32 bit word (16 bit data and 16 bit error checking) they can send, I find it also 'stretching it' that it's getting difficult. A 16 bit word length should provide for about 65K combinations (somebody who's done the math can pipe in here). So, bumping into Pioneer seems a little illogical to me too.

[mandarax]

Looking good... trials of the firmware upgrade seem to be a success..

Robert

[Jim Noyd]

The firmware update is now available to Bravo D2 customers via the Support section of their website http://www.vinc.com/support.

Just click on the “BRAVO D2 DVD Player Firmware File and Installation Instructions” to download the ZIP folder. It contains a PDF instruction sheet and the .iso firmware file.

Let us know how your update goes-

[maxvengeance111]

I just ran the firmware...and even though there was a screen that wasnt in the pdf, everything was installed and I checked, did a hard power off with the button on the player, turned back on, and settings were still there. Hopefully I wont ever encounter those hiccups, and the player will be 100 percent.

[mandarax]

Thanks for that Max...

Will do one later... and if Fedex finds my boxes I will do them all at once..

Jim thanks for the update ... much appreciated.... that was very respectable turn around time..

Robert

[tomrhyne]

I just updated my firmware to 1.10. Powered up with B/C/S set in the middle - 7 bars as opposed to when I first powered it up with 1.09 they were at one bar (Bars? Numerics would be so much better). I adjusted the video output to DVI 720p, the audio to digital encoded, and aspect to 16:9. I then powered down the unit with power switch for about 30 seconds and then on again. All settings were saved! I then did the powered it down for about 30 seconds by unplugging it from the 110 volt source. Plugged it back in and lo and behold, all the settings remained unchanged. I then popped in "Lord of the Rings" and repeatedly paused and restarted. The audio glitches that I had just observed were not there. It appears that 1.10 fixed these problems, at least on an initial test.

Now, Jim Noyd, it certainly would be advantageous to have some of the other outputs hot when doing a reload. I don't have composite video going to my projector so I had to take the Cable RG-59 and connect it to the component out of the D2, jumper the Cable RG-59 in my jumper box to the RG-59 running to my Cable input of my Mits 55" RPTV in another room, splice a composite connector on to the RG-59 behind my Mits and run back and forth between my theater room and the 55" RPTV to get the firmeware updated. That wasn't any fun. Oh, well it worked and the D2 is working. I'll let you know if I observe anything else as I use the D2 over the weekend.

Tom
<><

[hma]

Jim (or anyone else who knows!):

Please detail what the D2 firmware update changes. What specific problems does it fix, and will it possibly harm a working D2?

My only problem is the the loss of settings when powering off with the button on the unit. Everything else is fine. I don't want to create any new problems, so IS IT SAFE TO UPDATE THE FIRMWARE?

thanks,

HMA

[tomrhyne]

Based upon my experience it is safe. Also, if it creates problems for you, you can get a copy of 1.09 and go back to it.

Tom
<><

[hma]

Thanks.

If 1 or 2 others have a successful update I'll take the plunge too!

-HMA

[microhof]

A word to the wise...
Don't assume that this new firmware has magically fixed any problems other than the one that caused its "rapid" development and release, unless you see an official list of things which were addressed (so far the only official change seems to be the settings loss). I would venture to say that anything else you "perceive" as having changed is in your own imagination, unless you have a statement from V Inc. to back it up which says they did, in fact, attempt to modify the behaviorism.

Not trying to be negative, just realistic. I am anxious to try the update as soon as I get home tomorrow night!

[tomrhyne]

microhof, I agree with you on this. I'm very pleased at the speed of the firmware release. I understand that there is no magic in fixes. They fix, most of the time, what was intended. However, I did get an email from Jim Noyd implying that 1.10 may fix the audio glitch that I had noticed. I did check and the glitch did go away. I wasn't imagining it; however, I fully realize that other variables could have created this and indeed, the firmware may not have corrected the problem. Time will tell. I wish manufacturers that provide updates like this, including V, Inc. and SIM2, would release a text document along with the upgrade that outlined the fixes/changes.

Hope your upgrade goes well.

[Karl Freund]

Hey, Bob, I have the same problem, so you are not alone! As you know I am using the same Geffin switch with a 30' DVI cable. Specifically, when I stop, or eject, the D2 loses contact with the projector (HT1000). To get it back, I have to cycle through all the Video output settings back to custom DVI. Then it works. Needless to say, not an acceptable workaround; let's hope they can fix with firmware.

Having worked as CEO for a startup with quality problem, my heart goes out to these guys! Hope they handle it right so they can stay around!

[Karl Freund]

Well, folks, it seems that the new firmware does NOT resolve all the problems. I loaded (and confirmed) the new firmware, but still have the problem: afer resuming from a STOP or EJECT, the player is not sending output to the DVI (which is of course the reason we BOUGHT this puppy in the first place). You have to cycle through all the video output modes, back to DVI where you started. THEN it outputs fine.

I am pretty sure this is catalyzed by some sort of interaction with the downline DVI config. I am connecting to a GEFEN switch, then out to a 35' DVI cable to my HT1000. If I unplug the DVI OUT cable from the switch, then try to stop/resume, then plug the DVI back in, it works. Hope this helps the folks at VINC debug. Otherwise I will need to return the unit.

BTW, does anyone have the HT1000 calibration settings for the D2 over DVI?

Thanks! Still LOVE the picture and sound quality!

[Rijax]

There seems to be an issue with the Gefen switch when used with the D2

Here are posts (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/search.php?s=&action=showresults&searchid=231801&sortby=&sortorder=) from this thread alone that mention this problem.

[mandarax]

How would you guys that have the DVD player rate the video quality???