Aldi DVD Player - HDMI & USB for £35!

potnoodles

It might just be the way my divx 5.o was encoded then- which is better news. I will try a making a new DivX 5.0 using DrDivX and see what happems.
If you read the German review it clearly states that DivX is no longer supported the manufacturers choosing to go the Nerp Digital mpeg4 route.

regards,

potnoodles

seth

Watched a few XVID and DIVX files no problem no audio synch issues.
However this weeks DL.TV show...
I noticed some weird things with the latest DL.TV HTTP:\\DL.TV DivX format

1) This plays on the Aldi player if you rename the file to .AVI
2) The audio flies into and out of synch?!

Not sure if this is the player or the encoding?!
Video plays fine

Still no luck with my HD via USB it shows -/0 in the file count.

What is the biggest HD that works?

I'll reformat to that size.

Lütz_Pangaloo

seth wrote: »

Still no luck with my HD via USB it shows -/0 in the file count.

At least you're getting the file browser! I cleared out my 160GB drive last night and just added three AVIs to the root - got the same 'loading' then a black screen (has anybody else noticed there's a frenzy of disk activity just before the screen goes black - what's that all about?).

Do any of your files have names less than 8 characters long (that is another draft restriction on this player)? If none have then that might be the reason why they don't display (although I'd have hoped it would display the first eight no matter how long the name is).

I've tried three USB sticks of varying makes and capacities and they all work (but my wife's Philips GoGear MP3 player didn't), but none of the three external hard drives I've tried will even load.

I remember reading on another board ages ago when DVD players with USB ports started to appear that the partition had to be FAT32, primary and 'active'. I checked my external drives in XP disk management and they were all FAT32, primary and 'basic'. If you right click on the drive it lets you change it to 'active', so I did - made no difference for me, but perhaps it might work for someone else.

I'm sure somebody will stumble across the trick soon, and we'll all go "DOH!"

Lütz_Pangaloo

Sorry to double post like this, but I wanted to bump the thread - I've got some good news for those that are using big drives and get the 'black screen of death'!

I Googled for any information about drive issues with other Vaddis 888 players and found this comment on Videohelp.com from a Xoro HSD 8410 owner;

Have working with 200Gb FAT32 partition on external drive but it took some effort to achieve this. Will not work with 300GB partition. Result fine although slow to load. Screen saver cutting whilst loading is an annoyance which halts the process. To stop this you need to hit a key on the remote about every 30 seconds.

So I popped down and reconnected my 160GB drive with three AVIs and one MPG on, and during 'loading' kept pressing the 'Video' button on the bottom left of the remote.

Lo and behold after about a minute (with no screensaver) the file browser came up and there were my files! Thankfully it does display the first 8 characters no matter how long the name is.

First one I tried was Blazing Saddles - took about 30 seconds to load but seemed to be playing fine, until I notice the audio was out of sync - not by much, but still unwatchable.

Fortunately both the other AVIs played perfectly, so it's probably an encoding issue - I'll run them through Gspot to see what's what.

Lastly I tried the MPG, which is a TV programme I'd recorded on my Toppy as a TS and converted to MPG - picture but no sound (sorry PVR owners - looks like you'll have to keep burning to disc or convert to AVI).

I hope all you other 'BSOD' sufferers get similar results - I think the larger the drive, the longer you have to wait - good luck!

mouseman81

Was just starting to suspect something like that having spent the last few hours playing with this.

It does indeed take longer to load with larger partitions. I found it works fine with a partition size of upto about 100GB on my drive, anything more and the screensaver was coming in, then the dreaded black screen.

Good to know i can get round this by tapping a button though. Thanks for letting us know.

now if only there was a way of changing the screensaver timeout...

Lütz_Pangaloo

mouseman81 wrote: »

now if only there was a way of changing the screensaver timeout...

Or disabling it altogether - perhaps a firmware revision could help. Might be worth keeping an eye on the manufacturer's website;

http://www.siemssen-electronics.com/contell/cms/server/siemssen_electronics/Endverbraucher/Downloads.html;jsessionid=11DDA0C7EEF40C8EA232100DB5DFF263?fabrikat=Tevion&modell=&submit=Search

I've just tried my 500GB drive and after a few more button presses to keep the screensaver at bay the file browser loads on that too, but I get Seth's '-/0' display, no files (and there are plenty on it!).

The chap on Videohelp.com said 300GB (and larger) partitions were no go with his Xoro - shame. Perhaps you can do a bit more playing Mousey and tell us where the tipping point is between filenames and '-/0'? My 250GB drive works ok, so it must be somewhere between 250 and 300GB. Cheers.



EDIT: Good news for PVR owners - I've tried another MPG and it worked a treat, picture and sound perfectly in sync - there must have been something wrong with the first one (so it should be possible to play archives of TV programmes straight from a hard drive). The Topfield stores programmes in it's own proprietry REC format, so I use REC2TS first to convert the file to a TS (transport stream), then HDTVtoMPEG2 to convert the TS into an MPG - both are free downloads. Works very quickly (I don't think there's any re-encoding involved) and removes any audio sync problems due to dropped frames. There's probably a similar procedure needed for other PVRs.

mouseman81

Unfortunately i only have a 160GB drive so can't test how big a disk the player will support. I was considering a larger disk but i only have about 50GB of avi's at the moment and i think i've reached the limit on how much i'm allowed to spend on gadgets for one week!

Some observations:

I've currently got a single 100GB partition (roughly 97.5GB reported under win XP) working fine. The screensaver kicks in after 1 minute (if no buttons are pressed) and it seems that the 100GB partition takes 59 seconds to load, regardless of how many/few files are on there.

I can use the full capacity of the drive by tapping a button to stop the screensaver starting as mentioned above.

I'm also able to access folders 3 deep on the drive (eg root\TV\Simpsons\Season 9\episode6.avi) despite what the instructions say.

gromituk

Perhaps the files/folders limit is just a worst case figure based on memory capacity so that people don't get upset if it doesn't work as advertised?

potnoodles

FAT32 PARTITION for larger USB Drives

just to confirm the less than 100gb partition to be hassle free, as well as the keep the SSaver from loading for Larger Partition.
tried both using a 120 Gb WDigital and both work.

MPEG2 files via USB

Original file (Near Dark) a DVR-MS captured on Vista Media Center and converted using VideoRedo works perfect - Sound and Vision

regards,

potnoodles

4551darren

my dvd player is now refusing to play any discs at only 2 days of use.either says bad disc or totally locks up!
straight back to aldi.