Technical Issues and Questions

[Drucker]

If you're looking for something basic, David Mackenzie always seemed to indicate that you could safely get a Panasonic and that it shouldn't have undefeatable noise reduction. Can't recommend a specific model, unfortunately.

[knives]

Yeah, just basic for. I might want to future with UHD if can play PAL.

[knives]

Also would appreciate it having 3D capabilities for Godard.

[The Pachyderminator]

Do they even make 3D-capable TVs anymore?

[fdm]

Projectors usually still have 3D playback capabilities.

For PAL you may want to look at region free players.

[Rayon Vert]

My Sony all-region player (BDP something) has been very dependable for years and years, and only cost around 200$.

[knives]

Thanks all. Decided on a Panasonic per the above rec with some winnowing from some tech sites.

[DeprongMori]

Looking for a solution to this one: My Region B BFI “El Sur” will not play on my LG player booted into Region B. It reports that the disc is not compatible with the Region of the player. (This is my first time playing this disc.)

All other Region B discs tested have worked fine. When this occurred once before with a different disc, the problem was solved by unplugging the player to purge the timeline that kept the disc restarting on the error. This solution is not successful here, no matter how many tries or how long the power-down.

Any suggestions?

UPDATE: Ended up doing a factory reset in the player’s “Settings”, which cleared the problem. Surprised it took more than a simple power-down-and-wait.

[fdm]

If your player has a resume playback type of feature enabled, try turning that off. Also if it has such a capability, try purging its memory.

[Minkin]

I found this free player that seems to work (and allow screen shots too):

https://www.leawo.com/blu-ray-player/

(It has a few mildly annoying quirks -- but the price is right)

I used to have a torrented copy of PowerDVD on my old laptop, but I can't move it over to my new computer. So, I'm now in the market for Blu-ray playback software. I do have an external blu-ray drive.

I'm wondering if anybody else has tried using Leawo? I can't really find any reviews of it online, which raises quite a few red flags. You'd think the only working free blu-ray playback software would at least merit a techcrunch article. Otherwise I'm going to try and trackdown a discounted version of PowerDVD.

And the VLC blu-ray work-around didn't work for me.

[DeprongMori]

The Leawo player software isn’t region-free, and I don’t generally play Blu-rays on my computer, but it has been working great when I need to do so. And it being free, the price is right.

[fdm]

Regarding VLC (on a Mac), after a little bit of troubleshooting, it just seems to be really limited about which blu-rays will actually play with it. I did find one after a few misfires, the Twilight Time Miss Sadie Thompson. (I can't recall what the others were that I did get to work last month when I first got VLC to play actual blu-rays. I apparently lucked out as whatever it/they were, it/they all worked fine). Some of the others seem to want to work, but they never finish starting up (Manhattan, Uncut Gems) and actually play; others just error out. Doesn't really seem worth bothering with.

Pretty much every blu-ray I tried with MacGo's Blu-ray Player and/or Blu-ray Player Pro seemed to work though. The Pro version however seems to pay attention to Region setting, and seems to be limited to 5 changes... but the basic version doesn't seem to mind (even Satantango plays). The Pro version mimics playing the actual disc like if you played it on a blu-ray player; the regular version you can just have it play the movie or blindly pick other content one at a time by chapter. (VLC was a bit better than Pro as you could actually click on the playback screen to pick from the menus, while with Pro you need to use a pop-up that behaves like a remote to control the disc playback.)

[TMDaines]

VLC works well with DVDFab Passkey. I tend to use PotPlayer, with no menu support, but when I want menus, I use VLC.

[tenia]

I use DVD Passkey (also because my old computer screen isn't HDCP compatible), with MPC-HC for the main feature and taking screencaps, and VLC if I need to access the menu and the extras.

I used to use an older version of PowerDVD I had bundled with an old computer, but it progressively got rubbish and couldn't do proper screencaps anyway.

[mfunk9786]

Question for the HV geeks on this forum (of which I was once one...) - any recommendations for a low profile and/or small Blu-ray player? I figure they must have gotten more compact and efficient lately, but my use case is a little specific so I didn't know if something exists for users like me. The contingency is - our TV is mounted on the wall, wire to the outlet is hidden, and we are very happy with the fact that there are no wires going to the TV and there is no shelf below or next to it. The problem is, we don't have a disc player hooked up to it for that reason, and it's beginning to get a little impractical to only have a disc player in one room.

Long story short - looking for a small player that could mount to a wall, or would be small enough that it could be placed on a small shelf next to the TV without much impact. I found the now OOP Samsung BD-P4600, but the reviews and the relatively high price since it's no longer being produced have scared me off a bit, coupled with the fact that it's often sold missing the mounting hardware, the remote, etc. Anything else on the market that might serve this purpose well?

[domino harvey]

Why not get one of those wall mounted cord cover strips and just paint it to match your wall?

[cdnchris]

I run my cables behind the wall, which is usually not hard to do since going down the wall there shouldn't be any studs in the way, tbough wall patching is not hard if it comes to that.

There are also mounting kits. But you'd need a player that doesn't have a tray.

[mfunk9786]

Why not get one of those wall mounted cord cover strips and just paint it to match your wall?

Already running one for the TV extension cord, so there'll be no need. Just don't have a shelf to place a horizontal player on and don't plan on adding one, hence the desire to mount if possible. Chris, glad to hear those are available - going down the rabbit hole now.

[J Wilson]

I have an Oppo BDP-83 that I've had for probably 10-11 years, which has always worked without issue. Recently, I've had two different releases that the Oppo wouldn't play video for (sound worked fine on both otherwise), the Arrow Gamera set (the US version) and Eureka's Murders in the Rue Morgue disc from the Lugosi set. Everything else I've played has worked without issue. Does this seem like a disc-based thing, since the player is getting rather old and maybe can't handle something about recent discs, or could there be a mechanical fault? The firmware is up to date, but they haven't updated it in six years.

[Drucker]

A very basic question for 24 FPS playback. Should cinema smooth be enabled on Samsung plasma TVs when watching blu-rays? I have it off, and the pictures from when I got my TV calibrated have it greyed out, so I think it's supposed to be on and must have been accidentally disabled during one of my recent moves, but want to be sure.

[Adam X]

You don’t want it on, no, unless you want everything looking like it’s been shot on noise-reduced digital video. I imagine your calibrator did it deliberately, even if it would’ve been better to just explain why you want it off.

[Drucker]

Good to know. It’s been off but I’ve had to reset a few settings after a couple of moves for some reason restored some default settings even in my calibrated setting. Thanks!

[domino harvey]

I just bought my first new TV in over a decade (!), also a Samsung, and I was thankful for the much lauded Scorsese/Nolan-endorsed Filmmaker mode because even with reading lots of reviews and guides the different options were all so confusing. Plus your dumb brain automatically thinks brighter and bolder colors are better even if they are inaccurate, so at first when switching between options I thought Filmmaker mode was just putting a hipster dull sepia tone on everything like an Instagram filter. Nope, I’d just been watching shit wrong with mad boosting of everything.

[flyonthewall2983]

On the cusp of getting my first 4K TV. I've had a trusty 50" Magnavox for 4 years now, atop the small but stylish TV stand I had when I got my first HDTV 10 years ago. Hoping to get something at least 60" this time, and am wondering what cheap alternatives there are out there to the more pricy TV stands I'm seeing all over. I do not want to mount anything to the wall. I don't even have paintings up.

[Mr Sheldrake]

I bought this stand last month for $100 on Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B089 ... UTF8&psc=1
I needed something on wheels, it’s very sturdy. I bought a 65” TCL Roku tv that has an option for less wide feet length, some 65” tvs with wider feet might not fit it.