Quote:
I will be curious to see what you think about when or whether you will have to 're-treat' the cable ongoing.

That's a good question. It is in fact the same question my friend asked today. My honest answer is; I'm not sure. One reason being, I'm the only person in the world who's ever applied this particular technique, and I only discovered it like two days ago. The cable was probably only the second object I applied it on. For another reason, part of my tweak uses water, and water evaporates. That seems to matter less than you would think. But anyway, based on an educated guess, the change will likely remain, even as other things around it change, to influence the overall sound and picture in their own way. But even if for some reason the cable itself doesn't retain its new properties, it's not much of a problem. It's about a one minute re-do, if ever I feel it necessary. FWIW, I tested my tweaked cable about 8 hours afterward today; against a freebie cable that came with a Sony DVD player I later bought. It easily bested the Sony for video and sound; and had clearly not diminished in its virtues yet.

Quote:
Killer tale of the trials and travails of shopping!

Thanks. The travails of finding a good DVD player was a learning experience for me in numerous ways, and it continued to be one, because the story didn't end there! Proved to be a few more twists and turns, and a bit of audiophile witchcraft, before I was finally able to close the book on this quest....

Later in the day, no more than 2 hours after I posted those observations, the lovely Pioneer I had settled on was gone. Finito. Disparu. It is, for all intents and purposes, an "ex-Pioneer". After it refused to play or even show more than 4 mp3's on an mp3 disc that contained much more than 4 songs (which the Sony had no problem with), the Pioneer had outstayed its welcome! Given how flaky this thing was, we already made a lot of compromises over its shortcomings for the sake of good sound. But unable to read mp3's?? I'm sure you can find toys in cereal boxes that can read mp3's these days. Pioneer is nuts if they think this is acceptable! What I really needed was a player that sounds as good as the Pioneer, but otherwise works as well as the Sony (DVP-NS718H). But with no other contenders in sight, that led to one desperate idea: what if I tried to Beltify the Sony? Could it make us forget the Pioneer altogether, and finally put an end to the quest? I had done pretty good on the el cheapo HDMI cable with nothing but a bit of water and some handy household items, so why not give it a shot.... So in a hasty last ditch effort, I popped the hood open, tweaked all the good bits inside, closed her up and in less than 5 minutes total, we were ready to rock n' roll....

For the test, I popped in my DVD of The Darjeeling Limited, and ran one of the first scenes where Bill Murray and Adrien Brody are running for the train, and some funky music starts playing. Well, color me astounded, because what I heard and saw easily surpassed my expectations. Even my friend, who was always much more attached to the Pioneer than I was, started to loosen that grip on it, after hearing the tweaked-out Sony. She put on a Jesse Cook CD for comparison, and the Sony now clearly presented a much larger, deeper sound field than the Pioneer, with a far more realistic metallic timbre (and body) to the guitar strings. It was also significantly more engaging for me, on most music (even stuff I didn't like, like Jesse Cook). The only clear advantage I could discern from the Pioneer at this point, was a tighter, more solid bass kick on Mick Fleetwood's drum in the opening song of Fleetwood Mac's "The Dance" DVD (live). Still, after this session, we agreed we could finally let the Pioneer go, and allow the Sony to take its place.

With this decision settled, we let the Sony play music through the afternoon on the stereo system. And it was nice, but without really thinking anything particular about it, I felt like I wanted to turn the volume down a bit after a while. My friend then tells me she doesn't like the sound of the Sony after all. Not sure why, except there's something stressful, something fatiguing her in that sound. I realized I must have been experiencing the same sort of thing, when I remembered I thought it was too loud for comfort, even though it wasn't playing very loud. But since it sounded so right in so many ways (without aggressive treble), I couldn't say what it was or why it seemed fatiguing. We just knew this Sony wasn't going to work out after all. I also felt it wasn't worth my time to keep tweaking it, until it could not fail to satisfy. Because while I feel that in the time it takes to name the new lineup for the Green Bay Packers, I managed to disprove the old adage that you "can't polish a turd".... it still doesn't change the fact that I started with a turd to begin with. That said, I think it's still a positive that at sometime, somewhere, someone at Wally-Mart is going to become proprietor of the world's best Sony DVP-NS718H. (Then he'll recommend it to his friends, and they'll hate him for it....).

So with both the Sony and the Pioneer on their way back, this forced us to take another look at that lonely little LG (DV4M) demo model I mentioned, that looked to be the last LG DVD player anywhere in the city. They managed to find the remote for it, but I insisted on trying this in the store; specifically, the setup menu. No one could get the setup menu on the screen. As I assumed, this was the wrong remote, and they had also lost the remote to the only other LG DVD demo model next to it. The dealer tried to sell us on a Pioneer model, the DV-420V, that he said had better sound / performance than any other brand going. And he knows, because he owns the model below it, the DV-320. I explained that I had no confidence in Pioneer, having just lost a battle with the model below that, the DV-220V. He insisted the brand was reliable, he had no problems with any Pioneer player, mp3 discs or otherwise, and we must have just gotten hold of a lemon; or that model has "bad software". Since the DV-220V did have the best sound, and the dealer "could" be right about other models, we decided to take his advice and buy the DV-420V. But since this model had every feature our DV-220V had (but was costlier), and no extra features I could see, I could not figure out what its reason for being was. We were obviously hoping the extra cost for this model was to fix the problems they didn't have the budget to fix in the DV-220V.

However, to give it something to aspire to, the Pioneer had some competition. At the store we returned the other model, I spotted that impossible anomaly, the mythical Sony dvd player that comes with an HDMI cable included. Turns out to be the identical twin brother of the Sony we returned. Except the model here was the "DVP-NS717HP", instead of the "DVP-NS718H". Apart from the model numbers, the only difference I could possibly find between the two, was that this one includes the HDMI cable. It even sold for the exact same price (but was originally $20 higher). There was really no reason on earth to bother with this model, because there was no indication whatsoever of any difference, and we no longer required an HDMI cable. But at this late and frenzied point in the game, it kind of seemed weird to NOT walk out of an electronics store with yet another DVD player in hand... so what can I say, this one just followed us home and leapt into the trunk.

Still, I had little hope for either of these new players, because they were both spitting cousins of the ones we had just given up on. The Pioneer DV-420V however, was an improvement. The cheesy display was replaced by an EL display so you could finally hope to understand what it is trying to tell you, build quality is a bit better, and lo and behold, the thing could actually read my DVD-R with the video files that it's poorer cousin was completely unable to read. As for the mp3 disc the other Pioneer could only see 4 files on it.... well, there turns out to be a good reason for that. I looked at the disc on a computer and "coincidentally", only 4 files are mp3's! The rest are normal wav files. So both Pioneer models are unable to read wav files not burned under Redbook standard. This was still something other DVD players had no problem doing. This upper model Pioneer still thoroughly locked up on discs it had problems with, where the Sony's did not. So as I figured, that was no uncommon "lemon" we got with the DV-220V. Some of the "bad software gremlins" I was warned about made their way to the upper floors at Pioneer. Or maybe the Pioneers are just cranky old players that simply don't like a lot of DVD-R's. I'll bet a pristine copy of On Golden Pond will play just fine and dandy. As for the picture and sound on this fancier Pioneer, it was okay, but nothing suggested it was better than the cheaper model, and at least soundwise, might have been a bit worse. But we no longer had the other model to compare.

We did however have a Sony DVP-NS717HP to compare with the Pioneer, and a fair comparison at that, since both retail for the same price. The newest Pioneer offered no real surprises, so the newest Sony was not expected to compete with it. Yet just about instantly, both of us came to the same conclusion about the Sony DVP-NS717HP. It was easily superior in both sound and image to the Pioneer! It took about a minute or two to conclude that we had finally found an acceptably good, all-around DVD video and music player, that could make us forget we ever had a Pioneer. (Later, more involved tests with sound and picture quality, did not reverse this assessment. And as a result, I can probably recite the first chapter of Monsters, Inc., forward and backwards, better than any kid on the planet. Now my friends call me "Phlegm"...).

I, especially, had difficulty understanding this experience. This did not sound or look like the pre-modified Sony DVP-NS718H that preceded it. An off-the-shelf unit, yet it sounded like it might even have outperformed the one I tweaked, and had a rich, clear, realistic picture image that was superior to anything that preceded it. More significantly, despite the fact that I had just taken it out of the box, it sounded very reminiscent of a Belted device, to me. I felt it had that liquidity, fluidity, depth and resolution of timbre I've come to associate with that sound. All at once, it occurred to me that what's happening is the Sony I "Belted" must be "influencing" this unit. Of course, -that- would explain everything. Except... I then realized I no longer had the old Sony! So I might have some weird theories about it that are probably impossible to test, but in the end, I have no real idea to explain why this unit would sound any different to the seemingly identical model I tested, or why it would look and sound better than the other models I tried. Which means I can't really predict that another DVP-NS717HP is going to perform as well as the one we got. But assuming this isn't a flukey one-off or has some weird metaphysical connection with something I did at some point.... then I have to conclude that for those not jumping on the Blu-ray bandwagon, if there is still interest out there in finding a good DVD/DivX/xVid player, it looks like this one is a real good place to start!