Yamaha S-2500 universal player - DCDi, HDMI, i.Link, video scaling - Page 13

I have DVC750 and noticed it too late to return this player. It drive me crazy.
Why Yamaha couldn't make it work faster is a question. When I turn DVD on and want to insert a new DVD, I have to wait almost a minute or more (sometime I even press open botton again because I don't know if player even got my first command) before tray will open.
Second problem I noticed but it is related to changer only probably - couple of times when the tray opened, I found 1 DVD laying on top of another with next place empty. It looks like the mechanism is either moving a dvd to different place when you turn a tray or patented Xchange don't remember where DVD have to be placed.

Mine works quick. But the remote does suck. Cheap.

i thought going through cd tracks was a little slow on a cd that was all mp3's. but every dvd player i've ever seen is slow on audio cd's... i never use a dvd player as an audio cd player, except in this case will use for dvd-audio/sacd...
even so, the load times are not unreasonable on dvd's, etc... there are things just not worth being impatient over. seems to perform fine for me.

Any word from Kris Deering, finding one to review?

If the 2500 is really based on the Philips 963 or 9000 as I suspect, then it's natural that it'll be slow.

Yes, I think 9000s or B will be cheaper alternative!

So what do you guys think? If I could get the S2500 at Yamaha employee discount or the Oppo?

?? Two VERY different beasts. One's a universal player, the other a DVI-D -based scaling player. What do you want them to do? SACD? I-Link? The Oppo doesn't do it? Scale to 720p or 1080i with DVI-D, the Yammy doesn't do it (except to go HDMi-to-DVI) They have different target audiences. One's a cheaply built $200 Chinese player (I own the Oppo); one's a mid-priced mass market player.

Ted

Well I have a Panasonic 50phd7uy plasma that is 1366x768. I'm just a dvd movie person. I don't really need all the fancy audio stuff.

Just purely picture guy. I'm not 100% but I think 720p would look the best on the plasma?

I just want the best possible picture with a cost/benefit ratio that makes sense.

UK Model - with multiregion override
I've had a couple of days to play around with this new player, following the multi-region hack (same as that for the Philips 900SA:

Multiregion hack:
-Turn on the player without disc in it.
-Press Play button on the front panel.
-Press 1-5-9 on the remote.
-Display on the player will show "------------"
-Press 222 222 005 255 on the remote.
-Press Play on the remote.

To get firmware version:
-Open the disc tray
-Press Menu on remote.

Having endured 6 months of problems with the Denon 3910 - it had to return that because the iLINK was persistently dropping out and had problems with certain DVD-A discs.

Well thankfully the Yamaha iLINK is rock solid. Pity they had to exclude an iLINK cable to keep costs down!
Audio for SACD and DVDA is superb from the iLINK and multichannel outs (although I did note that the manual recommended the latter because it didn't downconvert 96kHZ material that was copy protected).

Picture wise, I'm unable to use the HDMI as my Sim2 projector is not HDCP compliant, however, using the progressive component out produces a fabulous picture - Monster's Inc had me doing a double-take. I know that is a pretty punchy movie anyway, but nevertheless it looked great. Having never witnessed HDMI/DVI output, I'd be interested to know how much of an improvement that could make (given the reported problems with black crush).

The unit has a couple of minor bugbears - hopefully these can be sorted out in a firmware upgrade (I'll advise Yamaha UK ):

1. DVDA discs take three seconds to complete a chapter skip - I kept pressing skip and nothing appeared to happen, until I found I was 3 tracks further forward than expected!

2. When some DVD and DVDA discs load the initial menu screen- the player pops up a blue message box at the bottom of the screen which reads 'Dolby Pro-Logic II'. This is not related to the 'Status' Display which locates at top of screen (and can be defeated). It is an annoyance and I've not yet found a way to suppress it.

3. The Progressive/Interlaced switching is not controlled via the GUI - there's a slider switch on the back panel - not sure why they have chosen this method - seems a bit retrograde and makes it a bit difficult if you don't have easy access to the back of the kit after installation.

4. The navigation is a bit quirky - there is not the standard Title/Top button (to take you to the top menu) - Yamaha have a title/chapter button which list those avaialble. Also, they've combined the skip and search buttons. To scan forward or back, you have to press the skip button, but hold it down for 2 seconds. This is a bit clunky and takes some getting used to. This search only provides X4 and X32 speeds using this method - if you want other speeds, you have to select via the GUI. Using the pause button will allow frame advance.

Keep those reviews coming !

I am a bit puzzled to read above. Does it mean that this player down-rez DVD-A audio of 88.2kHz fs or higher, or 20/24-bit PCM to output through i.link?

Hi Gary Nash,

I wanted to try to answer one of your irks with this yamaha player. While I don't have the S-2500, I do have a 750 and I had similar gripes until someone enlightened me. Regarding #4, it is not obvious, but there is a way to do FF and FR without using (and holding) the chapter skip buttons. Yamaha instead dedicates the arrow keys for playback contol use in the following manner:

right arrow = Fast Forward
left arrow = Fast Reverse
down arrow = slow forward
up arrow = slow reverse
enter/select = resume play

Another hidden feature is that pressing-and-holding stop should eject the disc tray.

If this does not hold true for the S-2500 (or if this has already been covered in this thread), my humble apologies. Good luck.

-BigFoot_Lives

I saw an online picture! Remote does not have open/close button?

Interesting. Any idea if this works for the US model?


I find that chapter/track skipping is slow with any format


That's because all stereo material -- including menu chapters of DVD and DVD-As -- is processed with DPLII if you have selected '5.1' as the analog out option. This outputs a synthetic surround from the 6-channel analog outputs. I don't think it's suppressable. It has no effect on the ilink output.



I'm finding it easier to just program Yamaha functions onto my Radio Shack remote, instead of using the rather dodgy, non-backlit Yamaha remote.

I do wish there was a way to display format -- e.g whether the source was 2- channel, 4 channel, 6 channel, and what the sampling/bitdepths/bitrates are

Any idea!! Kris pls? If you will be reviewing it soon?

How does this player stack up in the Secrets review?

I dont think it has been shot out yet!

I have one on my way, so I can either accept for return?

These are exactly the same issues my Philips 963SA has.

The slowness is unavoidable, but it is something you get used to.
The Pro Logic message always appears when you set the player to do internal pro logic encoding (which, by the way, you can apply to the digital output, not just the analogue one). Simply set the surround encoding to "Stereo" and it'll never appear.
I rarely have had to switch between interlace and progressive. No big deal about that.
It took me ages before I discovered that the > button fast forwards. Once you learn that it's no problem. Not being able to select 8x FF without going to the menu is a pain in the arse though.


Now that is a new one to me. I wonder if it'll work on the 963...?

? Perhaps I'm reading the manual wrong, but it looks to me like, if analog output is set to multichannel, rather than stereo, the S2500 applies DPLII to the *analogue* output, not digital...that is, it will output a 2-channel analog source as '6 channel' via its 6-channel analog outputs, after DPL II processing. (The exceptions are >88 kHz and SACD sources, which aren't processed). I was curious to know what that does to the 'dedicated' 2-channel analog outputs, but my impression is that those are left alone (i.e., they output normal 2-channel, rather than just the two front channels of a DPL II 'remix').

BigFooot, Carled,

Thanks for the advice.

ProLogic II Banner - I tried chaning the Analogue Output from 'multichannel' to 'stereo' and it suppressed the banner message. Unfortunately, it also reduced the iLINK audio output from 5.1 to 2.0 channels !! I don't know why this should be the case as analogue changes should not affect digital outs.
So if I want the banner suppressed, I have to remember to reset the anlogue uadio to multichannel whenever I play DVD-Audio.
Not very user friendly!

Navigation - Tried the arrow keys during playback, but only the up arrow functioned (forward step).

I've also noted another couple of things:
4:3 Aspect Switching
At first I thought this wasn't working - I played back X-men 1.5 in the 'enhanced mode' - this includes branching to behind the scenes video segments in 4:3 format. When the segment is displayed, it did not display the image in a 4:3 pillarbox on my 16:9 screen. The image was stretched.
If I set the played to 'pillarbox mode', then the video segment was pillarboxed OK in the centre of the screen, but when the movie playback resumed, it was windowboxed within the 4:3 image.

However, all is not lost - I popped in the 'Incredibles' disc and the 4:3 switching worked fine.
The 'coming attractions' screen was pillar boxed, 'Cars' trailer was full width anamorphic, 'Chicken Little' was 1.85 windowboxed in the 4:3 pillarbox image. Then the Incedibles menus and movie itself played back full width anamorphic.
The 4:3 aspect mode is set to auto.

So I'm thinking that maybe Xmen 1.5 doesn't have the correct flags set for the 4:3 material, whereas Incredibles does.

Erratic Menu display
I have noticed that the S2500 does not consistently display the correct DVD menu when 'menu' is pressed during movie playback.
Some Menu selection screens are preceded by short video sequences that normally only playback once, when the disc is loaded. After that, the next time the menu is selected, this intro sequence is bypassed.
I've found with several discs (including X-Men 1.5 and Monsters Inc), that during playback, if the menu button is pressed, they will sometimes return to either this video intro, or the primary language selection screen (English, French, Spanish etc, rather than the audio format, Dolby, DTS etc), rather than the main menu.

Hi everyone,

I'm new to this forum and since all the S2500 owners seem to be here, and I just purchased one, I thought I'd add my two cents... er, two problems...

I am getting slight pauses between the tracks that run together on the QUEEN "A Night at the Opera" DVD-A. Oddly, if you start at the second of two tracks and search back a bit, then play, it works fine. But when just playing through from the beginning of the first track the problem is quite apparent (and most annoying).

Also on disc 1 of the Fawlty Towers set, when the fourth episode is selected it stalls a bit then jumps right to the second chapter!

If anyone could test out these titles to compare or has any advice etc I'd certainly appreciate it.

Cheers,
Dave

S2500 owners,

Could you look up your owner's manual and tell me what kind of recordable/rewritable DVDs this player can play? I couldn't find any information on this on Yamaha web-site or this thread. Pioneer 59AVi is guaranteed to play only DVD-R/DVD-RW, while S2300 can play DVD +/- R/RW. What about S2500?

Did some one hack a R1 player to make it region free?
How is pal to tsc conversion?

jheoaustin,
according to the DVD-S2500 manual, here are the supported formats

DVD-Audio, DVD-Video, Super Audio-CD, Stereo/Multi-channel and Hybrid disc, DVD+R, DVD+RW, DVD-R, DVD-RW, Video CD (VCD), Super Video (SVCD), CD-Audio (CD-DA), CD-R/CD-RW (CD-DA, VCD, SVCD), MP3, JPEG

brianhahne,

Thank you very much for your information. It seems to play all the format I want or may want, except DivX. That seems to be one advantage of s2500 over 59AVi...

I would like to see 2 cpmpared neck to neck too!

Well I can't speak for the 2500, but the 963s manual was totally useless with respect to all the many oddities of the player. I can (and used to) apply surround processing to the digital outs when playing back 2.0 stuff. I'm not sure if it was an oversight or intentional, but it was pretty cool in a weird sort of way. The 963 only had pro logic I, though, so it's not something I've ended up using much.

I have not seen much talk about the picture quality of the 2500, in comparsion to players like the Denon 2910 and the Pioneer 59avi. I have a Sony 900v which I might play an occasional SACD. So I'm more interested in the video quality of this player and if it would be a step up from the Sony.

Thanks, Bill

The S2500 is too recent in release to have been thoroughly reviewed. Stay tuned!

I understand that, I was thinking of people on the forum that have the 2500.

Bill