Yamaha S-2500 universal player - DCDi, HDMI, i.Link, video scaling - Page 14

Manual downloadble: http://www.yamaha-online.de/download...ng=e&dlid=1567

Page 26 speaks to fast forward and reverse.

Anyone try this remote region hack that works for some other Yamaha models (US):
1. Power up. 2. Open tray. 3. Press "On Screen". 4. Press 99990 (0 is for region free - you can change to whatever you want). 5. Press enter. 6. It should now say Region:0 on the top left(along with firmware, etc.). 6. Close tray. 7. Play

Earlier Gary reported this remote region hack for his UK machine:
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...&&#post5750022

Well if you look back a few posts, there was a comparison made to the Denon 3910. And it compared very well to that, and the 3910 is twice the price of the 2910. So if anything, it should compare just as well or better against the 2910, while offering more features for about the same price.

Thanks Johnla I forgot about that post.

Bill

Randall, I tried this, but when you press on screen, then set up menue pop ups!

and it does not take those numbers! Pls advise?

Any word on Macroblocking and the layer switch? I'm running a JVC HD-ILA and tried out a Panny S77 but took it back because of the MB. I know this is a DCDi product but would like the upconversion and a reduction in the layer switch from my Denon 1600 if possible.

Thanks in advance!

Sorry to hear that. I've only applied this remote region hack to the S5750. Maybe an S1500 owner might have some pointers?

If you saw bad MB with the S77, you really need to go with a non-Faroudja player, like a Sony, Samsung, Pioneer, or Onkyo upscaling player. The S1500 had MB, and I have no doubt the S2500 does as well.

Thanks for the reply. The red wall in AOTC chapter 4 came alive on the S77. Probably not enough for most people to notice but I would be looking for it in every movie. Just like the CUE and the convergence on our old Sony CRT RPTV, once I saw it, I cannot not see it.

I did the same thing to my wife on the expand mode on 4:3. She didn't like the grey bars. "Look at the distortion on the edges." Now we watch all 4:3 in OAR.

It sounds like I am "stuck" with my 1600 until something better/cheaper comes out as I know I will get my clock cleaned for the SP1000 or 59AVi and know better than to ask about the 5910. I really like the DCDi on my 1600 so this is unfortunate that the 23xx chips cause problems.

DVD Compatability.
Hit a problem with the new 'jarre in china' DVD. The player is unable to lock on to the audio for Disc#1. Neither the menu intro/loop nor the concert itself can maintain a stable audio signal (it drops in/ou 2 or 3 times a second). I've tried iLINK, digital co-ax and analogue multichannel outs. I even sourced a second copy of the DVD and same problem.
This disc plays back fine on my older players.

Disc#2 of this 3 disc set plays back without error.
I'm guessing that the S2500 doesn't like something about the way the Disc #1 is (THX)mastered, which is surprising as it seems to handle tricky discs which cause problems on my other players.

I've flagged this with my UK Yamaha contact - he's already notified Japan of some other issues I raised, so hopefully a firmware upgrade will be forthcoming.

Can anyone definitely confirm that the following hack is working to make the drive region free?

--------------------
-Turn on the player without any disc in it.
-Press the Play button on the player itself.
-Push slowly 1-5-9 on the original remote.
-The display on the player should then show "------------"
-Push 222 222 005 255 on the remote.
-Push Play on the remote

For step 1, 2, 3 always wait until any OSD message disappear between a
command and the other
--------------------

Gary stated that it's working on his UK player. Anyone with US or other european players?

Hi,

It does work on European and US players, and it also works on it's more than cousin Philips 9000s

--Patrice

Hello,

Had anybody bought this from BrandNamez.com? It seems to be the best-price place on the internet. I'd like to hear your opinions about where to buy, or how Brandnamez.com is rated.

Well with BrandNamez.com, you will also not have any valid factory warranty. And they are only about $28 cheaper than what I was quoted right off the street at one local B&M, that is a authorized Yamaha dealer. And I know another local authorized B&M that will very likely go a bit lower than that one did. So when you figure in any differences of S&H, against what my local sales tax is, it's almost a "wash"... And I might save all of about $10 or so with buying it online. And with that, for me at least. Then I'd say that buying one online for price like what BrandNamez.com is asking, is just really not worth it for something not having a valid factory warranty.

Johnla,

Thank you for your reply, and I envy you as I don't have such a good Yamaha authorized dealer nearby in Houston, AFAIK.

I actually have maybe a total of around 11 different Yamaha dealers, (and that's with counting but only 1, of the almost a dozen Tweeters alone in my area) all within about a 5-40 mile radius here in the Chicago suburbs. And about another 5 more, if I want to travel a bit further and up to as much as 90 miles away and even over the border into Wisconsin. So they all tend to compete with each other some to try and get your business.
And even though Tweeter has by far the most stores in this area, they are also about the absolute worst, as far as trying to get a decent price on anything they sell.

After months of waiting it finally arrived on my doorstep last Saturday :-).

My first impressions are very positive. I have hooked it up to my Sony HS50 with a $10(!) 25ft. HDMI cable, and it produces a beautiful image at 480p. For some silly reason (and I'm convinced the $10 cable has *nothing* to do with it ;-) 720p just produces a full screen of "white noise". Amusing, didn't even know that was possible with a digital connection. I would expect some speckles or something with such a cheap cable, but not a complete loss of image. However, since the projector *does* switch to 720p, I am finally able to determine the impact of the infamous blanking problem (since I still have the original firmware in the projector) and decided that I''ll take the 480p output for now. To be honest, the scaling of the projector really seems fine to me - especially now I'm feeding it a digital signal. It is the deinterlacing that I wasn't too impressed about that made me decide to buy a new DVD player. For instance, the projector is not able to properly deinterlace some video material (mostly TV shows that I watch on DVD) and I also noticed serious artifacts on some titles, such as the scrolling text at the opening of the SW: Episode 2, or a water scene in Back To The Future part 2.

Anyway, the last few weeks I have been using the projector with a Yamaha DVD-S830. Since this is my first projector, I didn't have much to complain about. Until I hooked up the DVD-S2500 that is ;-). I can't believe the extra amount of information the S2500 displays compared to the S830 - even hooked up through s-vhs. And the HDMI connection is even better. Lots of detail, deep rich colours, lots of detail in the dark scenes, very stable image and no more artifacts in those tricky DVDs that I mentioned earlier. Especially an early scene in Episode 2 where some of the Jedis and the Senator have a meeting made me drop my jaw. The amount of detail in the faces, clothing and background was just unbelievable. A simple A-B comparison to s-VHS easily shows all the extra detail. "The Incredibles" looks so good, it's just unbelievable. Even the difference with a notoriously bad disk (SW: Episode 1) is amazing.

I have the player hooked up to a Yamaha AZ1 (European equivalent of the RX-Z1). Can't say much about the audio department, since I only use a digital connection. I've tried several analog connections from high(er)-end players in the past, and I was never able to tell the difference (and yes, I used source-direct to bypass the internal A/D-D/A stage), so it seems I'm satisfied with the quality the AZ1 produces and I'll leave it at that ;-). And to be honest, I can't be bothered hooking up 6 analog cables to enjoy the full quality of DVD-audio or SACD (don't even have one of those yet). Perhaps in the near future, but for now 5.1 audio for music is not high on my priority list - possibly when Roger Waters' new album finally comes out ;-).

I also can't tell you much about features and gizmos, since I usually don't use those. I find the setup-menus absolutely horrible (kudos to those engineers at Philips - at least they managed to keep up their reputation!). Then again, how often do you access those? If I can stop, start and pause a DVD I'm happy. If I can read the time on the display I'm happy.

A few little things that bug me:

- If I switch off the projector when using an HDMI connection, the player sometimes stops after 10-15s. It seems it can't handle a loss of the HDMI signal, even if you're playing a regular audio CD. If you start the CD again it works just fine. I'm sure that could be fixed with a firmware upgrade.
- In Finding Nemo I sometimes see a bit of "staircasing". Not quite staircasing, but don't know how else to describe it. Don't know if that is caused by the player or by the projector and it's the only disc that I noticed it on so far. Would love to try native 720p, but as long as a decent 25ft HDMI cable costs >$200, they can kiss my boots ;-). Maybe I'll pick up a shorter cable just to try it out and see if it makes a difference or not. Then again, as long as I don't know, I don't care - ignorance is bliss ;-).
- Already mentioned by someone else: The audio on Jean Michel Jarre's latest "live" DVD (as live as tutankhamon I would say) won't lock. No idea why. Only disk I have had problems with so far.

And an honorary mention to the disc-read speed. Yes, it takes a bit of time before the player has figured out what it should do with a disk. I doesn't really bug me, but I can understand other people have a problem with it. The player *does* seem to read any flavor of disk I've thrown at it so far: CD, DVD, DVD+R(W) and CDR. I guess that's the price to pay for compatibility. I've tried a Denon 3910 for a few days - it was considerably faster, but after 3 days of using it I already had a pile of CDs and DVDs that would either skip severely or not play at all...

Hope this information is of some use. I would say the DVD-S2500 is excellent value for money: DCDi, HDMI and - if you care about that - SACD and DVD-audio, all for less than $750 street price. Image quality is absolutely fantastic, I'm sure audio quality is up to the same standards. Now all you need to do is actually find one ;-).

Setup: Yamaha AZ1, Yamaha DVD-S830, Yamaha DVD-S2500, Sony HS50 (ISF calibrated) and $10 HDMI cable ;-).

All S2500 owners,

Could you do me a favor by posting where you bought this player?

Thank you.

S2500 manual contains really funny comment regarding i.link:

- Copy-protected96 kHz DVD-Video Discs are downsampled to 48kHz when using an i.Link connection.

Can anybody tell me what the heck this means? It passes more heavily copy-protected DVD-A and SACD contents without downsampling, but downsamples DVD-Video 96kHz soundtrack??

It passes SACD over i-link??? Manual clearly states that it doesn't - can anyone confirm this? I would consider upgrading my amp if it does... Right now I find the whole high-resolution audio a big let-down because I have to invest in 6 good analog interlinks to be able to hear multi-channel SACD.

Don't know of any 96khz audio tracks on DVD-Video discs. Perhaps the DTS 96/24 tracks that exist, *somewhere* out there?

From personal experience I can assure you that the S2500 most certainly does pass SACD over ilink. I use it for that purpose often, passing SACD and DVD-A digitally to my 56txi.

I suspect you are misreading the manual. It says SACD cannot be passed over the *HDMI* output, or from the digital out jacks (meaning coax or optical, not ilink).

I wouldn't worry about downsampling from 96 to 48 kHz. Even if it happens, do you REALLY think you're likely to hear it?

Well, the manual says that SACD is not output from digital-out jacks - I just assumed that i-link was considered a digital-out jack. Glad to hear it isn't. Or actually - I'm not, because now I have to seriously consider upgrading my amp ;-).

If that were the case, very likely. Although from my reading of the manual, there is no downconversion for SACD or DVD-audio.


What about bass-management for DVD-audio? It seems to have extensive bass management for SACD, but no mention of DVD-audio.

There are/were some DVD-V titles with 96kHz PCM sound track. Many of them have no video and are called "DAD". I also know a Pioneer DVD-V title with video and 96kHz stereo PCM.

Actually I am not that bothered, as I have only one DAD disc which I now regret to buy because of this. I may be able to hear the difference, or may be not. But this is not a show stopper...

I visited my Local Tweeter today. They said they have the Yamaha S-2500 in their wherehouse and are seling it for $699.00.

Just to clarify that the S2500 does NOT do CD upsampling DSD like its twin Philips 9000 does. Could not find this spec in the manual.

Thanks.

Ben

It's good to see that Yamaha doesn't do such a stupid and unnecessarily resource-consuming thing.

That depends on whether or not you consider DSD upsampling to be a good thing or not.

After a few more days of testing, I can add the following to my earlier post:

- Using an HDMI link, I get audio-sync issues. both the s-vhs and component links are fine.
- The staircasing effect I talked about is not staircasing. It seems that very bright pure colors sometimes have some sort of artifact in it. Again, only on HDMI. Component doesn't show this artifact. Read extensively about macro-blocking and chroma-upsampling, and don't think its either of those.
- Since both problems are not present on the component link, you would guess I would be using that one by now, but the HDMI image quality is so much better - even compared to component - that I'm willing to take these things for granted. My amp has an audio delay feature, the artifacts only shows in some very specific scenes (mostly pixar movies ;-)

I would have to try the player on a different projector and a different player on my projector to determine which one is causing the problem. I'm assuming the player for now, but have no evidence to back that up.

DSD upsampling can't be technically good. Most DACs do the similar thing for DA conversion actually. However 1-bit DAC is inferior to advanced multi-bit delta-sigma DACs these days, due to too high quantization and excessive noise-shaping because of the final DAC being 1-bit. PCM DACs normally generates 64 ~ 256fs 3 ~ 5 bit PDM stream for DAC. But DSD upsampling generate only 64fs 1-bit PDM stream. This is technically much inferior to what PCM DAC does.
Bottom line: let PCM DAC do PCM/Analog conversion.