No problem


The Kosch is interesting b/c it's region free out of the box apprently however it'd be nicer if they charged a couple bucks more and included a one year warrenty. If an extended warrenty is only a couple bucks it might be worth it.

I was suprised the LG needed a firmware flash to get it region free. Haven't seen that needing to be done to a machine in awhile. More trouble than it's worth imho.

Loblaws Superstore= Superstore btw. It's just called different things around Canada. I think it's Alberta's Superstore in AB for example. The one around me has an electronics dept. with a number of dvd players in it. Wal-Mart has it too for the saem price but you don't get any extra PC points there

Superstore isn't giving out Best Buy GC's there however you mentioned you had an electronic GC or something for $10 so since it's $100 at Best Buy and $90 at Superstore I'd just get it at Superstore for cheaper and use your $10 credit just to get something small (like blank dvds or a movie or something) for free.

The Philips is pretty easy to modify from what I remember. Just pressing a few buttons on the remote and following the instructions. If you need any help with it feel free to ask.

Cheers!

Malata DVD-856 at Visions (think they are only in W Canada) this weekend for $44. All region out of the box and is DivX compatible. Mediatek chipset. VGA output.

Don't know how it compares to the LG 530 but for $44, it is a great deal.

Originally posted by saugt Malata DVD-856 at Visions (think they are only in W Canada) this weekend for $44. All region out of the box and is DivX compatible. Mediatek chipset. VGA output. Don't know how it compares to the LG 530 but for $44, it is a great deal.

I saw that. It looks pretty decent. I don't have any experience with that unit but all the Malata's I've read about have gotton top notch reviews. I actually thought they went bust or something since I haven't seen anything from them in *ages*.

For divx this looks nice for the price however for region free it's up in the air since not all Malata's can properly convert anamorphic PAL dvds properly (stretches the image). I'm not sure about Visions return policy but if it's decent it wouldn't hurt to grab it to check if you're in the market.

For myself the Philips 642 has been great for divx and very good for region free. Having said that my top pick still is the Venturer machines (also the same as some Centrinos units from the source). Give a slightly better image than the 642 for PAL discs but the 642 is still damn good.

This one properly converts PAL to NTSC (no probs with anamorphic on 4:3 TV). It's also dual voltage so you can use it worldwide . It probably uses the same Mediatek 1389 family chipsets as the LGs. Of course, Malata is almost non-existent for firmware upgrades, which can be an issue with newer DivX codecs, but people should be using XviD anyways. XviD is free and open source, unlike DivX which is motivated by $$$ so they'll just keep coming out with newer codecs that won't work with older decoders.

Originally posted by saugt This one properly converts PAL to NTSC (no probs with anamorphic on 4:3 TV). It's also dual voltage so you can use it worldwide . It probably uses the same Mediatek 1389 family chipsets as the LGs. Of course, Malata is almost non-existent for firmware upgrades, which can be an issue with newer DivX codecs, but people should be using XviD anyways. XviD is free and open source, unlike DivX which is motivated by $$$ so they'll just keep coming out with newer codecs that won't work with older decoders.

Agreed with the whole "keeping up with the Jones" for divx players however I've even had some xvids that were too new to play on my 642. What somebody needs to do is make a MP4 player (divx, xvid, Nero Digital, H.264 etc) that runs linux and will allow whatever codecs the user wants to be installed.