I told Sony as much, and added that I would be buying a JVC VCR instead. The one I got has many many features, including the ability to record Super-VHS on normal VHS tapes, as well as the same functionality as a Sony 'cable mouse'. And brand new, it cost $232.42 including shipping. I bought it from One Call, which has always had the best prices around. I have bought four VCR's from them, and two TVs, and recommended them to my friends. Here is their banner:

Since I have some electronics skills, I decided I was going to try to fix the 'cable mouse'. I took it apart, expecting to find just an IR LED. I was surprised to find that there were lots of parts inside, including a large integrated circuit, and a bunch of surface mount stuff, including transistors. This stuff would be very difficult to fix. But the unit used to work, and failed without anything notable happening to the unit. So I checked the connector to the circuit board looking for a broken wire. No good, all the wires were ok. The only suspicious part was a 10volt, 100microfarad electrolytic capacitor. These are generally the least reliable parts in electronic circuitry. So I removed the Sony one (which is really a Marcon CE-SE part), and replaced it with another capacitor that I had lying around (ok it came from a circuit board of a scrapped answering machine). The cable mouse now works!. So Sony either bought a substandard part, or designed the circuit in a marginal fashion. I'm not impressed, as this stuff should work for more than 2 years.

Sony XBR 36 HDTV

Well, I should have learned my lesson. But I was a moron. When my mom wanted my old 27" XBR TV, I gave it to her, and I decided to buy a wonderful 36" XBR TV. It has all kind of wonderful features, and is HDTV compatible. What this means is that it accepts 'component video', and can display pictures up to 1080i mode. Most importantly (for now) it can also play 480p signals from a 'progressive scan' DVD player. So (again) like a moron, when my mom wanted my old DVD player, I bought a new Sony DVD player that does progressive scan.

It is a bit complex, but a DVD player can put out '16*9' output, which means the picture is 16 units wide, and 9 units high. The TV can also deal with '16*9' input, which is good. For video 1..4 it automatically detects and processes '16*9' input. For the component video inputs, you either enable or disable it (no automatic). Well, I enabled '16*9' mode for my DVD player, and the picture looked great. I then switched to a different input (like watching broadcast TV). When I returned to the DVD player, the '16*9' mode was disabled. Sony admits it should not be that way. However, since I bought the TV over a year ago, parts and service are not covered under warranty. It doesn't matter that I just found out about the problem yesterday (because component video devices used to be hard to come by and were generally expensive).

So I will have to pay many hundreds of dollars to get this problem fixed. I now swear, I will never buy another Sony product. I called them up and explained the situation. Sony said it was out of warranty, and it does not matter that I just found out about it yesterday. That sure is a good customer attitude. At least a good attitude for losing market share.

Sony NS-755V DVD player

I bought a Sony DVD player because it had component video outputs, which at the time was a big deal. It was $200, and works ok. Nothing exceptional except it also plays DVD-A disks (that is high definition audio disks) which few players play.

Philips DVP5928 DVD and media player

After spending lots of effort to build a Media Player to play my compressed video files, I found a Philips DVD player that has very similar functionality. In addition to playing normal NTSC DVD's I believe it will play PAL DVD's. It will also play almost anything that is stored on an external USB drive, thanks to its USB input on the front panel. I have tried it on a variety of flash drives, but I am told it also works on USB hard drives as long as they are formatted in FAT32. It plays 95% of the compressed media that I have tried to play. Occasionally, I have to use my Media Player and VLC to play something quite obscure. Considering it has a remote control, costs $50 and uses virtually no power compared to my Media Player, I consider it quite a useful device. It is also really quite thin, being slightly over 1 inch thick.

Apex 660 DVD player

I had read a few reviews about the Apex 600 DVD player. It plays CD-R's that have mp3 files. I thought it was a nifty feature. Yesterday, I went to Circuit City to get some thanksgiving bargains, and there was a bunch of Apex DVD players stacked in front for $90. I thought about it, and decided I really needed a DVD player...

But these inexpensive players didn't play mp3 files. So I ended up buying the more expensive Apex 660, which is supposed to play mp3 files. It was inexpensive, at $150 (with a $20 rebate). I took it home and started playing Contact. That worked well. I then put in a cd-r I had that was full of mp3's. But they wouldn't play. You see, I record all my mp3's with variable bit rate (VBR), so more bits are used during complex passages and less during simple passages. Its part of the mp3 standard, though most encoders don't do VBR encoding.

And the Apex doesn't seem to do VBR mp3's. I called their number, but got no answer. I couldn't find a web page. I took it back to Circuit City. Imagine my surprise, when there were two other people in line returning the $90 Apex DVD players. They were both defective. Not good quality control...

There was another DVD player that said it did mp3's. It was a Aiwa, and cost $200. I popped my disk in, and it seemed to work, based on the time counter on the display. But there was no way to listen to it. You see, the clever folks at Circuit City had about 30 DVD players on the showroom floor, but no way to switch between different ones to play audio or video. And they were backed against a wall, so you couldn't just hook up some wires at the back of the unit. Pretty clever way to sell equipment, Circuit City (go buy a clue, and buy an A/V switcher at the same time).

Needless to say, I cannot recommend Apex due to poor quality control, as well as a substandard implementation of mp3 decoding. Shouldn't take more than a megabyte of code to completely decode mp3's. I wouldn't be surprised if they couldn't do other unusual formats, like high bit rate...

Sandisk Sansa c250 mp3 player

I finally bought a mp3 player, because it was a crazy deal for $5 after rebate. When I took it home, I hooked it up to my computer. It was supposed to have a mode where it is treated as removable storage. I went through the menus and I couldn't set the player to that mode. I called Sandisk on Sunday, and after going through several options, the tech guy said it was defective and to get a new one. The new one acted just like the old one, but the tech guy was different. He said to update the players software. After doing that, I was able to access the mode to set the player as removable storage.

This player has a micro secure digital (SD) slot so you can add more storage. I called up Sandisk, and they told me as long as the player was at least V2, then I could use micro secure digital high capacity (SDHC) which was good news. I looked on the back of my player, and it said in very small letters V2. So I ordered a 4gb micro SDHC drive. I put it in, and it wouldn't work. I tried a 1gb plain SD drive, and it worked. I called Sandisk and they told me to check the firmware version of my player. I told them it was version 1. They told me my player didn't support SDHC. I told them I had called them previously and they said if the back said V2 then the player was V2. The tech suggested someone switched the back. I told them that wasn't the case, as I had bought it new one week before. They had no explanation. A friend has a player like mine, except it has version 3 firmware. His back says V2. His player also worked with the 4gb micro SDHC. This demonstrates that Sandisk has issues labeling their product accurately. This also demonstrates that some of their tech people are a bit clueless (like the first tech I spoke to).

Others know of these problems. For example, at the Rockbox twiki they say "...The v1 hardware uses firmware named 01.xx.xx, while the v2 hardware uses firmware beginning with 03. This version number can be retrieved under Settings->Info. All other indicators, such as markings on the casing or packaging, are unreliable due to SanDisk's practice of reusing these things without consideration for the hardware inside." So clearly Sandisk has a history of being sloppy at best labeling their products.

Overall it is a decent product, but the screen could be easier to read.

Recently, I found out that there is open source software for many media players, including mine. It is called Rockbox. In addition to being free, it has many features that the Sandisk software doesn't. It can play mpeg1 and mpeg2 video files. It supports many types of audio files including flac, aac, ogg, wav and many more file formats. It even has a variety of games including chess, jewels, reversi, sobokan and many more. Right now it is only supported with version 1 software, so I am able to install it on my player.

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