Thursday, October 12, 2006

Hacking a VGA-connection in a DVD-player

I own several players, some for daily use, others for special occasions or if one of the others might kick te bucket for some reason. One of those daily players is an "Encore DVD-43031", and sits in my bedroom, as I like to watch a movie or anime now and then before I go to sleep.
I connected it through a VGA-box to a computer monitor I had lying around, but I wasn't very satisfied with the picture quality. The conversion from composite to VGA made the image very bright, but toying with the brightness and the settings of the VGA-box didn't do much good.
The VGA-box also has S-video and YUV-connections, so I thought I'd try a YUV->VGA conversion.

The image improved a little, but still quite bright and saturated, so I checked the setup of the player for more options.
"Hm, let's see what we have here... Video, S-Video, RGB, PC-VGA, YUV... Hold on, PC-VGA? That would be nice; let's fire up the soldering iron!"
Okay, technically it's not really a hack, since it's already built into the firmware, but not everyone is very keen on drilling holes in their DVD-player. ;)

It's quite logical actually, as most cheap DVD-players tend to be built around a PC-type DVD-pickup, and driven by a small MPEG-decoder with everything but the kitchen sink built in.
The PCB had an unconnected connector with R, G, B, H-sync and V-sync next to it, so I removed the SCART-connector (who needs that when the player already has connections for Composite, S-video and YPbPr), drilled some extra holes and mounted a VGA-connector instead, using the wires that used to lead to the SCART-PCB.
Hooked it up to the monitor without the VGA-box, and presto; a stable image without being too bright or saturated. Here are some pictures I took during the build.

For sound, you get 5.1 analog outputs and both TosLink and S/P-DIF digital outputs on this puppy, so that was good to begin with.
Now, if you'll excuse me; I have NieA under 7 to finish.

Cheers, K.

posted @ 10:16 PM | Feedback (6)

Thank you Vodafone...

I've been having a cellular phone for almost seven years now. Not as long as some people I know, but long enough.
I started out with a prepaid number, because I wanted to keep track of what I spend on telephone calls. Later on, I decided to switch to a subscription, because of cost and I wanted a new phone. :) Since I was already doing business with Vodafone and didn't have any problems, I decided to stick with them.

A while ago, I got a new subscription because of a certain type of phone I wanted for my Japan-trip, so I got a new number, and decided to switch my old number back to prepaid, as I wanted to keep the number for a while longer, but I don't feel like paying a whole lot of extra money, just to maintain an extra number (and a tainted one at that, since too many people had gotten hold of that number). I thought about taking a new, private number earlier so I bought a new SIM a while ago. Then I decided to get the new subscription and use the PP-SIM to have them transfer my existing number to.

Are you still with me?

Yesterday, I found out that I had to add some credit to my balance, as the Vodafone computer rendered my SIM invalid, and thus cut me off. However, I didn't make any calls with the card so far, and the number was transferred only three weeks ago.
So I rang Vodafone's Customer Support, asking them what happened and to see if they could restore the number. Apparently, the year-without-adding-credit has to do with the SIM, not with the number attached. So I'm out of luck, and after seven years of being a paying customer, I can go to hell as far as Vodafone is concerned; I'm not getting my number back.

I would be fine with all of this, if only Vodafone would have had the decency to send me a warning message before time ran out, and according to the guy I talked to, I indeed should have been warned, but that didn't happen. Yeah, like that's going to help me now. :(

I'm not sure if I'm getting another (prepaid) number, but as cellular phones are allmost a necessity these days, I fear I'm going to have to, if only to protect my private number.
Whatever it will be; it's not going to be a Vodafone number anymore, that's for sure.

Cheers, K.

posted @ 8:14 PM | Feedback (1)

More pictures added

Yes, I finally took some time to add more pictures. However, I want to go to sleep now, still more to come. :)

Cheers, K.

posted @ 12:07 AM | Feedback (0)