Tonight, I decided to watch
X-Men: The Last Stand. A good final sequel to X-men and X-men 2; definitely worth watching.
But that's not what's bothering me.
When I tried to get the -region free- Philips-player to read the disc, it spit it out again, apparently unable to do something sensible with it, and since it continued to do so with several other discs, the only logical conclusion would be that it died on me after close to five years of service.
Fortunately, the DVD was region 2, so I was able to play the movie in my region-locked JVC DVD-recorder. For some reason, I couldn't get a signal from the DTS-track, so I set it to DD5.1 and enjoyed the movie, despite the apparent unavailability of the best audio signal available. After I finished the movie (and my dinner, but that was finished long before then), I did some tests and found out that one tiny setting was set wrong, so the digital output wouldn't get the stream.
Because of the region lock and my ample supply of non-region 2 discs, I don't use the recorder very often, so what I found out tonight is by sheer coincidence.
At first, I thought JVC made a mistake when the machine was sent back for repairs earlier this year, because of a nasty defect. When I got it back, they said that the audio circuit was replaced under warranty, so I suspected that they used a different circuit compared to the original.
Furthermore, I know my receiver is capable of recognising and handling the stuff; it has a nice big DTS ES-logo on the front, and I was able to watch the DTS-edition of Ghost in the Shell just fine in the Philips the other day. The reason I coudn't try the GitS-DVD in the JVC is because of the region-problems.
So, the bottom line is I have to get myself a new player since my normal player is borked.
I'm looking at the
Panasonic DVD S52 in black, which has S-video out, is capable of decoding DTS tracks and sending them digitally to my receiver, and the region-lock is supposed to be quite easy to circumvent.
Now to find out where I can get this player before Christmas at a reasonable price.
Cheers, K.
P.S.: This is my 100th blogpost! Go me!