I hope I'm not outstaying my welcome here, but as an old Pronto owner I have received useful answers to almost all my Pronto-related questions. I recently brought with me a RC 9200 from the US (to Norway) and it now seems to be working in a fairly stable manner (thanks to you guys) and I am about to implement the final (?!) plan for my home theatre, purchasing two DVD-changers. The reason for changing to the RC 9200 was that I wanted to be able to display a lot of colour bitmaps of DVD movie covers as buttons which would then (magically) start the movie without any further work.

I have been offerd two Pioneed DV-F727s modified for multiregion play at USD 580 each, from electronicsdirect.com, and I have the following questions:

1. I know the player has been discontinued, but have read good things about it in the past. Please give me your opinion!

2. Is the price OK? (Hard to tell from over here)

3. Does anyone know electronicsdirect.com?

4. Any other comments?

I would really appreciate any help I could get here, event though the question is only vaguely related to remote controls!

Thank you very much in advance

Christopher Groth

With due respect, this question is not even vaguely related to remote controls. Or turning it around, if this question is suitable for this forum then any question regarding a product which does use a remote control is suitable for this forum.

A simple search on Google would give you a lot of links including this one [Link: audioreview.com]

Thank you very much, the link was very useful!

I beg to differ on the issue of relation to remote controls though, as the reason for wanting the players is the existence of the "Pronto family" with bitmaps, macros etc and the availability of the Nudelist application.

Question 3 stills remains!

Thank you all again

Christopher

If you have two identical DVD players, how do you control them individually from the pronto, wont they both respond to the same commands.

Craig

From the manual (which I have downloaded) it seems that they may be "daisy chained" is a master-slave configuration through a cable between the players. This means that the slave will not respond to any commands utself, but that the master will pass along any relevant received IR commands to the slave using the hard wire connection. Also the manual says that chaining them together will reassign the disc number on the slave, so that DVDs/CDs 001 to 300 will be on player one (master) and 301 to 600 will be on the slave. Handy?!

This is a good question for the forum - it just depends which part you want to answer...

With regard to using dvd cover art as buttons - keep in mind that image file sizes are going to be critical for what you are trying to accomplish. I believe that you are probably looking at somewhere in the 20-40K per image file size particularly if you want anything decent in cover art images. If we use 40K as the typical size your RC will have room for maybe 150-200 DVDs before you run out of memory...

This is something you should consider/test carefully before you get too far along.

Also - dvd profiler (see their website) have an awesome set of tools for creating these sorts of cover art images and actually allow you to create custom bitmaps that can incorporate other movie-specific details like surround format, movie length, etc etc etc (very extensive) along with the cover art image - this would be ideal for your purposes. There are many predefined layouts already done so while you can create your own custom layout you might even find what you want is already done and available.

Anyway - just my .02... :)

Greg

This message was edited by gregbr on 06/26/02 21:23.01.

I have a DV-F727 in the UK. Had a lot of trouble looking for a US shipper who would ship to a UK address. Eventually found a UK company who would do it, but ended up paying in GBP roughly what you're being asked in USD.

I really wanted a jukebox. The Sonys were virtually impossible to get hold of and have (apparently) a lousy interface which is especially difficult to automate. The Kenwoods are the size of a small house. The Pioneer at least allows you to go directly to a particular disk, but the names you enter are only about 12 chars long (far too small for DVDs and is clearly adapted from their CD jukebox software) and there is no provision for cover art on the player itself.

Because this is a US player, there is no RGB output and the NTSC output is "real" NTSC, not the PAL 60 that many players provide and a lot of European TVs are set up for.

The player is a bit long in the tooth and, as a jukebox, not exactly top of the range, so it doesn't have the best picture I've ever seen, but better than my previous (older) Pioneer (DV-505).

That said, it seems to work fine.

Anything else I can help you with?

Greg,
it depends on how large you want to make the cover bitmaps. If you take six per screen, you'll end up with 9KB for each. I have about 180 DVDs and another 180 CDs along with quite a number of full screen graphics and have had no problems so far...

Andre - yes agree with you absolutely on the image size and resultant file size - i've only tried a couple different variations and did end up in the 20-40k range as i had mentioned - from what i can see your 9k images look just fine so that is great to see. in my case i was trying to setup a single movie per page where someone flipping through them could see other movie-specific details like surround format, key actor and actress, movie length, movie screen format and several other things - once i had incorporated all this info and used a larger movie image i found myself in that 40k range...

do u use dvd profiler for your cover art? If not what application do u use?

Greg

Greg,
I use pure and simple spare time ;-)
I must admit, I couldn't figure how to do it with supernudelist and didn't even know there was a programm called dvd-profiler...
Just like you, I also have a details page on which you can find a short (9 lines) synopsis of the movie. The browse-view (6 movies per page) is only for convenience, also there is an alphanumerical keyboard to browse by the initial letter.
I use Photoshop and made some macros to resize and convert the cover pictures to the right size (70*100pix) and to the pronto palette.
André

This message was edited by André du Fresne on 06/27/02 16:01.03.

Mark,

Thank you very much for your reply. Lots of good information there, which I will think seriously about before deciding on whether to buy. One question though, as a non-native English speaker what does "long in the tooth mean"?

Thanks again for your help!

Christopher

On 06/27/02 10:36.55, Mark Nolan said...

Sorry, should have taken out the colloquialisms. In this case, "long in the tooth" means "quite an old model". I think it comes from our agricultural past as there are some animals (like horses?) where the teeth never stop growing, so you can tell their age by the length of the teeth!

Mark

I see, well the upside is that it's now quite reasonably priced at around USD 530. I guess there a new model just around the corner, but that'll probably be more than USD 1000? Problem is, now I'll need to buy a new amp that does component video switching as my projector only has one input!

And for those of you who still think this is not related to remote controls; had I never bought the Pronto in the first place I would never have bought my CD changer, and without these I wouldn't have bought the RC 9200, and without this I wouldn't be thinking of two new DVD changers, and without these I wouldn't need an expensive new surround amp (thinking of the Yamaha DSP AX3200)...... It's a disase and I blame the Pronto!

And Leo only added to the addition with SuperNudeList. But it is a program that we ALL CANNOT live without.

They work fine. I used to own a few DV-F727s.

However, as to the Daisy-Chaining aspect, know this:

You cannot daisy chain component video. Only s-video is permitted.

You cannot daisy chain digital audio inputs. If you want Dolby Digital or DTS, you will need to use separate digital outputs for each.

If you want true daisy chaining capability, you have to go to the Kenwood Sovereign series. You might be able to get two Kenwood Sovereign DV-5050Ms for around the amount you're talking, and you'd be better off.

Unless you're willing to sacrifice component video or digital audio inputs, you'll have remote control confusion.

Nick