I was shopping with my parents at Wal-Mart this afternoon and I noticed that their newest generic Diamond Vision DVD player supports DivX! The model number is DVDV816X (or DVD V816X) and it’s a slim black unit. It comes with the regular outputs like component/s-video/RCA for the video, and coaxial/RCA for the sound. Not bad for $39!
General Playback
The player appears to use a Sunplus chipset which is not flashable (damn!), but the DivX support seems good, the couple of videos I tried (Top Gear, Wedding Crashers, Bourne Identity) all worked great, although sometimes it would display a corrupted image during Top Gear playback. No idea if it was a bad burn or an error by the player but not a big deal.
Subtitle support
.idx + .sub files don’t seem to work. Although .srt files work, they are a pain to work with anyway if you converting from .sub as you have to run through an long process of OCR using SubResync or SubRip. The only option I can think of is to hardcode the subs into the .avi file.
They had a Philips player nearby which was on sale for $59 (down from $79). This might be a better deal for $20 more, especially since you can get firmware upgrades from Philips and modified ones off websites. I’m pretty happy with this though, if I could get subtitle support to work right it would be perfect!
UPDATE: Almost a month into ownership and it’s not going so well. It’s having huge problems reading certain DVDs that I burnt. The DVDs skip every few seconds and sometimes it just plain stops. DVDs containing .avi files do just as badly, with some files refusing to even play. The same DVDs (good quality Taiyo Yudens BTW) work great on my older dying DVD player and the PC so I guess it’s the fault of the player. Gonna return it and get the Philips instead.
7 Responses to “Wal-Mart and DivX”
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Hey Soowei,
seakrait (Jeremy) here from the P5 club (and fellow Singaporean). Just wanted to let you know that I’ve stopped by. Found you via google search for reviews of Senhor Roosters and used your review in my own blog. Awesome site!
Cheers!
-jeremy
Thanks man… never underestimate the power of the internet.
Ya… don’t get this one. My brother just bought this model from WalMart, it’s having huge problems. I have the Philips one, go for that one if you’re going on the cheap.
I think the real key here is “DivX Compatible.” Note the key word “Compatible.” It doesn’t say “Certified.” DivX uses Mp4, so every tom-dick and harry can make an MP4 DVD player and call it ‘compatible.’
I ended up buying a LG LDA-730 on sale for $69.99 from Future Shop. So far it has played everything I throw at it, so I am very happy with it!
If You go to burn video files on cd use Data and change your burn settings to 16x to get a full burn that wont skip and stop on dvdv816x .. you may have to change some settings on your burning program expert features like nero switch mins to 84:00 .. No multisession and also enable dvd overburn. then close the program and right click the video file and select burn with nero or w.e program ur using .
Anyone know if there is a difference in the code for video divx [r] Vod : Regerstration code on diamon vision dvdv816x or if there is any hacks ?
Also i try to burn a movie then never checked to see wat format it was and it was .wmv .. now im guessing here u need windows meadia consent or somthing to play these or is there away arround it like converting or adding in a file to let this play then burn as image then burn to cd or dvd. ?
Found this page looking for a firmware update to this thing. Damn, I’m stuck with a real lemon. It’ll pixelate on me, then refuse to keep anything in it. I have to unplug it for a day to make it play anything again. So much for cheapest common denominator.
is there a list of what manufactures and chipsets and their subsequent divx players that allow you to perform firmware updates
thanks
simon