Well, it's been a while since I've contributed to the forum but I have been a busy boy these past few months. I've come back on to report on Aldi's new upscaling DVD player with USB/card reader support.

Price: $59.95
Availability: On sale from 06/02/09...You know Aldi...get 'em while they're hot (...and I don't mean stolen!!!) !
Color/Size: Silver/black fascia...full component width case, low height & slim line.
Feature Set: HDMI; plays just about anything from music CDs to VCDs, DVDs (of course!), picture disks, photos and MPEG4+DivX movies on disk or card/USB stick. Full LCD display. Upscales standard video output to 1080p through HDMI or component.
Menu System: Dead easy to navigate. I've seen this menu style on other brand name and no-name machines so the firmware must be from a big supplier in China.
Loading Tray and Drive: Thin wafer-style tray, drive is quick to open and close + load from scratch.
Instruction Book: Satisfactory. I've never been wowed by any of Aldi's instruction books provided with products I've bought in the past. This one was a little better...just!!! At least it got the basics across in a way that a newbie would understand.
Connections: RCA composite video, component, s-video, coaxial audio, HDMI.
The Lowdown:

I bought this DVD player to use with our bedroom Panny HD plasma. We had been using another no-name upscaling player but it was flimsy, the picture quality wasn't great, it had no USB provision and it didn't play Mpeg4 or Divx, formats we use a lot.

For a machine with a lowly price tag of $59.95 this unit just piddles over the previous player. The picture output is richly detailed when upscaled. I could see no evidence of jagged edges or poor motion handling. Sound output is fine and is handled by a coaxial connection for 5.1 systems.

I ran my usual "test" DVD through this machine and did a comparison with the Sony upscaling player we have connected to our Panny HD plasma in the loungeroom. Frame by frame I couldn't see any difference between the expensive Sony unit and the "Vivid" Aldi machine.

Summing up I'd say that this makes an ideal starter DVD player for people new to upscaling players who are on a tight budget. It also makes an ideal second player for HD tvs you might have elsewhere in the house. The build quality seems okay from the outside but only time will tell if the internal components are robust...but for $59.95 this thing is a bargain for the feature set it carries.

If you want one be quick because stuff like this usually walks out the door of Aldis pretty quickly. Good luck!!!

I was looking at one of them today and wondering if they are any good.

Would be interested to read your thoughts and experiences after using it for a while.

Touch wood...so far, so good. I am still very impressed by the picture quality and the USB/card provision in the unit is just great! Like I wrote in the previous review, this unit is just fine for those on a tight budget who've just bought their first HD or medium HD tv and only have a few bucks to spare. It also makes a great second DVD player for those who have two HD screens. At $59 it's not a big dent in the finances, is it, and Aldi has a good returns policy for faulty items/warranty.

Do you know if the DVD player is region free ie plays dvds from all regions?

Thanks

I haven't investigated that. It seems that many players being exported to Australia are, again, being region locked to R4. Why, I don't know as this was once a selling point for the cheaper Chinese units. However, most companies will provide an unlocking code to be entered via the remote upon request. This is quite legal in Australia and, in this respect, we are more fortunate than our European cousins.

Aldi products provide a warranty hotline so I'm sure you'd get some sort of assistance. Why not ring them before you purchase the unit, just to make sure.

Yes, I bought one of these and I'm quite impressed. I suspect they are made by LG because the remote is identical to the remote on a LG DivX DVD player I own. (Also, I notice Kmart or Target has a $64 LG DVD player on special at the moment that has HDMI upscaling, which could support this theory.)

The reason I bought this player is because my new Sony Blu-ray player will not play duped standard DVDs. I wanted a way of upscaling DVD dupes to watch on my HD LCD TV. The Vivid player achieves this. It lets me watch discs that I've burnt and upscales them beautifully. It's proved to be a great, inexpensive solution.

The upscaling is excellent - hard to believe at this price. To test it I used a BBC drama series that I transferred to DVD from tape some years ago (a bad transfer). My normal DVD player does not handle these discs well; there is washed out colour, the background shots have little detail, and there is a blurring movement in the foreground as the camera pans. The Vivid player, however, upscales the picture so well that there is good colour rendition, good foreground detail and reasonable background detail, and no sensation of movement or bluriness. This series is now quite watchable thanks to this cheap player.

One thing I'd like to ask Dr Zac is about mpeg-4 playback. I can't get the Vivid to recognise mpeg-4 movie files (.mp4). I've tried burning the files on to DVD blanks, I've tried putting them on to USB sticks, and I've tried putting them on to an SD card. The player reads the USB stick and the SD card, but it won't recognise files with a .MP4 extension. They won't show up in the directory structure. I've also tried changing the file extensions to .MPG and .AVI in desperation (please, no sermons on MPEG-4 being different to AVI - I know this isn't the thing to do).

What's the answer? Have you been able to play MPEG-4 movies yet? I've tried researching this across the Net but I'm not having much luck.

Thank you

Lots of players won't play mpeg 4 correctly, if at all.

You might need to convert your files to another format. The following lists some options.

http://www.file-extensions.org/mpg4-file-extension

Sorry about the late reply, Highdeffer...I've been a bit poorly over the last couple of days ("OH the pain, the pain!!!"...:SLAP: that's getting too much in character!!!)

I have played a number of video files loaded on to a 2 gig memory stick and they've played each time without a hitch. All of them were standard AVI files. Perhaps the file(s) you are trying to play aren't fully supported, as Ozzymozzy has indicated in his post. In any event, just as he wrote, there are numerous video file converters available as freeware on the net. Here's some links for you:

http://www.snapfiles.com/Freeware/gmm/fwvideconvert.html

http://www.softpedia.com/get/Multimedia/Vi...-Freeware.shtml

http://www.freewarezoom.com/archives/prism-video-converter


Hope this helps... Thanks also to OzzieMozzy...

I think we have to draw a distinction between DivX (AVI) files and mpeg-4 (.mp4) files.

I can play AVI files okay, it's the .mp4s that the Vivid baulks at, and I don't know if it's because I'm going about things the wrong way.

I take OzyMozzy's point about lots of players not playing mpeg-4 files but I wonder if he's generally referring to AVI/DivX players. DivX players don't as a rule play mpeg-4 files, unless it is in the specification for them to do so. I have a DivX player and it can't play .mp4 files. This Aldi player, however, is actually specced to play mpeg-4 (.mp4) - as well as AVI - and by all counts I should be able to play an .mp4 file from a USB stick or a SD card, or from a CD or DVD.

cheers

Can't find a $64 player in any Kmart or target catalog.....any ideas?

Got an Aldi one today. So far pretty good. Wont read my 320Gb USB powered FAT 32 HD. :-( Using USB keys now instead.

Here is a post I made at WP and I'm still yet to find an answer

Well, that's a weird problem. I can only comment on the basis of the experience with my unit, linked to a Sony 5.1 HT amp (coax) and my Panny 42" HD plasma tv via HDMI. So far the picture when outputting 5.1 sound has been great...no problems at all. I'd try ringing the Vivid tech assistance line. You might have been unlucky and picked up a dud. Let us all know how you fare with this.

Thanks for the reply mate.

I did actually ring their Tech Support who hadn't heard of it before and they told me to return it and get another. So I did and the problem is still there... I'm starting to think the store manager gave me back the same unit.

I have noticed if you are watching a DVD and it only has stereo sound (5.1 selected in DVD menu) the picture is fine. Note that even with the amp (cheapy one) completely disconnected the issue is there.

It has me stumped.

Hmm...Try changing the sound setting in the Audio part of the menu to "RAW". I seem to remember I had to fiddle around with this setting to get the thing to output 5.1 whilst it was upscaling. Are you using an RCA coax connector to your amp.? It's the only way you're going to get 5.1 sound. All players in the cheaper category seem to be like this., using their coax or optical connectors to output digital 5.1 sound. I used to have an early Wintal upscaling HDMI DVD unit with USB input. It was a cow of a thing, sound-wise...it wouldn't accept any 5.1 settings for output when upscaling. In exasperation I contacted the company who then told me I'd have to wait for a firmware update. I'm still waiting...but I don't have the darned thing anymore!!!

Anyway...let us know how you fare and I'll double-check the settings on my unit for you. Good luck!

Yeah mo4 is confusing because i think it can be used for video or music files.. Unlike mp3 which is audio only.. Also xvid is a mp4 codec I believe so that makes it more confusing

Has anyone been able to play DVD files (eg. *.VOB) on this unit via the USB port and get SOUND working (and not just video)?

I have some DVDs as files (eg. video_ts/*.vob, *.iso) on my PC that I would like to play on a big screen TV without having to move the PC or plug it to the TV or burn them to DVD-RWs.

A while ago, I backed up a certain scratched DVD to HDD on my PC using DVDFab (via the "main movie" option). I transferred one of it's *.vob files to a USB stick and was able to play it on the Vivid unit with video and sound working But I haven't been able to replicate this success (with sound) on any other titles. When I copied other *.vob from other titles to a USB stick and played them back on the Vivid unit, the sound is missing. I tried to duplicate the first working DVD title by using DVDFab and select "main movie" option when backing up another title, but still don't get any sound on the Vivid unit. I played around with the sound settings on the Vivid without luck.

If no one has a solution, then I will persist with the burning to recycled DVD-RW (4x speed).

BTW, a friend has been able to plug in his battery powered USB disk drive into the Vivid unit and play *.avi files But I couldn't get my portable USB disk drives to work => "Unsupport USB device" (probably the USB doesn't have enough power for these). So I'll try an externally powered USB disk drive.

It should say in the manual what the max draw can be from the USB ports. It sounds like they are drawing too much power though the USB for the unit to deal with and need an external supply.

My friend reformatted his USB disk drive from FAT32 to NTFS, and found the Vivid unit would no longer recognise it.
The Vivid seems to be like the Panasonic DMR-XW300, in that it's USB supports FAT32 (and maybe FAT16) storage but not NTFS (and UDF/exFAT maybe).

The Vivid manual is nowhere near as comprehensive as Panasonic's.

I bought this Vivid player a few weeks ago. I was interested in the usb option. Avi's play fine from usb (4 and 8GB). I too was unsuccessgul in external drives (probably poor power). I have yet to get those same working avi's to burn to a DVD-r and play. It just comes up with bad disk. I have tried verbatium and TDK and all are burnt at 4x speed. Has anyone got advice as to what I may be doing wrong. Why can't to play xvid off a dvd disk?
Any help is greatly appreciated