JVC XV-S500 help!

[Rat Fink]

I recently purchased the JVC XV-S500 as I had noticed that several online dealers are selling it as an "all region" player. I wanted it because my old all region player (an Apex) won't play PAL DVD's that have an anamorphic wide-screen picture (it comes out "squeezed"). Anyways, I got mine at a Best Buy for about 1/2 the cost of what I saw them for online, only this one will NOT play all regions! I have yet to see anything posted anywhere about this one. Any suggestions at all on how to set this to "all region" would be greatly appreciated! (and turning off the damn Macrovision wouldn't hurt either!)
A million thanks in advance!!

[mmasse]

Hi ,

I wonder if you got a solution for this. I have the same model and am looking for a hack.

Thanks

[NautTboy]

Wow!!! Since 2002.

Well, anyone who own this player please talkup. It's not playing VCD (PAL). Well it's playing but it's not showing on TV correctly. It doesn't have a button that i can just click form NTSC/PAL like my Apex does.

So the sound works, just the video is jerky only if I can tell it to play/encode as PAL, if this model even plays them at all.

Help!, it's 2009 now.

[Rat Fink]

This particular JVC player can only play All Region if it has been opened and manually adjusted. They have been sold online this way for awhile. But there is no remote hack for it.

[jman98]

Wow. Rat Fink, who has posted a whopping 6 times in 7 years (Happy Anniversary!) actually replied to this. I am just amazed.

Anyway, with regards to NautTboy's problem, manufacturers make changes during production and this can break hacks that used to work. Of course, Rat Fink said that this player never had a hack. For all we know hardware changes have broken PAL playback for models sold in North America or this player is simply old and warn out. Not enough info from NautTboy to tell.

[Seeker47]

This particular JVC player can only play All Region if it has been opened and manually adjusted. They have been sold online this way for awhile. But there is no remote hack for it.

I bought one of these modded units online a few years back, for a relative. The player did indeed play PAL and other region DVDs, and was in service for about 2 years. Then it died -- would not recognize DVDs any more, just gave some obscure error code -- and is probably in a landfill by now. Since the player had just light-to-moderate use and was well cared for, this did not leave me with a particularly good impression of JVC. I have a 5 year old no-name player that has had heavy use, and is still running fine. Then again, you never know what the mod-merchant may have done to it.

[NautTboy]

I take it, No, it doesn't play PAL correctly.

Once again i'm talking bout VCD not DVD.

It'll play VCD NTSC 352X240 OK, just not the PAL 352X288.

OK, wait! Rephrase that. It is a DVD.

DVD full of karaoke from VCD(PAL) authored from Tmpgec DVD author.

[jman98]

VCD resolution video that used MPEG-1 is valid for DVD, but it could be that the firmware is poorly written and your player doesn't support this even though it should. You'll need to test with a PAL DVD at normal PAL resolutions to see if your player just doesn't support PAL at all.

You might want to explain what "doesn't play PAL correctly" means. Does that mean it doesn't play it at all? Or that it plays it, but you only see black and white and the image scrolls constantly? The latter might be able to be fixed if your DVD player allows you to change the output from MULTI or ANY to NTSC. If your DVD player doesn't allow you to change the output to NTSC, then it's probably unable to convert PAL video to NTSC.