Liteon LVD-2002 DVD Player Review

[teramesher]

I picked up the 2002 the day after thanksgiving. Some of you may know I was debating between 2001 and 2002 due to the 1080i support, but I decided to go with 2002 which offered $30 rebate.

I've never done any sort of reviews, but here it goes:

Looks:
- It looks nicer than I expected. It has blue faceplate, which doesn't match my black HT system, but it's nice enough.
- The player is half the size of my good old Pioneer 333 player in height.
- The red power light is really annoying when the player is off especially when the player is sitting right next to my TV. I put a piece of postit sticky over it to dim it for now.
- The Remote control is very thick and looks cheap. But it serves the purpose. The numeric key "0" is located to the right instead of regular spot like the phones. A minor nuisance.
- The buttons on the player itself are a bit stiff and you have to push hard sometimes to get it working.

Functional Annoyance:
- While the player's turned off, if you push eject button, the power comes on and the tray ejects. However, when you try to close the tray with eject button again, it some times doesn't respond.
- When you have the tray opened and a disc is in place, pushing the play button closes the tray, but it reopens immedately again sometimes. (It should close and play).
- When you turn the player off, the power comes back on immediately sometimes. I haven't figured out exact steps you need to take to make this happen.

The player seems to be picky about opening/closing tray with the eject button. If you try to bypass it using the play button or use eject button while the power is turned off, its logic doesn't seem to work correctly. These annoyances are very small, but it's still annoying to have to push the buttons multiple times.

Playability (I am running 29 firmware):
- Divx 3.11 high bitrate (~1300) skips as many people have found out just like 2001 does.
- Divx 5.x plays beautifully.
- Have not tried Divx 4.x. (I don't see the reason to try this. I usually convert any 3.11 or 4.x to 5.05)
- Xvid works as good as Divx 5.x
- Divx/Xvid files encoded with AC3 5.1 works fine. You get the full Dolby Digital audio! Very sweet.
- Divx/Xvid files encoded with DTS does NOT work. The player does not handle DTS avi files. Don't get this confused with DTS on DVDs. I tried Gladiator's DTS audio and it's good. They work fine. I have sent an email to Liteon asking whether 2002 plays avi files encoded with DTS audio before I bought the player and their answer was yes, but I found out that it's not true. This was a letdown as I was looking for a player with AVI DTS capability. No Cigar here. Hopefully the future firmware upgrade can fix it.
- haven't played with external subtitles. Since the player does not support doublebyte character anyway, I usually encode my avi files with subtitles. So this is no biggie for me.
- MP3's navigation could use some work. You can't jump to prevous/next page in the list. You have to click on down arrow button over and over again. Like other functionalities, you have to stop what you are playing in order to get out of the current display to change any setting or navigate. And also 29 firmware does not have directory support. The files are listed flat in the root directory.
- When playing an avi file, rev or ff button works at the incrememt of 1 min and mp3 works at the increment of 5 sec (correct me if I'm wrong. I don't remember right now)
- The search button on the remote works ok. When you push "search" button, it pauses the movie. You enter the time. For example if you enter "00:45:00" Then you hit Enter button to jump to 45 mins into the movie. The search works on both DVD and Avi's. I wish the movie doesn't pause when you use search button though.
- When you display jpg files, the image does not resize to fit the screen properly. But you can use the zoom button to resize, etc.
- I have read a lot of complains about 2001's remote control not being responsive. I did not have the problem with 2002. The buttons layout is decent except numeric "0" being off the normal place.
- The noise level from the drive varies from DVD to DVD. When I was playing Gladiator dvd and mute the audio, I could hear constant high pitch noise from the drive, but not on Matrix. The drive is very quiet when playing avi files.
- The video is currently connected through S-video, so I am using NTSC setting instead of 480p on my 36" Sony WEGA Trinitron. I'll probably pick up the component cable over the weekend and give 480p a try. Compared to my Pioneer 333 DVD player, the video quality looks a little more nicer, but can't really tell.
- The disc load time is around 2-3 sec, which is decent.

To summarize, below is the improvement I'd like to see in the future firmware:
- support of DTS avi audio
- support of doublebyte character in file display as well as subtitles.
- Better directory structure and navigation for mp3 and ogg.
- Support of wmv and asf files. ( I doubt this is going to happen though)
- Better rev and ff navigation


Overall, I am happy with the purchase. It's worth $99 if you are looking for play-all dvd player. If you are looking for dvd player that supports 1080i, this isn't it though. I've thought about building a PC made for Home Theater. I figure I'd have to spend $30 for a sound card with optical audio out. I figured the cost factor wasn't better than $99 player, so that's on the backburner for now.

comments or questions are welcomed.

[teramesher]

had a chance to test Divx 3.11 encoded at 943 bitrate and 900 bitrate. Surprisingly, it played without freezing. I have heard that ~800 was the limit for 3.11, but I was able to push the limit!

[hastey]

What is the highest bitrate for Xvid/Divx5 that it will accept and/or you have tried?

[teramesher]

I tried as far as 1700kb/s on divx 5.05. They work without any problem.