RJ Tech RJ1600 Region Free DivX DVD Player

[knownasmichael]

What do you guys think of this new upcoming divx player? Is $160.00 a good price?

http://www.sunpowerusa.com/rjrjdvdpl.html

[Roundabout]

I'd steer clear of this one. Quote from the website you linked:

This item is pre-order only! Expected to arrive in our warehouse for shipment by 02/08/2004. Order yours today! Replaces RJ-4000 (discontinued).

They discontinued the RJ-4000 before even having any information about firmware upgrades on their website... www.rjtech.net

And now they have...

...no website at all!


Anyone thinking about buying this one, good luck getting tech support unless you speak Chinese and have a good long distance calling plan

Get the LiteOn LVD-2002 or the upcoming LVD-2010, at least they have some tech support you can contact (and a website that works)

[absolutic]

What do you guys think of this new upcoming divx player? Is $160.00 a good price?

http://www.sunpowerusa.com/rjrjdvdpl.html

what chip is it based on? still ESS Vibrato? Or RJ has "graduated" to newer chips?

[jeanboy]

About sunpowerusa.com:
- The website now sells the RJ1500 not the RJ1600. (?)
- They said it would be in stock by Feb 08, then changed to Feb 18, well guess what.. today is 18. Will it ever be in stock?

About rjtech.net:
- Has the RJ4000 had any firmware upgrades since its release?
- or.. you have to get the next model for a new firmware upgrade?
- Their website sells the RJ1100 upto the RJ1700 (!?) what does that mean?

On the other hand, I've read lots of good comments about the RJ4000. So I guess the RJ1500 line should be good too. But I refuse to buy the next model in line every 3 months just to get the next firmware upgrade (support for DivX 6, for instance). So is the RJ1500, RJ1600, or RJ1700 really worth the money? Please share your thoughts on this.

Also, can someone guru tester make a review on the RJ1x00 when it comes out?

Thanks,
Jeanboy

[knownasmichael]

Well according to the people at RJ, the 4000 player was not certified. On the contrary, the 1600 or 1700 or whatever will be divx certified. Umm.... yeah, thats all i know. Anyways, I really like their new portable divx player (something like rjx1200?).

[absolutic]

DIVX certification is a fiction. Go to www.divx.com go to forum , hardware, players. Their own person explained it.

DIVX certification today means that they DIVX engineers will actually test the player.

But all the players that have been tested before the last month or so (which is pretty much every certified player they have in their list) is SELF-CERTIFIED. What that means is that DIVX told the manufacturers what needs to be done for the players to be certified and as long as manufacturers told them that they did test them, manufacturers could place the certification.

DIVX labs never tested the products for certification. So players such as POLAROID 0600 which is a piece of junk according to many, got certified through this "SELF-CERTIFICATION" process.

When DIVX realized that the manufacturers did not really do much before stamping the player with Certification stamp, they stopped the SELF-CERTIFICATION process. Now DIVX engineers themselves do it. They got burned. But they cannot revoke certificaiton from these self-certified players. Every player on their list today is self-certified from what I can tell. For more, go to the divx forum as indicated

[jeanboy]

Thanks for the post absolutic. I just read all about it in the divx.com forum. I also found this post interesting, from one of the divx certification guys:

"...we only tested one of the RJTech models, but that is because they are all the same product: they just have different model numbers because some are sold in different geographic regions..."

Interesting.. so the RJ1500, 1600, 1700, etc. are the same product but with different region codes? Can't rjtech.net just say so in their website? jeez..

Jeanboy

[cody]

Hi guys!
Just got my RJ TEch 1500 from the website below- so far so good- have tested with all my movies ( including those from 3 years ago ) and works like a charm. Plays any format I've put into this player- let's wait for how long . One future that is missing is text files subtitles playing with some foreign language movies (Liteon's firmware next revision will support that). And yes player is multiregional- as far as I know- did play all my region 2 movies.
In therms of pricing- should be around $100-130 - bought it for 165 from sunpower.... What can I do
One more negative-progressive scan isn't that smart as it suggest in the setup- no way to strech out or shrink playing movie automatically to format that has been recorded in.

[absolutic]

Cody, please tell us more about the player because I am considering it as a second player...

How is the quality? is it really that much better than on Liteon? I mean the picture quality of divx files. Also Cody, could you also check how it plays XVID files? How is the progressive scan quality-wise? Do you have ANY files that it was unable to play? And does it really ff or rw 2x 4x etc like a regular dvd?
Thanks.

I am also not sure what the diff is between RJ1100, 1200, 1300, 1400, 1500, 1600, and 1700, their site basically provides exactly the same description for them! I emailed RJTech with no luck.

[optimus]

You can take it with a grain of salt but here's some info about this player:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=3082768719&category=50599

Note the comparison between liteon's chip and the vibratto chip at:

http://www.minicamusa.com/minicamusa/www.nsf/h/essvxsigma

I ordered one and am crossing my fingers. I have read that the vibratto is alot better with divx3. Liteon users keep saying that they are converting divx3 to divx5 because of the problems. I don't see why I should do this, especially because renecoding will lose quality and half of my cd's would be wasted.

Hopefully there will be fix for the divx3 problems soon on all divx players

[absolutic]

Very good, please check to see if it also plays XVID files.

[optimus]

Yes, it supports xvid

[cody]

Hi guys.
Optimus- yes player does support divx3 and I think any format you'd serve for this sweet player- it will simply play. I've tested over 200 movies from my collection and all off'em are ok. As far as progressive scan goes- player displays it in decent quality- almost no difference between RJ and my old JVC-XV-SA70BK- but as I said before My JVC has an inteligent progressive scan chip displaying movie in its original ratio (means a lot for me since using 16:9 tv and don't like streched 4:3 movies ) - with RJtech i have to change aspect ratio on TV set. Not a big deal, but ..
Absolutic- yes xvid is also not a problem and all the futures as ff, rew , slow motion work as good as on regular dvd- no 10 sec skip like on Liteon

[absolutic]

Cody and Optimus, thank you. Seems like the player that I need. Cody it seems that it played all of your files. That is very exciting. I see a lot of RJ1500 on ebay and also RJ1200. Do you think they are much different from RJ1600?

[optimus]

With the lite-ons I have read that you have to use some kind of zoom feature to get the right aspect ratio? Cody, is that the same for this player?

Does that only affect DVD's in widescreen format, or does it affect divx movies as well? I am confused.

I have a standard tv (not widescreen). Am I going to have to change anything on the player/tv to get normal 4:3 aspect ratio, or will all my divx movies just appear normally on the tv?

[absolutic]

optimus, with liteon, if you a hdtv-ready tv connected to it through components, you have a lot of options: first of all, the liteon has a menu where you can change from 4:3 to 16:9 so it changes a ratio. It also has a P-Scan button on the remote where you go from 480i to 480p to 720p to 1080i and that changes the aspect ratio too. Plus it has a zoom button which you can use to strech the screen up/down or left/right, and move the picture to the left/right/up/down. So with so many options, you would always find one aspect ratio which is good.

[gts]

Does this player play .OGM files ?

If not, do any of the currently available players that play divx play OGM files? Anyone know of any?

[stevieboy28]

I have had the rj1500 for a few days now and I am only having one problem so far, which is any xvid movie I burn to a cdr is slightly out of sync by a second or so. If i burn the same movie to a dvd-rw it plays fine though. I have tried several different kinds of cdr media with no luck yet. All divx versions have played fine on a cdr , just no luck with xvid. This sucks because xvid is being used alot now, and i would prefer to burn my xvid moves on a cdr instead of filling a dvd-r with them. Is anybody else having this this problem??

[optimus]

If i burn the same movie to a dvd-rw it plays fine though

It doesn't really make sense why the media you use would make any difference at all.

any xvid movie I burn to a cdr is slightly out of sync by a second or so

This is a longshot, but....open the movie with virtualdub versions 1.4 and higher) You may get the following message:

Virtualdub has detected an improper VBR audio encoding in the source avi file and will rewrite the audio header with standard cbr values during processing for better compatibility. This may introduce up to 3ms of skew from the video screen. If this is unacceptable, decompress the entire audio stream to an uncomplressed wav fle and recompress with a constant bitrate encoder

If you click okay and try to play the movie in virtualdub you will find the audio/video skew noticeable.

Try using decompress.exe to decompress the avi file. You can get decompress.exe with avi2vcd.zip here:

http://home.cogeco.ca/~avi2vcd/sq32n/avi2vcd_ver1_4_2.zip

Then open the decompressed avi (between 1.5 and 2 GB avi file) and then select direct stream under video and Full processing mode under audio. Select compression under audio and select Mpeg Layer 3, and then 96 kbit/s 48,000 Hz, or 41,000 Hz.

The choose "save as avi"

The new avi won't have the skew anymore. Burn it and try it on your divx player and see if it makes a difference.

This is the only thing that comes to mind for me with audio skew or out of sync problems. It still does not account for why you have no problems on dvdr

[gts]

to Cody or Optimus:

Do you know if this player will play ogm files or if there will be some kind of firmware upgrades to allow it to in the future.

Thanks

[cody]

Player doesn't support ogm files yet- as far as I know- but hope that next firmware version will handle it. I have no info about future firmware.

[morikar]

Subtitles in RJ-1500DVX

MOve the cursor over the subtitle file (? simbol) then press "angle" in the RC, later go to the Divx file and press play ENJOY !!!!!!!!!!!!!! :P

GROUP RJTECH_AR

YAHOO.COM.AR

[cody]

Morikar- great news- nice to hear that- tried and works fine- cool option- so far the best divx player for me on the market

[optimus]

Well, I got mine last night. I am speechless. So far everything has worked (xvid, divx3, divx 4, divx 5) except for one movie where the video worked but the audio didn't....the audio was encoded at 64 kbits so I suspect that may be the problem. Otherwise...it's flawless. If you bought a lite-on, you wasted your money. Return it and get yourself an RJ1500....it's the best so far.

[mmelendez5]

Looking for a Divx/DVD player also. Was considering the liteon 2010 whenever that comes out because it is networkable. Can the RJ-1500/1600/? read multiple avi files from a single DVD-R disc? Thus you can select which file you want to play.

[Yanch]

And what about mulitple audio streams? Does RJ1500 support them?

[Kairk]

mmelendez5 : Yes, it will play multiple files from a DVD-R. It searches all the folders on the disc and you navigate through the folders to pick what you want to play.

Yanch: I tried one AVI with 2 audio streams and it worked.

[FulciLives]

Well, I got mine last night. I am speechless. So far everything has worked (xvid, divx3, divx 4, divx 5) except for one movie where the video worked but the audio didn't....the audio was encoded at 64 kbits so I suspect that may be the problem. Otherwise...it's flawless. If you bought a lite-on, you wasted your money. Return it and get yourself an RJ1500....it's the best so far.

Any new comments on this?

It's been a good week a half ... just wondering if you have anything new to add ... good or bad.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[sushix]

I am thinking of getting this unit to replace my Liteon player. BTW you can get them cheaper at ebay http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=3085945415&category=50599

[Kairk]

Does anyone know what the max resolution the rj1500 will play? I tried playing a 1280x720 xvid avi and got the message "Reso. not supported". If it matters, I'm trying to play it on a regular (non-HDTV) TV.