new player woes

[RIPPER03]

Hi,my first post....
I generally burn avi movies(xvid,divx) to dvd.....for the last while,most have been in 5.1ac3 or a52.......when i play them in my apex ad1250x,the display shows its in 5 or 6 channel and you can clearly here it......the apex is older and i have upgraded to a new rca hdmi drc275n.....which clearly is much newer and more expensive and indicates dolby digital,yet,when i put the same disc in and hit the display...it says ac3 2 channel.....then i put the same disc back in the old apex,and it says 5 or 6 channels ac3.......grrrrrrr...am i missing something...a setting or anything...lol...frustrated.

[Baldrick]

Much newer and more expensive doesn't necessary mean that it has same divx/xvid ac3 support. What does the manual say about divx with ac3 support? Tried different audio settings?

[RIPPER03]

thx...
but the entire manual mentions nothing about audio codecs...funny tho,that when the movie is playing,and i hit the display,it says ac3.....only it says ac3 2 channels...lol.....i dunno....grrr

[jman98]

DVD players have to use a special chip to decode Divx. There are many different models of chips and some of them differ wildly from each other. The RCA probably uses a different and quite possibly inferior chip to the old Apex player you have. The RCA may only be able to output 2 channel AC3 with Divx because of a chip limitation.

I don't associate RCA electronics with quality. Apex made a lot of great "play anything" type players in their days and I can certainly believe that this old player is better designed than your new RCA.

[RIPPER03]

thx for that info

dang...ya,the old apex played everything i threw at it.....just all used up now,probly the laser.....
bought that rca,last week,was the top one,played everythin it says,hdmi,and 3 times the money,so i never even thought it wouldnt play what the year and a half older one does.....
anyway to take that chip from the old one,and put it in the new one...lmao...

is there anyway to flash or update the new one ?

[jman98]

Yes, you can update your firmware if RCA has an update available, but it won't fix your problem if the decoding chip has a hardware limitation that only allows it to output 2 channel AC3.

You would probably have been better off to have bought an Oppo player. Take a look at http://www.oppodigital.com
The downside for me is that Oppo players don't support VCD/SVCD and I do sometimes play those, particularly VCD.