Anyone have a Bravo D1 DVD player? Curious to hear comments/opinions ... It sounds like the construction leaves a bit to be desired but that the video quality through the DVI out is awesome.

ms

Hmmm... looks great value for the price. This review seems very favourable.

I don't have one, but know a lot of people that do and they LOVE em. Although they had to go through several to get one that didn't freeze up...

- Jon

yikes ... Oh well ... I'm always up for a challenge Mine should come in in a couple days ... I'll post a followup after it does.

Please do. Seems almost too good to be true, at least for TVs with DVI inputs.

The author of the review linked in the first reply to this thread writes the following:

For whatever reason, mainstream manufacturers of DVD players have been unable to recognize that DVI output would be a highly desirable feature on a DVD player.

Well, I suspect the reason is rather simple. They don't want to get their collective asses sued by the MPAA nor the studios for selling a device that comes set up to defeat Macrovision protection, which only works at 480 (i or P). Sure, you'll need a connecting device that takes the DVI input and can pass it back out to an analog output such as S-VIDEO. And, they could restrict the output to 480, something Bravo seems to not have done.

A digital signal out of a DVD player is a rather big thing and happens to be one of the major stumbling blocks for the release of higher definition DVD into the mainstream.

Bruno

Still on my honeymoon with it, but this just arrived a couple days ago (took forever for it to ship -- I think they're just really backed up with orders).

After upgrading the firmware (kind of cool -- you burn an iso onto a CD and you can then boot the player off the CD to perform the upgrade), I was able to access the custom DVI settings and configure the 1:1 mapping for my HS10 (1368x768). The output looks considerably better than my previous player ... I didn't know what to expect with it, but I must say I'm impressed. The scaler in this thing does a really good job ... I do, however, agree completely with the other reviews that 480p looks like crap. Not sure what they managed to do there, but do not buy this if you're not going to drive a 720p or 1080i HD device (but then, why would you?).

I imagine you can get similar performance out of an HTPC w/ ATI card doing 1:1 also (I haven't tried playing a DVD with mine yet -- just games), but this guy's kind of nice in that it doesn't require a dedicated PC.

So far this is a "highly recommended". Now I need to track down the discrete on/off Pronto codes ... I'll follow-up again after a longer test drive.

Speaking of PC hookups -- Now that I have my DVI switch, I finally have everything hooked up properly, and programming and game playing on the projector is pretty badass. I just need to run digital audio out from my PC to the receiver to be fully prepared for Doom 3

ms

Have you tried the component outputs? I'd be interested in a product like this, but my HD monitor only has component inputs.

I believe component out is restricted by licensing (I think whoever licenses the DVD algorithms, logo, etc) to a maximum of 480p. That means you step into the crappy output side of the device I mentioned earlier .. I'll double check that though.

ms.

So this is only true if the DVD has Macrovision.