Jun 29 2008
Case of the RM150 DVD Player
For just RM150/£24/US$47, you could get this “ultimate” all in one DVD player that sports “Dolby AC3 and dts decoding” and ”High definition video output” using “Japanese imported microcomputer controller” from a company in Shen Zhen, China, known as Maike (迈科).
But does this DVD player lives up to its claims?
Reviewed here today is Maike DVD-822. According to its packaging, the “all in wonder” could play just about anything, from MPEG1 VCD to bleeding edge DivX AVI. The unit claims that it could also read audio (MP3, AAC), photos (JPEG) and videos (DivX, MPEG1/2) off a DVD, USB drive and/or SD card.
Probably my TV is too old, but I couldn’t tell the difference between the component video and VGA video output from this unit from S-Video. Maybe my TV is playing tricks on me.
When I popped in a home brewed AC3/DTS audio test DVD, my speakers began to play tricks on me. 5.1 channels sounded exactly like stereo. Suspecting that the DVD audio stream is defective, I tried playing it on my trusted notebook (with Creative Soundblaster Audigy 2 Notebook), and walah! I got 5.1 that really sounded like 5.1. This is really really odd.
This is the Maike DVD-822 player dissected. The innards looks rather clean and well, empty.
One couldn’t stop wondering why there is a speaker sitting in a DVD player. Probably in China, television sets don’t have speakers.
Though the packaging stated that the unit is powered by a “Japanese imported microcomputer controller”, a quick Google search will reveal Sunplus SPHE8202L System on a Chip (SoC)’s Chinese origin. Probably Sunplus exported their chips somewhere and had the Japanese import them back to China. Unfortunately, Sunplus couldn’t bother to put up a datasheet for SPHE8202L on its website. Must be some super marketing strategy I didn’t know of.
When you choose DVD players, usually the player with the most variety of outputs is the best. The DVD-822 seems to fit the bill, with no HDMI output though.
Top: Stereo output jacks.
Bottom: Power amplifier.
Here comes the best part:
Maike probably has the best engineers in the world! They convert stereo audio signals fed from the 3 wire cable into 5.1 discreet channels with the magical PCB!
Things get even more absurd when you flip the user manual:
According the manufacturer, the signal to noise ratio (SNR) and total harmonic distortion (THD) of the audio output are >90 db and <0.01% respectively. And wow, the Digital to Analog converter operates at 192Khz, 24-bit in 5.1 channels mode. Mind you, this is a rather good spec for such a cheap looking piece of equipment. Not even an RM700 Creative X-Fi Platinum could handle six channels in 192khz/24-bit mode! But unfortunately, there aren’t any test parameters to support the claims, so until then, we can safely conclude that the manufacturer simply lifted the specs off some literatures published it.
Well, what more could you ask for? After all, its just RM150!
I have one of this kind of ‘ultimate’ player at home as well
it even has a touch screen control panel. the appearance looks pretty convincing - slim, stylish and all - but movies played with it always look pirated - crappy sound, shitty pictures. i better use my computer.