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Uber uber ding
Nov. 5th, 2021 12:41 pmRecently, the DVD player with 5.1 speakers that I bought from a local charity shop back in March 2015 started having little.. pauses.. every.. so. often.. when playing discs.
The first time, it was while watching an 'even more ultimate than the Ultimate edition' set of the Daniel Craig Casino Royale (another recent charity shop find) for the commentaries and actually interesting special features on a third disc. Hmm, the discs look OK.
Then a discussion with JA and one of her school friends over what they'd seen loads of times as kids led to a desire on the part of JA and I to see Muppet Treasure Island again, and it happened with that too.
So it was the player with the problem - it had already decided not to play CDs anymore - and this is the sort of thing that doesn't get better by itself and also isn't going to be easy or economic to repair.
Fortunately, a couple of years ago, I'd saw a standalone set of 5.1 speakers for some silly price (a fiver?) in yet another charity shop, thought 'Well, the DVD player's set only works with the DVD player and I might at some point do 5.1 sound with the PC', and bought them. That idea didn't happen - mostly due to where the PC is meaning that there isn't really somewhere to put at least one rear speaker - but they've been happily waiting for the day when they'd be needed.
It turns out that they're really rather good too, with a DTS decoder as well as doing Dolby 5.1. It also, for the first time in my owning speakers, has an optical input.
Ah ha, I think, the HDMI audio extractor* that I use to get better audio via some 2.1 speakers for the Virgin Media TiVo / Chromecast / Raspberry Pi running Xbian Kodi than the TV will ever do has an optical output as well as the normal RCA stereo leads, doesn't it? Indeed it does!
That's set up - fortunately being sensible and remembering to reuse the old speaker wires rather than get the old ones out from around and under various bits of furniture and route new ones, not least as it turns out that the 'new' 5.1 set was missing one long pair - and works very happily.
So what to do for DVDs? I could just rip them as required and play via the Pi, but that's a faff and no-one else is going to do it if they want to watch one. The older player that did HDMI output (but wouldn't play a handful of discs because of some firmware problem with menus) is still around.. and doesn't want to power up at all for some reason.
It turns out that new replacements are about £25. No optical out, but with the extractor, I don't need (or want) one.
Hmm, that leaves me with four HDMI out bits of kit competing for three sockets on the HDMI switch. I am pondering swapping the Pi and the DVD player as required when it turns out that, for some reason, the switch simply will not switch to the new DVD player. Return it as faulty?
Before I do that, I remember that I do have a 2 to 1 HDMI switch (33p from a charity shop selling ex-Amazon stuff at three for a pound) and having the DVD player plugged into that with the Pi means that the 3 to 1 switch will see the DVD player (when it's selected on the small one!)
Weird. I would wonder if it was some copy protection thing, except that I assume the TiVo would have the same issue, and it doesn't. In the meantime, I'd already ordered a 5 to 1 HDMI switch and we'll see what happens when it arrives.
Ah ha, I think the next day, losing the old DVD player means I don't need to worry about whether the TV has an S-Video connector any more, do I? The one bought when we moved here in 2011 has always had an annoying hum any time the volume isn't reduced to zero (the reason the audio extractor was bought in 2015) and needs to be turned up to one and down to zero every time it's turned on... but it has lots of different connections that aren't easy to find now..
.. and now most of them aren't needed any more. So I've swapped that one for the one we got in Edinburgh** and which niece and boyf rejected for something silly sized. Also 32", but smaller physically (particularly in thickness, I now discover) and (I am now reminded) significantly less heavy.
So the current setup is:
Raspberry Pi plus the new DVD player going into a 2:1 HDMI switch..
.. with it, plus the TiVo and the Chromecast going into a 3:1 HDMI switch..
.. going into a HDMI audio extractor, now with its optical audio output going into the 5.1 speakers and the video output going to the TV (which also gets audio, but the volume's set to zero).
This means all four sources will do 5.1 sound = happy Ian.
I also have a (different) spare 32" TV probably to be offered to charity shop / freecycle; a spare 2.1 speakers (bound to be useful for something, somewhere, sometime...); five 4 Ohm small speakers plus an 8 Ohm big one; and at least one bit of electrical junk.
* As well as passing through HDMI video and audio, it splits out the audio signals and has them available for separate playback.
** As well as wanting one while we were in the flat, it looks like lots of people in Edinburgh got new TVs for Scotland's first appearance in a major football finals for decades - the number available in local charity shops exploded as the months moved closer to what turned out to be a replay of Argentina 1978.
The first time, it was while watching an 'even more ultimate than the Ultimate edition' set of the Daniel Craig Casino Royale (another recent charity shop find) for the commentaries and actually interesting special features on a third disc. Hmm, the discs look OK.
Then a discussion with JA and one of her school friends over what they'd seen loads of times as kids led to a desire on the part of JA and I to see Muppet Treasure Island again, and it happened with that too.
So it was the player with the problem - it had already decided not to play CDs anymore - and this is the sort of thing that doesn't get better by itself and also isn't going to be easy or economic to repair.
Fortunately, a couple of years ago, I'd saw a standalone set of 5.1 speakers for some silly price (a fiver?) in yet another charity shop, thought 'Well, the DVD player's set only works with the DVD player and I might at some point do 5.1 sound with the PC', and bought them. That idea didn't happen - mostly due to where the PC is meaning that there isn't really somewhere to put at least one rear speaker - but they've been happily waiting for the day when they'd be needed.
It turns out that they're really rather good too, with a DTS decoder as well as doing Dolby 5.1. It also, for the first time in my owning speakers, has an optical input.
Ah ha, I think, the HDMI audio extractor* that I use to get better audio via some 2.1 speakers for the Virgin Media TiVo / Chromecast / Raspberry Pi running Xbian Kodi than the TV will ever do has an optical output as well as the normal RCA stereo leads, doesn't it? Indeed it does!
That's set up - fortunately being sensible and remembering to reuse the old speaker wires rather than get the old ones out from around and under various bits of furniture and route new ones, not least as it turns out that the 'new' 5.1 set was missing one long pair - and works very happily.
So what to do for DVDs? I could just rip them as required and play via the Pi, but that's a faff and no-one else is going to do it if they want to watch one. The older player that did HDMI output (but wouldn't play a handful of discs because of some firmware problem with menus) is still around.. and doesn't want to power up at all for some reason.
It turns out that new replacements are about £25. No optical out, but with the extractor, I don't need (or want) one.
Hmm, that leaves me with four HDMI out bits of kit competing for three sockets on the HDMI switch. I am pondering swapping the Pi and the DVD player as required when it turns out that, for some reason, the switch simply will not switch to the new DVD player. Return it as faulty?
Before I do that, I remember that I do have a 2 to 1 HDMI switch (33p from a charity shop selling ex-Amazon stuff at three for a pound) and having the DVD player plugged into that with the Pi means that the 3 to 1 switch will see the DVD player (when it's selected on the small one!)
Weird. I would wonder if it was some copy protection thing, except that I assume the TiVo would have the same issue, and it doesn't. In the meantime, I'd already ordered a 5 to 1 HDMI switch and we'll see what happens when it arrives.
Ah ha, I think the next day, losing the old DVD player means I don't need to worry about whether the TV has an S-Video connector any more, do I? The one bought when we moved here in 2011 has always had an annoying hum any time the volume isn't reduced to zero (the reason the audio extractor was bought in 2015) and needs to be turned up to one and down to zero every time it's turned on... but it has lots of different connections that aren't easy to find now..
.. and now most of them aren't needed any more. So I've swapped that one for the one we got in Edinburgh** and which niece and boyf rejected for something silly sized. Also 32", but smaller physically (particularly in thickness, I now discover) and (I am now reminded) significantly less heavy.
So the current setup is:
Raspberry Pi plus the new DVD player going into a 2:1 HDMI switch..
.. with it, plus the TiVo and the Chromecast going into a 3:1 HDMI switch..
.. going into a HDMI audio extractor, now with its optical audio output going into the 5.1 speakers and the video output going to the TV (which also gets audio, but the volume's set to zero).
This means all four sources will do 5.1 sound = happy Ian.
I also have a (different) spare 32" TV probably to be offered to charity shop / freecycle; a spare 2.1 speakers (bound to be useful for something, somewhere, sometime...); five 4 Ohm small speakers plus an 8 Ohm big one; and at least one bit of electrical junk.
* As well as passing through HDMI video and audio, it splits out the audio signals and has them available for separate playback.
** As well as wanting one while we were in the flat, it looks like lots of people in Edinburgh got new TVs for Scotland's first appearance in a major football finals for decades - the number available in local charity shops exploded as the months moved closer to what turned out to be a replay of Argentina 1978.