Cambridge Audio DVD59
Value For Money
Cambridge Audio DVD59
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User Reviews
Value For Money
I First Got A Cambridge Audio Dvd 57 In March Last
I first got a Cambridge Audio DVD 57 in march last year,problem one:progressive scan picture use to bend and audio was out of sink with picture.number two player:CD audio used to get a high pitied noise after 10 minters play,this also happened to three player:i sent this one in to get fixed at richer sounds,never got it back (3 months later)richer sounds change it for the 59 model:vcd play back problem, can't turn timer clock off . after 4 players(8 months).i got my money back.richer sounds is rubbish. don't be fooled by them ,you can get better deals of the INTERNET, plus you don't have to put up with having to go back to shop and change player all the time.
Value For Money
I Was Intersted In The Lower Cambridge Audio Dvd-5
I was intersted in the lower Cambridge Audio DVD-57 model but was up-sold to the new DVD 59 player, an even slimmer silver unit with a very narrow loading tray (that somewhat annoyingly doesn't come all the way out so you have to slip discs into it rather than drop them on it). The remote is big-ish and fairly well laid out. The OSD is frankly cheap and nasty looking but functions well enough. Physical build quality is excellent throughout.
Sadly it has to go back as it cannot play VCDs or SVCDs (despite the assurance of the Richer Sounds salesman...). It does read CD-R (audio), DVD+R and DVD+RW discs ok (haven't got any DVD-R discs so couldn't test)
Other than that it is a fine player. I have a Scan 440LSI at the mo but need to replace it as the RGB output doesn't work properly (bad design - signal levels are all out of whack). One feature I miss from the Scan on the Cambridge Audio player is the ability to skip copyright notices and such. The CA player adheres to the skip-lock protocol so you have to sit through clips that the author doesn't want you to skip. This can be a pain on discs where they insist you sit though the copyright notice in 6 different lanuages before allowing you to go to the root menu...GRRR!
The component output from the DVD59 is very good. I have a Sanyo PLV-70 projector showing an approximately 7ft 16:9 image and did A-B comparisons between the DVD59's s-video and component outputs. The s-video output is very good with very little colour smearing and excellent tonal range and blacks. The component output did even better with near-zero bleeding or smearing (only MPEG-2 related colour bleed evident as opposed to analog effects). It also showed better colour resolution (same-colour brush strokes in the BG artwork of animation being more clearly visible) and top notch handling of subtle near-black dark tones (especially tricky blues on black).
I have the luxury of a progressive scan converter in the projector and comparisons on moving footage between the DVD-59's PS mode and the projector's efforts were difficult. Both did very well with minimal motion interlacing artifacts. However, the PS converter in the DVD59 fell down when trying to output still frames (even on non-motion scenes where the odd and even fields were the same). The DVD59 seemed to only put out one field so showed very rough jaggies in the image. Selecting the normal interlaced output and letting the projector convert it to PS proved much more pleasing to the eye with full-frame stills showing no (obvious) jaggies.
Out of interest, I tried the RGB output instead of YCrCb but it had some weird vertical bar pattern noise on it - this might scupper those trying to use a TV with RGB SCART inputs! It could also have been the hastilly cludged SCART to BNC cable I made... :D
For users without the benefit of a TV / projector with a good PS converter, the DVD59 does a good job for very little cash.
I didn't test the audio on this player as I use the raw datastream into a Yamaha 5.1 amp and don't have any DVD-A discs to test and listen to normal CDs in another room anyway...
I should explain the rating I've given this player a bit. If it had played VCDs and SVCDs I'd have no hessitation in awarding 8 stars for value but the omission of these two basic formats is serious in a player costing £200 when these days a £40 no-name player can play everything except the tuba! This is especially true considering that I've read here that the lower DVD57 model (in it's later revisions) *can* play VCD and SVCD... GRRR!!! The overall rating takes into account the player's foibles but also it's extraordinary picture quality from DVDs.
NEED HELP ON RESET. Background: (see previous entries above) without a blink of an eye, the Richer Sounds shop swapped my CA (Cambridge Audio) DVD57 for a DVD59: they said there are known problems. Now 8 months later, the DVD59 has failed: absolutely no output on any channel (SCART, Composite, Component, etc). DVD still plays (can see on front planel display).
Question 1: just in case helps, does anyone know how to reset the DVD59? I need to do so without being able to see a screen, hence I need exact sequence of steps and keys to press. For example, other manufactures say to unplug unit, then while holding down a particular button, plug in again, then press 2, etc.
Question 2: I read somewhere that the CA DVD 50 series is just rebadged kit from another manufacturer. I can't find where I read this before, so, does anyone know so that I can find more detail about what might be going on in the box?
Thanks.
You can enable the vcd and svcd support on this player. If you go to the setup menu and scroll to the speaker page, type 9210 enter and it sends you to the support page. If you turn the support on then it will allow you to play SVCD an VCD!!
I have also noticed a strange vertical line on playing DVDs - this is noticed mostly when using the S-Video input and a £30 gold plated, oxygen free cable also from Richer Sounds. I originally went to buy the Pioneer 565 which retailed at 1 pound lower and plays SACD's. I was convinced by the guys at Richer Sounds that this was the better player and was sold by the fact that the picture looked the same on both DVD players using good composite cables (£80 - cambridge audio) and a 42" plasma. Could not compare sound as this was not connected - although as CA are mainly audio manufacturers thought this would be a strong point rather than a weaker one. The back connections are also better on the CA i.e. gold plated. Design wise it looks a lot nicer but the OSD is cheap and tacky - but output to me is of more concern. I have 14 days to trial the player but after seeing this slight vertical line (I liken it to a test signal on the Video players) which presents itself in the third quarter of the screen vertically, I have decided to buy my original choice recommended by one of the well known magazines. It’s a pity as sound is very good and detail is much better than my original PS2 on all regions of DVD.
Cambridge Audio's techie is a good bloke and was quite keen to get to the bottom of the bugs and I appreciated him being honest about the lead time on software change requests.
CA aren't the only ones... he told me that their products were using the same building blocks as the NAD players and that they'd both had the same problems with certain NTSC discs. Last time they had to collectively bully the chinese supplier into writing a fix quickly (for the DVD55/57).
In some ways the smaller manufacturers are better. My first player was a Scan 2000 and that had numerous firmware revisions but the developers were pretty on-the-ball and you could download firmware images from a user support forum. In the end they fixed almost everything on that player, apart from the tendency for the DSP chip to cook and crash! (I had to glue a heat sink on it...)
Anyways, I took the DVD59 back as I've splashed out on a Denon DVD-2200... watch this space for a review :D
I actually have the CA DVD 57 and have a similar problem with about a quarter of my DVD's (regardless of NTSC/PAL or region 1/2) skipping or freezing. The problem is only the picture, audio continues fine. The same DVD's played on a new Sony (I don't know model) are fine, so the problem is the player not the disk.
The skipping is fairly regular, say every five minutes, and as described in the previous comment above, seems only to be a very few frames, but very annoying none-the-less.
The CA DVD 57 was purchased in August 2003 and I am wondering if there are perhaps firmware upgrades, or if that is not the problem what else could be done. I've sent an email to Richer Sounds support and will report on their answer, if any. As someone has already mentioned on the DVD 57 reviews, there is NO support for these UK models, even though CA are a UK business!
Another problem I have but have not tried to solve is how to get the player to switch to 4:3 format, even though I have specified this format in the setup. (BTW: I'm going to upgrade the old Sony TV one of these days when I can afford a decent flat panel, but for now I have to put up with 4:3.)
The only way I get a close approximation to 4:3 is by pushing the Zoom button on the remote; and this has the annoying "feature" of keeping the zoom size displayed all the time rather than just disappearing after a few seconds. So I watch films with a very annoying white-text showing "x2" in the top right corner of the screen. Connection to the TV is SCART. The Sony has a wide-normal button, but pressing this makes NO difference. Any advice?
By the way (BTW), I am going to put a comment under the DVD 57 review to say there are similar discussions going on under this section DVD 59; the reviews seem closely related.
Q&A
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