Topic: WLISH DVD player

[ditterdi]

Hi,

since my Cyberhome DVD broke down beyond repair I allowed myself a budget of 1,500 peso to buy a generic DVD player.
The only apliances store in Dinalupihan (Ocampo) does not sell cheapies so I went to the market. There are 3 or 4 electronics stalls. They sell Hug, Ace and Unikon. The models look verry different but at the back they look the same. The "last" asking price for all players was also the same 1,400 peso with 1 free DVD.
I did not know what to choose so I went to the electronics repair shop where I know the owner (Deltan electronics) to ask advice. He told me that the machines are more or less but that some brands have better quality controll than others.  He offered me a player brandnew in the box for 1,500 peso, no free DVD but with 6 months waranty. We agreed I could bring back the payer if it was no good and get a refund. "Brand" name: Wlish.
The player plays all kinds of disks exept CD+G including DivX and mpg4. It claims to have a resolution of more than 500 lines and can play audio disks with a sampling rate of 96 Khz.
For Video it has composite out, Yuv/RGB out, S-Video and VGA (progressive scan). Video systems Pal and NTSC.
For Audio it has stereo out, 5+1 analog surround out and digital out, optical and coaxial.
It has a build in radio, amplifier and speaker and it comes with a disk with over 300 old fashioned 8 bit games with 2 game controlls. It has digital karaoke control. And it has a USB port.
I opened the box. The remote is of a differend brand than the player (Ace). All buttons work correct exept 1. The manual was for another model.
I hooked up the machine to my Daewoo TV on the Yuv connection and to my Onkyo stereo set. I switched the player on and there was a big disapointment. The welcome screen is verry low-resolution and blurry.  I put in a DVD of the 9 series, the ones with only one movie per disk.  And there was another surprise: the picture quality is good. Not exelent but good. Next I tried an audio disk with classical music (Bach) and that sounded verry much oke.
When the machine is off it looks nice, it has a all metal case, the front is also made of metal. When it is on it looks cheap because of 2 blue lights next to the disk tray. The build in amplifier has enough power to drive 2 KEF bookshelf speakers and can be adjusted by the equaliser function. The radio is no-good, no indoor reception.
The player is region free. It has an extencive 3 level menu. An mp3 file on my memory stick played verry well on the USB port. I did not yet test the karaoke functions.
My verdict: for 1k5 you get an awefull lot of verry reasonable quality exept the radio. If the machine does not break down verry soon this is exellent value for money.

Leo.

[ditterdi]

Hi,

continuation of my findings with the WLISH player.

- it has survived its first endurance test: my daughter has been watching some Korean soap disks for more than 12 hours continiously. The player did not get warm and kept decoding the movie correctly.

- the error correction for the audio is weak. I have a disk with 2 faults. My Technics audio CD player masks this faults so you do not notice them. The Wlish gives a (verry short but audible) silence.

- the build in amplifier is usable for monitoring purposes only. It can drive my two KEF bookshelf speakers, but that are verry small speakers. If you put up the volume to much there is to much distortion.

-The stereo digital to audio conversion is good. The surround decoding (Dolby AC3) simply does not work. You get the same stereo signal on main L/R, rear L/R and on center/woofer (!). If rhe digital out works I cannot test.

- The build in speaker is useless, so is the radio.

- When you put a CDrom or a USB stick, the player selects and organises the files it can handle. This is a nice function.

- The mp3 decoding is oke even an old recording with Louis Armstrong at 128 Kb/sec sounded verry lively.

- The Wlish has a microphone connetion with echo but that does not make it a karaoke machine. In general if you want to use a normal DVD player for karaoke you better use an amplie with karaoke funtion, their microphone pre-amplie and echo chips are better and some nice machines come rather cheap (Sakura eg.)

- the player cannot read .SRT subtitle files for DIVx.

My verdict stays the same: much value for money. Good for general use. Not recomended if you want to use your DVD for audio disks to because of the weak error correction. Also not recomended if you have an analog surround system because the analog AC3 decoding is fake.



Leo.