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In this page, we carry out various tests such as to see which audio codec bit rates the player supports.  For those interested in playing discs from outside of their DVD region, we will also cover the testing of discs from different regions.

Audio File Tests:

As this player is capable of playing WMA and MP3 audio, some may ask about what bit rates and modes of each codec is supported.  For example, WMA could mean WMA standard, WMA professional, WMA voice, WMA VBR or WMA DRM, not to mention the choice of bit rates also. As this player cannot be connected up directly to a PC for Windows Media Player to authenticate it this obviously rules out WMA DRM support. 

For these tests, we used Goldwave to create different Wave formats, LAME 3.96.1 to create different MP3 formats and Windows Media Encoder 9 series to create different WMA formats.

Wave Audio

While most DVD players support the playback of MP3 and WMA, apparently some will also play the basic uncompressed PCM wave format.  For this test, we created several wave files of different sample rates, bit depth, both stereo and mono.  However the DVD player would not recognise the wave files as playable files, let alone play any.

MP3 Audio

As MP3 is still the most widely used audio format when it comes to consumers carrying their music on the move or downloading it online, some may ask what bit rates it supports or whether it plays variable bit rate, etc.  When encoding MP3, we left LAME to decide on the sample rate and MPEG version.  We will also test free-format bit rates in which the MP3 is encoded at a non-standard bit rate, such as 125kbps for example. 

The Sample rates and MPEG Versions LAME used for CBR encoding are as follows:

The Sample rates and MPEG Versions LAME used for VBR encoding are as follows:

For the Free-format bit rate tests, we tested 88kbps and 152kbps to be in-between the regular bit rates and still be a multiple of 8, 125kbps to test a bit-rate that is both non-standard and not a multiple of 8 and finally from 328kbps to 640kbps in steps of 8kbps. 

The results of all the MP3 tests are as follows:

It is nice to see that the player can play all standard bit-rates in both constant bit rate and variable bit rate.  However, for audiophiles and those who may use non-standard bit rates, this player will simply skip any MP3 file using a non-standard bit-rate.  Please beware that when we attempted to play some of the higher free-format bit rates, we got loud abrupt noises from our speakers, so please do not attempt to play these type of files, especially with the speakers turned up as these noises could possibly cause speaker damage. 

WMA Audio

As pretty much everyone has Windows Media player installed on their PC and many use it to rip their music into WMA (often without realising it), it is handy to be able to play Windows Media audio also.  When WMA version 9 came out, Microsoft added a professional WMA format as well as a Voice WMA format to this version, so these tests will cover testing out these special versions of WMA. 

As Windows Media encoder gives so many combinations of bit rates, sample rates and options for encoding WMA, we have grouped bit-rates for a sample rate together to shorten the table when ever a group all passed.  For a few bit rates, Windows Media Encoder gave a 'Low Delay' option by default, so in these few cases, there is an '*' beside the bit rate.

The results are as follows:

Note:  * = Low Delay

While the player has no issue with the most common WMA bit rates one will likely encounter, unfortunately unlike MP3, it will not play audio encoded with sampling rates of 8,000Hz, 11,050Hz or 16,000Hz.  However, it will play all standard bit rate encodings ranging from 16kbps (22kHz) all the way up to about 500kbps for the quality based VBR encoding and can play CBR, VBR, ABR Peak and Quality based VBR encodings.  However, the player does not support the new Voice and Professional versions of WMA included from version 9. 

Video File Tests:

In our last standalone DVD recorder review of the LiteOn LVW-5045, to our surprise the recorder was able to play MPEG 1 & 2 data files, including PVR content that was recorded from satellite.  However, when we tried loading a CD containing some MPEG 1 & 2 files with a .MPG extension, the player rejected the disc.  The same happened when we tried an XviD AVI file.  In either case, the player would eject the disc within a few seconds of loading it.  When we combined the MPG and AVI files with MP3 files, the player only listed the MP3 tracks.

JPEG Picture Tests:

With the rapid growth of digital camera usage, it is nice to be able to show pictures on a TV for others to see.  A disc also takes up a lot less space than a photo album and it is much easier to show photos to a large group of people than with a physical photo album.  The advantage with this player is that it will also show photos in high definition modes, unlike regular DVD players which limit the output to 480i or 576i. 

Unlike MP3 and WMA audio files which have specific standard bit-rates, JPEG images can consist of virtually any dimension, quality or file size.  So, the purpose of this test is to see which common resolutions can this player support as well as the length of time each image takes to load.  We started with a 6 Megapixel image and used Jasc Paint Shop Pro 9 to resample the image to each resolution below.  For each Megapixel rating, we adjusted the size such that it would have roughly the number of pixels as the Megapixel rating.  For example, for the 3 Megapixel image, we resized the image to 2000 x 1500.  All the images have an aspect ratio of 4:3. 

It is a pity to see that the player will not handle anything above 5 Megapixel.  But then again, with the extremely long loading time for a 5 Megapixel image, it is impractical to use this player for displaying such high resolution images.  Even our basic 1 Megapixel image takes 24 seconds to display, which is still unacceptable for displaying for than a few images.  We got our best performance once we dropped to about 800 x 600, however this kind of defeats the purpose of using the player to play back images high definition since this resolution is just a touch better than standard definition.

On the other hand, the player would still work well for playing back automatic slideshows using high resolution images where the user does not mind the player showing each image for around a minute. 

Disc with combination of MP3 + WMA + JPEG:

While we are unable to playback JPEG images while playing MP3's, let's see what happens when we load a disc containing a mixture of MP3's, WMA's and JPEG images.  For this test, we put our WMA, MP3 and JPEG samples all on one disc in separate folders.  When we loaded the disc, we were presented with the following screen:

To our surprise, it gives the option of selecting a choice of MP3+WMA and MP3+JPEG, which seems like that the player does not support the listing of all three formats in its file structure listing.  When we choose 'MP3+WMA', we are presented with the following screen:

In the above image, we can see that the directory structure only lists the MP3 and WMA files on our CD, but not any images.  The player has no problem playing MP3 tracks followed by WMA tracks and vice versa.

To return to the file format selection screen again, we have to press 'stop' to fully stop the CD and when we press play, we get that initial file format choice screen again.  When we select 'MP3+JPEG', we are presented with the following screen:

In this case, the pictures are shown in the listing, while the WMA track and folder listings are no longer present.  Unfortunately as we mentioned earlier, it is not possible to show images while playing MP3's at the same time.

Playback of Recordable Discs:

With the widespread use of DVD writers in PCs to write video DVD's as well as the increasing use of standalone DVD recorders, the ability to play back recordable discs is pretty much essential no matter what type of DVD player one may go for.  For this test, we used recordable CDs and DVDs that were recorded in our LiteOn LVW-5045 DVD review.  Each DVD recording contains an hour of recording in HQ mode, broken up into 20 5-minute chapters to completely fill the disc.  Each CD is recorded as a video CD.  For each test, we play each chapter of the DVD for a couple of seconds and for the video CD tests, we jump to a few time-spots throughout the disc using the players 'Direct-time' entry feature.

The results are as follows:

Notes:

*1 - Player showed 'No Disc' on our first load attempt, but played fine including all chapters on our second load attempt.
*2 - Player recognises disc, but picture repetitively breaks up.

While the player has the ability to play all common CD and DVD writable and rewritable formats, unfortunately it has difficulty recognising our DVD+R discs.  When we loaded the Octron disc, we heard the player spin up & down the disc a few times before showing 'No Disc'.  However, once it recognises the DVD+R, it plays it without any issue, including the seeking of different chapters.  The two DVD+R's it did play first time took longer than the rest for the player to recognise.  The Smartbuy disc is of very poor quality and the only player capable of playing it back was the LiteOn DVD Recorder it was recorded in.  On the other hand, the DVD+RW that shipped with the LiteOn which caused problems with a few DVD-ROM drives played without any issue in this player.

For the best performance with recordable discs, we would recommend avoiding DVD+R recordable discs in order to avoid having to reload the disc more than once as well as to get quicker loading.  We have also tested a Viking CD-RW containing Super Video CD content and the player has no issue playing this back.

Multi-region, PAL & NTSC testing:

According to the manual that came with the DVD player, the player is multi-regional and will play DVDs with any region code from 1 to 6.  So, for this test, we tried three DVDs we have handy that are from three different regions.  The following table shows the region codes printed on the back of each DVD case as well as the movie titles:

As our TV Tuner will only accept PAL with the current configuration, we have the player set to PAL output.  Interestingly, it plays the region 1 NTSC disc without any issue and the picture comes out fine with the output set to PAL:

Now, on to our region 2 PAL DVD:

Finally, our region 4 PAL DVD:

As this player has no problem accepting DVDs from different regions, this makes it an ideal player for those who have an existing DVD collection from different regions or plan to purchase DVDs during their next holiday located in another region.  The advantage here is that the average consumer will not need to worry about finding out what the 'secret remote' key is, not to mention encountering a DVD player which requires a physical hardware modification or add-on to make it multi-regional.

When connected up to the projector (which supports both NTSC and PAL), the player has no problem outputting PAL DVDs in NTSC either.  However, there is a drawback in that the disc must be stopped first before the NTSC<>PAL switch works properly, otherwise the picture will become 'jumpy' until the DVD is stopped and resumed.

Power consumption:

For those curious about its power consumption as well as saving electricity, we have measured its electricity usage in its standby mode, idle mode as well as while playing a movie.  The energy meter used in this test is a Brennenstuhl PM 230, features a minimum wattage measurement of about 4.5 watts and an accuracy of ±3%. 

The images below show the player's usage:

Standby mode:  A '0' wattage rating means that the power consumption is too low to measure (<4.5 watts)

Idle 'No Disc' mode (varies ~0.1 watt)

Playing a movie (varies ~0.5 watt)

Power consumption while playing a movie is very low, considering that it takes quite a lot of processing power to upconvert to high definition.  The power consumption also shows no sign of fluctuation when we switch between high definition and standard definition modes.  However, as the idle (Stop / No Disc) power consumption is still about 16.5 watts, we would recommend putting the player into standby when not in use.  While 16.5 watts may not seem like a lot, this would work out at ~145kWh (€19) of wasted energy over a year (based on 13c / unit).