Chinese DVD player with no surround sound - normal?

F

flammifer

Audiophyte
Hello,

I'm an expat in China.

When I rented my apartment, a DVD player (Shinco 8311) and a set of five loudspeakers were included. Yay, Surround sound!

However, it seems that the sound wasn't surround at all - only coming from one or two loudspeakers. After some testign, it appeared that of the outputs on the back of the DVD player (front / rear / Center / subwoofer (I think :p the names are in Chinese)) , there was only signal coming from the "center" output. (I tried it with several DVDs. Always the same, so it's not a DVD with only one channel).

I complained to the landlord to have it repaired, we took it to a nearby electronics shop, and they said everything was fine with the machine. I experimented with a DVD player they had over there, and it behaved the same way (only one audio channel output).

I have come to the conclusion that there's a vast conspiracy in China, and that they only put the extra outputs for esthetics, and that there's nothing behind them.

But then, it's also possible that I'm a doofus, and I'm just doing things wrong. Or that this is a minor problem that can be fixed by a competent tinkerer (I don't trust the skills of the repairs-old-tvs-and-bicycles guy down the street that much), maybe somethings unpluged inside. WHich is why I turn to you experts :)

Have you ever encountered anything similar?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.
 
Resident Loser

Resident Loser

Senior Audioholic
That seems...

flammifer said:
Hello,

I'm an expat in China.

When I rented my apartment, a DVD player (Shinco 8311) and a set of five loudspeakers were included. Yay, Surround sound!

However, it seems that the sound wasn't surround at all - only coming from one or two loudspeakers. After some testign, it appeared that of the outputs on the back of the DVD player (front / rear / Center / subwoofer (I think :p the names are in Chinese)) , there was only signal coming from the "center" output. (I tried it with several DVDs. Always the same, so it's not a DVD with only one channel).

I complained to the landlord to have it repaired, we took it to a nearby electronics shop, and they said everything was fine with the machine. I experimented with a DVD player they had over there, and it behaved the same way (only one audio channel output).

I have come to the conclusion that there's a vast conspiracy in China, and that they only put the extra outputs for esthetics, and that there's nothing behind them.

But then, it's also possible that I'm a doofus, and I'm just doing things wrong. Or that this is a minor problem that can be fixed by a competent tinkerer (I don't trust the skills of the repairs-old-tvs-and-bicycles guy down the street that much), maybe somethings unpluged inside. WHich is why I turn to you experts :)

Have you ever encountered anything similar?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.
...just plain wong! Sorry, couldnt resist...

Number one question...anyone have a manual?...it may simply be a set-up problem...

And in a DUH! moment...as my Chinese is limited to moo-shoo and sumai, it looks to be only a player...Is there an amplifier/controller on the premises? Counterfeit DVDs? Is it/they Mono?

jimHJJ(...jacks that go nowhere sounds unlikely...)
 
Last edited:
B

bongobob

Audioholic
Ni Hao!

Is the player hooked into an amp or directly into a tv? If into a tv then you're most likely to get 2 channel only as there is no digital input on most if not all tv's (other than HDMI). If you're going into a recever, either use the SPIDF digital out or an optical out into the reciever. The DVD set up menu must be set to output digital signals. There's alot of stuff buried in there.
I got my Kebao in Hong Kong for $35 US. Plays everything I throw at it including Chinese DVD's in 5.1.
Hope this helps a bit....
 
F

flammifer

Audiophyte
Thanks for the quick answers!

Yup, there's an amp, with five speakers. The speakers all work fine. The amp has three cables (front, back and CE/SW) that plug into the DVD player (pairs of standard analog RCA jacks). However, there's only signal on one of the outputs of the DVD player (I switched the cables around to test, so I can have the "front" coming out of any of the speakers, but can't get all the speakers to work together).

The DVD also has a mono (a pair of analog RCA jacks again) output that's directly plugged into the TV, there's a signal on that one too (However, I suppose it's the same as the "front" output - I could theoretically use this to get sound out of more of my amps, but I don't think duplicating the same signal on five speakers counts as real stereo).

Number one question...anyone have a manual?...it may simply be a set-up problem...
I do have a manual, both for the amp/speakers and for the DVD players. Unfortunately, they're all in Chinese, and my (Chinese) landlord didn't get anything to work looking through them either. I've looked through the manual (I can decypher some chinese, and there are a lot of pictures), but didn't find much useful information.

Counterfeit DVDs? Is it/they Mono?
Yeah, I have counterfeight DVDs (You can hardly walk a block without crossing a guy with a box of DVDs at 5 kuai - about 80 cents - each), but I tried with a lot of DVDs, all of which supposedly had 5.1 stereo, but it was always the same. Even for "quality" DVDs. So I don't think I got cursed with a batch of Mono DVDs (Anyway, I'd expect they'd have the same signal on all channels, not only one channel).

The DVD set up menu must be set to output digital signals. There's alot of stuff buried in there.
Hmm, I'll have to look at that. I've played with a few of the options in the DVD setup, but never got any difference.

Any suggestions of diagnostics I could perform? (Any suggestion that involves sacrificing a chicken will be discarded)
 
Seth=L

Seth=L

Audioholic Overlord
Just because it says it has 5.1 doesn't mean it has it. If it says 5.1 stereo, that sounds very suspicious. I have seen DVD's here in the US that claim to have DTS tracks, but they don't have them. Bootleg DVD's from China aren't going to be up to spec, at least not for 80 cents a piece.
 
F

flammifer

Audiophyte
Seth=L said:
Just because it says it has 5.1 doesn't mean it has it. If it says 5.1 stereo, that sounds very suspicious. I have seen DVD's here in the US that claim to have DTS tracks, but they don't have them. Bootleg DVD's from China aren't going to be up to spec, at least not for 80 cents a piece.
Well, depends of the quality of the copy I guess. Some are godawful filmed-in-the-theater-with-a-camcorder pieces of junk with machine-translated subtitles (I also got one with the subtitles for the wrong movie on it ^-^), but some seem indistinguishable from the originals in terms of quality, options in the main menu, etc.

I may even have some legal DVDs lying around, I don't know. you really have to go out of your way here to legally buy DVDs, and I'm not sure what the definition of "legal" would be anyway. But for all the DVDs I've tried, I always encountered the same problem.

So I still strongly suspect the problems's with the player and not the DVDs, but haven't seen any real evidence one way or the other. (I agree that having "DTS" written on a DVD is no proof of anything, since the DVD copies are often just copied or retrieved from the internet)

Is it significantly harder to copy a DVD to include DTS? (I'd assume that you'd just copy everything)

Is there some way of checking whether a given DVD has DTS? (with a computer?)

Has anybody heard of any DVD players with no support for DTS?

If a DVD doesn't have DTS, wouldn't there still be sound (but mono sound) coming out of all speakers?

Oh, and Wikipedia tells me: "But DTS was not part of the original DVD specification (1997), so early DVD-players did not recognize DTS-audiotracks at all." - but if my DVD player is such a relic of a bigone era, would it still have front/back/surround/subwoofer output?

(Or could it be an old player in a newer casing? I could open it up and look, but that'd break a seal, I'm not sure I want to do that)
 
Seth=L

Seth=L

Audioholic Overlord
Some background on surround sound for you. Dolby is in the original spec for DVD, at least in the US. I have one DVD that is in PCM stereo, but it is German. Dolby Digital 5.1 is found on most DVD's in the US and at the very least Dolby 2 channel. DTS is not a requirement for DVD, though some movies that had a better run in theaters or some production companies include them on their software. I was merely using the Seniors DVD with the DTS logo stamped on the disc to illustrate a point, just because it says it has something on the box, doesn't make it so.

I have never seen a DVD player that wouldn't support DTS, if it is on the software, through a Digital connection to a decoder that can handle DTS. I have a CD player from 1987, before DTS was even about, and I happen to have a DTS music CD in 6.1. The CD player has a Digital out, so when attached to a decoder that handles DTS, I get glorious DTS using an old CD player.:)

The way to check for DTS on a computer, when you rip a DVD to computer it will give you all the sections of the disc. It will have all the seperate files listed, so you can select which ones you want to keep and delete the others. Since many DVD's dual-layer (signified by a slight pause in the middle of the movie, which indicates the layer transition where the laser refocuses on a new layer) and the most common DVD-R/DVD+R are single layer(half physical capacity of dual-layer) then taking some of the junk like special features, commentaries, and other audio tracks you have no use for, can reduce compression. This preserves better picture quality.

If DTS is present on a DVD you can select it two ways, audio menu on the DVD, or the audio button while you watching the DVD. The audio button sometimes doesn't work with certain DVD's so you have to access it from the menu.

China doesn't have the same copyright laws as the US. Often DVD's are released in China before they even hit theaters in the US.

If your surround system doesn't support DTS, then DTS will not work. Unless the DVD player has a built in decoder. If the DVD player has this logo:



Then it does not decode DTS internally. If your surround sound does not have this logo:



Then it doesn't decode it either, but if the DVD player does have the above logo it will decode DTS internally.

Sorry for not answering your questions in order. It is not hard to copy the DTS, it just consumes more space than Dolby 5.1.

Hope this answers all of your questions.
 

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