What makes it comedy is the way they talk =D

You mean they don't support 1080i uploading? (inside joke)

Nice item. Great assortment of inputs (no pun) and great review. Thanks for the tip. I might just pick up this little beaut.

any ideas about the disc format that are actually read?
because at the neodigits homepage the say "DVD", but for other items they specifically say "DVD-R" or "DVD+R", so what i wanted to know is if this player actually played home burnt DVDs...

I generally agree with the review, but it does have some bugs that weren't mentioned. For example, you have to turn off subtitles each time you watch a DVD. Also, the manual is rather uninformative. Mine came with parts missing and Helios made me e-mail photos of the player before they would help. Rather strange, I think.

I have one. I haven't found anythin it won't read yet. The upconverting is so sweet. I have mine at 1080i, looks very crisp compred to standard. I have all three seasons of Arrested Development and all three seasons of Enterage all on three discs each and it plays them flawlessly and in HD as compared to the standard which would include like 50 discs and worse quality.

I have the 4000 as well and it has played everything that I've thrown at it. I have a bunch of avi movies that are burned onto cd's and it has played all of the ones that I have tried. All of those movies that were burned onto cd's were burned over 5 years ago. The picture is great, mine is set at 1080i and it's hooked up to a Sony 55" DLP. The avi's look great.

This is nice! I like the region free DVD playback feature. Then just throw in everything else and it makes it a steal.

For what it's worth, I just returned my H4000 for the following reasons:

- It doesn't support HD-XviD/DivX, so all those 960x540 BSG episodes are a no-go.

- On regular DVD playback, the subtitles kept turning on automatically, and I have to turn them off repeatedly.

- The parental lock kept randomly refusing to play DVDs, even though setting is on level 8 (the highest level - There's no option to disable parental locks - only a level setting). So the H4000 would play Robocop just fine, but refuse to play Star Wars.

- My TV supports 480i, 480p, and 1080i. The player supports many, many more modes, but does *not* allow you to select which ones your display does not support, forcing you to cycle through what feels like a thousand modes before you can see anything again. So it was like [click] 480i [click] 480p [click] [click] [click] [click] [click] [click] [click] [click] [click] 1080i.

- I have a component video smart switcher that auto senses when a device is turned on if there is a signal on the component outputs. Unfortunately, the H4000 outputs an active signal even when soft-powered off. Since I already have one other device which always emits a signal, adding the H4000 has rendered my auto switcher useless.

I'm upgrading to the X3000 to hopefully fix at least some of these issues.

Heard of a cool website called ebay?? $160 all inclusive!! Ohbyeah! ebay, here i come!

thx. gizmodo!

http://search.ebay.com/search/search.dll?query=helios+h400...

i find it funny that the HDDVD special interest group is advertising on this page.

but this is the official red-laser player of ninja h4x0rz everywhere from now on. supporting region free, DRM free, torrented, and can upscale SDTV to 1010i or 720p, oh my i want this. too bad i only have one EDTV and the rest of my house is SDTV.

Lets say you dont got the money for this one head over to brandsmart and pick up a zenith upconverting dvd player its only 70 bucks. it has all the normals divx play back 1080i/720p
output mps and wma playback and a few more great features

Can someone get me a TV so I can buy this?

Why does the reviewer write like Yoda talks?

this is pretty similar... yet lacks the 1080p upscaling. does 720p and 1080i though.

http://www.oppodigital.com/dv970hd/dv970hd.html

Can it only upscale <=DVD res DivX/XviD files or will it also play 720p ones?

The i4U review is fine if you've already own a legacy 480i, 480p, 720p or 1080i TV. If you're looking forward, or forward looking, to buying a 1080p TV then the i4u review is 30 fsp short of a happy meal.

Me want supersize TV review.

-ap

I bought this unit. It should ship soon (I hope). My current Samsung DVD/VCR combo has crapped out in a weird way (completely unresponsive to all commands given by any remote programmed to it, including original remote) and Gizmodo provides me with this little gem.

I can't wait to watch upconverted DVDs (been meaning to buy one of these) and have a player that supports DivX so I don't need to watch my Battlestar Galactica and The Office on a computer monitor.

To those posting "similar" units/brands...

The Helios H4000 is the only player that will play HD over analog outputs (component, specifically).

THAT is what makes this player lovelier than walking on a cloud of ti++ies.

Funny. The reviews on Amazon are all REALLY good or REALLY bad. The consensus there is opposite of Gizmodo's (interpretation of i4u) in terms of the quality of construction.

The real question for me is ... will it output HDMI 1080i non HDCP? Those of us who have a projector or TV that can handle 1080i pre DRM/HDCP can use an upscale convertor like the sony.