h4000, home entertainment, h4000, 1080p, dvd, hd, helios, upscaling

Helios H4000 DVD Player Upscales Your DVDs to 1080p

For our money, this is the sexiest 1080p upscaling DVD player that we've seen in a long time. The Helios H4000 DVD player can product 1080p and 1080i video using HDMI, component and VGA, making your older DVDs infinitely more watchable and holding off the next-gen onslaught for another few years.

The player can also play back "DivX, XviD, MPEG1, MPEG, MPEG4, SVCD, VCD and HDCDs", which means pirate-fans are right at home as well. Like boy-band N*SYNC and that screaming bald dude from basic cable say, "BUY! BUY! BUY!" – Jason Chen

Product Page [NeoDigits via Crunchgear]

5:30 PM on Tue Oct 10 2006
By Jason Chen
5,442 views
16 comments

Comments

Sean Harrington at 04:49 PM on 10/10/06
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Sexy is right! I want one!
Tank at 04:56 PM on 10/10/06
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This looks like the DVD player I've been waiting for!
Sunin at 05:03 PM on 10/10/06
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Why is this even necessary when most modern 1080p TV's already do the up conversion for you? My Sharp Aquos 52inch LCD looks fantastic upconverting the 480p signal!

Sunin
strider_mt2k at 05:05 PM on 10/10/06
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I just bought a model with similar features from LG.
All that and it plays formats from memory cards too.

Neat stuff to be sure.
Freebadeebadingdong at 05:09 PM on 10/10/06
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Ok, I'll byte. How does it add all the data that isn't there in order to take the DVD signal from present format to 1080?
tek_nic at 05:14 PM on 10/10/06
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I am getting one for sure. It's absolutely magical.
To Freebadeebadingdong... I've got a 56'' rear projection hdtv... it does a very piss poor job with scaling of any type... and that's pretty common.
With something like this, you can offload that step from the TV. The point being that now the TV gets a 1080 signal and uses it like that... instead of butchering a perfectly good signal.

Sure, it isn't actually HD... but it's close enough for government work.
technophobia at 06:02 PM on 10/10/06
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Free.......................

Um...it's called an "upscaling" DVD player, so how do you think it's done? It's making intellegent guesses at was is supposed to be there.

I was thinking this thing was going to be mega expensive, but at $170, it's pretty reasonable.

Beats using an HTPC to do it, although the HTPC can do a lot more...

If you have a 1080 capable TV, and it has inputs for your standard DVD player, why would you even need upscaling. The TV will be upscaling it to display it on it's native resolution anyway...
someToast at 06:11 PM on 10/10/06
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I did some searching, but came up empty.

Are there any visual comparisons of the upconverted image to the DVD source material? Seeing the player's on-screen display/menuing would be cool too.
Slab at 09:51 AM on 10/11/06
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Has anyone used any Helios products before? I am intrigued by the feature set but can't find much on the brand.
Monty at 11:05 AM on 10/11/06
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Yes - sexy - okay, good reason to buy it.

Upconverting a 480p signal to 1080i is your reason for the purchase? May I suggest actually watching a movie on it first and comparing to a standard 480p DVD player? I have seen a couple of these upconverting players in action, and to date have not seen any noticable improvement in picture quality.

Then again, I am pretty much an old man these days, so take my comment with a grain of salt.
sotos at 11:54 AM on 10/11/06
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The big question is how does it compare to similar products like the OPPO DV-970HD which has usb as well and plays SACD. It definetely looks awesome though.
Worf at 12:27 PM on 10/11/06
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The Oppo uses a Faroudja chip for the upscaling, as does the Samsung you see for the same price. These chips are considered to be the "best" upscalers around.

Unfortunately, I don't see the logo on this player (and you'd be damn sure they'd put it on if they used it - the Samsung does).

As for upscaling - the DVD player will always do a better job than the TV at upscaling because the DVD player will have more information available to do a better upscale. Modern TVs do a good job, but they can't compete with the information contained on a DVD. Plus, for a TV to do a better job, it would have to buffer a few frames of data so it can compute the necessary details. Do it over too many frames and you'd lose A/V sync since the audio path for a DVD player is not necessarily the same as for the TV. An upscaling DVD player can buffer a few frames of audio to keep the audio and video in sync.
Marco at 12:37 PM on 10/11/06
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DiVX is cool, but can you hack it to be region free?
Hello_Newman at 03:01 AM on 10/12/06
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At this price it seems like a good deal, but there's been other products out that do the same thing with mixed results or I'd have bought one already. I'll wait for real reviews to come out before getting one as with my current cable box the "stretch" or "zoom" functions make it look worse, if the chips in this really help instead of degrade then cool. Gonna bookmark their site and check back when actual units ship and reviews are available.
mw_st_westco at 12:02 PM on 11/17/06
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Dear,
With due respect to you and your management. This is Mark Wilson salim.I'm for an inquiry.I will like to make Order of your products.I will like to know if you have Panasonic DMR-EH55 (US version) or Toshiba SD-P1850 Portable DVD Player with 8" Widescreen LCD by Toshiba.
I want to know the types and brands of your products that you correctly have instock for now. and their prices range.so that i can go ahead with the order, will be looking forward for your mail with the product and prices you have instock.i will look as soon as possible.hope to hear from you soon
Thanks,
Advice
Sincerely
Mark Wilson.
vanguardd at 12:37 PM on 12/06/06
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I received mine a week ago and I have a Mitsubishi 65" WD-65732 which has the ability to do 1080p over HDMI. This dvd player will not display 1080p on this tv! I thought maybe it was my tv I contacted Mitsubishi and they did their troubleshooting on it. I then asked Neodigits and told me it was a known issue with some TVs displaying 1080p. Isn't the whole idea of advertising it as an upscaling dvd player that can display 1080p over HDMI and component the whole idea of this dvd player? They said they are working on a firmware to fix this problem and that it is due around the end of December.

It did play my divx files very easily but with many of the fansub anime I have it cuts half of the subtitles off and at least from what I saw in the settings there is no way to adjust the edges of the screen from the dvd player.

It is really disappointing when the main feature of 1080p does not work with a pretty popular DLP tv.