Page 1 of M5 whats the score?
Hardware Forum
hi there
after all the fuss about getting the region hack what has happened to all the Wharfedale M5 owners?
Whats the score with the machine ? is it any good? are there any problems with the known discs i.e. toy story disc 3, gladiator disc 2 jaws , matrix etc etc.?
is the machine any quieter than the 750 / 750s? lastly ( thank god i hear you say ) are there any artifacts or blockyness on the picture.?
please let us know
david
The machine`s definitely quieter than the 750(s).
In can only tell you the discs I`ve played that work:
The Matrix R1, Gladiator R2 (original pressing), Se7en PE R1, T2:UE, The Abyss R1, ID:4 R1, High Fidelity R1, Hollow Man R2, The Rock CE R1, Snatch R2. There are a couple of "problem" discs in there and a couple of which wouldn`t play on my sister`s 750, all of which now seem to play without any problems on the M5
As a player, it`s visually not up to scratch compared to my Sony 715 as (IMHO) the picture`s a tiny bit soft compared to the Sony. No blocky artefacty stuff that I`ve seen/heard.... although it does get a little narked if you play a disc that`s even slightly dirty, causing the sound and picture to "pop". Sonically, DD seems quieter and doesn`t seem to have as much "thickness". However it thrashes the 715 hands down on DTS (seeing as how the Sony doesn`t do it!). MP3 & CD playback is reasonable. Again though, it`s not as good as the Sony for CD playback and sounds positively poor next to an Arcam Alpha 8SE.
Personally, I think it`s a damn good player for the price and what it does. It`s just a bugger that it`s not black and it`s not Sony - it`s spoiled my black Sony home cinema monolith now (the Arcam`s in another room BTW).
Anyway, that`s my ten pence worth and I hope it helps you out.
Cheers,
Caca
Hi
I purchased an M5 last Wednesday...
..and took it back the following day.
My first impressions of the machine were good. It looked great and a lot better than the 750 that I also have. Once set up and switched on you are greeted by a colourfull wharfedale logo. The menus are much better than the 750. The region hack was easy to put in and worked fine on Fight Club R1.
The first problem I noticed was a slight jerkiness in the film. There seemed to be a slight split second pause every few seconds on fast moving scenes.
The picture quality was also not as good as the 750 and seemed a bit `grainy`.
I was impressed by the mp3 playback, but not the 8 character filename limit.
The next problem was that the machine `crashed` and the screen went all pixelated and started flashing. I thought this was the screensaver at first, but the machine failed to respond and I had to switch it off and back on again.
This happened a couple more times and on the third occassion it failed to switch back on and was completely dead.
I took it back to Tesco to exchange it. On arrival there were 2 other people returning players at the same time. I therefore decided to get a refund.
I will wait and see what other people think about it before buying another one.
Andy