After doing research online between going HD with either the HD-DVD or BluRay format; I decided to pick up this little gem released from Helios. They had a previous model, the H4000 and it is well known in the AVS Forums because of its ease of menu navigation, its ability to upconvert standard dvd’s and for its many output connectors.
The H2000 is the little brother to the H4000 dvd player and it is definitely a lite version as it offers upconversion for the 720P/1080i format via video output support for every connection standard from HDMI, component, RCA, VGA. It also supports MPEG-4, Xvid, DivX formats for playback. As for audio it support coaxial and optical along with a bunch of effects and options.
Some of its neat features include, last memory so that even if you turn off the machine and power it on again, it will remember where you left off last. Another cool feature is this player supports both PAL and NTSC television formats.
At $99.00, I upgraded from a Panasonic S-27 player to this and I am fairly impressed with it although the upconversion is a bit of a letdown but I need to recognize that by taking a 480p dvd format and upconverting it to 720p/1080i, pixels do not magically appear. Overall, the picture playback quality is much smoother and more crisp as the Panasonic machine did not scale as well and seemed less sharp when there were many moving objects on the screen. It is definitely a budget upgrade to preserve my current dvd collection until a true next generation format is settled.
Tips: Set up may not be as simple since factory default has the HDMI setting set and your signal may not work unless you turn HDMI off if you are planning to connect via component.
Update 1: After playing and testing many movies, it seems that old DVD movies have a HD Content Lock that appears on screen which I have not figured out on how to unlock. If anyone has tips or experience, please feel free in letting me know.
Update 2: A kind guest has mentioned that the HD Content Lock that appears on the screen is because of firmware issues. Earlier DVD’s used a different encryption method and those were probably not included in part of the decoding measures. Hoping Helios-Lab will take note of this and come out with a firmware update so we can really preserve our entire DVD library.
helios has a firmware that turns on the upscaling check out their user forum I think there is a thread for it
Hi John,
Thanks for the update. I have updated the article to reflect that the problem is a firmware but so far it has not been released yet. Hopefully they will send out this firmware for the H2000 model since they had done it before for the H4000 model.
RJC
Here’s a link to the firmware released to fix this problem:
http://www.helios-labs.com/download/H2000.rar
I found this doing a google search for H2000 firmware. The file was released on the 23rd of August 2007.
Thank you sir! It is not actually on their website. Have you tried the firmware and is it safe to use?
Sadly, I will not have their player for another week or two (shipping etc.). I decided to search this out ahead of time. On their forums, a Helios employee with the handle ‘SC’ discussed that a firmware would be released soon. I believe the date of his post is August 30th. If you send in a support request with this problem, he said they would help.
I guess I should say, use the above link at your own risk. It only has a bin file and no associated img files as the H4000 RAR does. It looks like they just have a different directory path for their updated product download page (http://www.helios-labs.com/us/products/hline/hline_download.shtml)
That firmware file is valid and tested according to Helios. All it does is turn ‘on’ the upscaling over component so there is nothing to worry about. It is posted on their website here:
http://www.helios-labs.com/us/products/hline/hline_download.shtml
(scroll to bottom for the link)
I don’t think it’s really advertised because the legality of upscaling over component is a bit of a grey area, that’s my guess anyway.
I downloaded the H2000 file and tried burning it onto a CD but the format was not recognized when input into the player. It is also unfortunate that support has been lacking since I emailed them about 2 weeks ago. Quite disappointing but I hope this will be resolved.
I have bought H2000 on 5th October.The shipment to India is still pending.
Regarding the factory default setup of Upscaling over component input, I have queried the Helios team and they conveyed to me that by default Component out is enabled along with HDMI .So I guess that it will just be to run Setup for HD options.
Regards,
Raman
1. disable HDMI in the Setup
2. Download the firmware (http://www.helios-labs.com/download/H2000.rar file), unpack it with 7-zip or winrar
3. burn a new data CD with a CD burner. I used Nero. The volume name has to be set to MEDIATEK , and a single file (the .bin file extracted from the .rar above) should be placed on this CD
4. insert the CD into the player. It gives you a prompt about firmware upgrade. Click “play”
5. DO NOT TOUCH ANYTHING. The player will behave weird - will do something for a few second, then opens the tray. There are no additional prompt no help on the screen. THIS IS NORMAL. When the tray opens, remove the CD. DO NOT CLOSE THE TRAY. IN FACT, DO NOT TOUCH IT OR YOU WILL BRICK THE PLAYER
6. in 4-5 min the tray will close on it’s own and player reboot. You are done. New firware is in. Everything should work
I did the sequence above and now enjoying all my DVDs in 1080i over component