momitsu V880 unresponsive

jwkxneud · Post by **jwkxneud** » Fri Jul 23, 2004 12:51 pm

I recently picked up a V880 dvd player, which is known to have poor responsiveness to its remote. On avsforum several people claimed that they programmed their Harmonys and haven't had any problems since.

I've programmed my HTPro via JP1, but the unit is still very unresponsive. It behaves like the IR process is cpu starved. When the playback engine is busy (lots of motion video) it may take a dozen key presses to get a response. When the playback engine is idle, every key press works.

I posted on avsforum again and got this reply from a Harmony owner:

I programmed my Harmony 659 with the following key timings and it seems to help:

1500
0
200

and this

1500: Power on Delay (delay before sending another command when the unit is turned on).
0: Inter-key Delay.
100: Inter-device delay.

Now... I have a hard time believing this makes any difference because 1) I'm not switching devices, and 2) I'm not cycling the power, and 3) setting the inter-key delay to zero seems like it would make it harder, not easier, for the unit to catch the signal. A typical scenario is the unit has been playing video for 20 minutes, I hit "pause", nothing happens. Hit "pause" a dozen more times and eventually one of them will work. Seem like only the inter-key delay would be involved in this.

Any opinions on this?

Are these setup options available on the HTPro?

chas6000 · Post by **chas6000** » Fri Jul 23, 2004 2:09 pm

I would like to help but not sure i can. I have been very happy with my OFA9910 and the V880. I have uploaded my file to the JP1 forum site and there are one or two others there as well. I did not have to tinker with delays at all to get any of the functions of the V880 to work. Certainly not the power on/off. If after looking at the V880 upgrade files on JP1, you think I can help further let me know.

all the best

jwkxneud · Post by **jwkxneud** » Fri Jul 23, 2004 2:25 pm

chas6000 wrote:I would like to help but not sure i can. I have been very happy with my OFA9910 and the V880. I have uploaded my file to the JP1 forum site and there are one or two others there as well. I did not have to tinker with delays at all to get any of the functions of the V880 to work. Certainly not the power on/off. If after looking at the V880 upgrade files on JP1, you think I can help further let me know.

all the best

I'm using the "Momitsu - V880 modified for URC9910.txt" upgrade.

Can you tell me what firmware version is on your V880?

All of the codes work. It's just that they don't work reliably during playback.

chas6000 · Post by **chas6000** » Fri Jul 23, 2004 3:52 pm

that upgrade has worked for 1.1.9, 1.1.11, and 1.1.12 versions of V880 FW. this latter is the current 'May' release.

chas6000 · Post by **chas6000** » Fri Jul 23, 2004 3:54 pm

my v880 responds very reliably with my 9910 and this upgrade. during playback, i get immediate rewind, forward, pause and play with absolutely no delay or hesitation at all.

I dont know the details about your HTPro, but the upgrade you are using is the one I contributed and it has been working fine with my OFA9910

jwkxneud · Post by **jwkxneud** » Fri Jul 23, 2004 5:44 pm

chas6000 wrote:my v880 responds very reliably with my 9910 and this upgrade. during playback, i get immediate rewind, forward, pause and play with absolutely no delay or hesitation at all.

Weird. We have virtually the same setup, but very different behavior.

What video out are you using? I'm using 720p over DVI.

chas6000 · Post by **chas6000** » Fri Jul 23, 2004 7:53 pm

720 and 1080i over DVI

the only 'thing' that i can offer is that sometimes after the v880 has been off for a while, it will not turn on with the first button push.

but after it is on it will turn off immediately as it should - and if it has not been off for a while, it will turn on immediately again as it should.

once on and playing, however, all of the functions respond quickly and reliably.

When you are close and directly in front of the v880 and aiming directly at it - does it still respond slowly when playing? does it display the same behavior with the original v880 remote?

jwkxneud · Post by **jwkxneud** » Fri Jul 23, 2004 8:10 pm

chas6000 wrote:When you are close and directly in front of the v880 and aiming directly at it - does it still respond slowly when playing? does it display the same behavior with the original v880 remote?

Yes, it's unresponsive at short distance, aiming directly at it, and with the original remote.

I'm baffled. I wonder if there is a difference in hardware revision of the V880. Maybe they changed the IR circuitry. I don't know how to check this without popping the box open, which I'm not ready to do at this point. The weird thing is it really does behave like it's CPU starved. On fixed images it works fine. I assumed it was a firmware bug.

I wonder if my RF->IR blaster is picking up a lot of radio noise and overwhelming the V880. I'll try unplugging it.

Any other ideas?

Oh, here's something: have you ever noticed corrupted data in the "firmware version" page? The "loader version" info on mine became corrupted after being on for awhile. Others on avsforum have reported the same thing. This is with the 1.1.12 firmware.

chas6000 · Post by **chas6000** » Fri Jul 23, 2004 8:14 pm

ahhh you are using a blaster. try turning it off and see if the v880 responds the same.

and on the garbled FW version - i too have seen that. but it also goes back to normal after a while of off and on and pulling the plug etc. it has happened to me on all the FW versions Ive used. i cannot tell that it has made any diff in performance ...

jwkxneud · Post by **jwkxneud** » Sat Jul 24, 2004 12:27 am

chas6000 wrote:ahhh you are using a blaster. try turning it off and see if the v880 responds the same.

damn, damn, damn, damn. It's the blaster. With it unplugged both the HTPro and the original remote work fine. With it plugged in the HTPro works very unreliably, and the original remote basically doesn't work at all. So it's apparently making noise all the time, even when the HTPro isn't in use.

Debugging this may be beyond what I have time for.

I wonder if there's a difference in how the V880 handles IR compared to other consumer electronics. For example, does it burn CPU time handling noise from the blaster, while my other devices filter it out in hardware? The V880 certainly acts like the noise is costing it CPU time.

chas6000 · Post by **chas6000** » Sat Jul 24, 2004 7:58 am

i am glad that you have located your problem. but i am afraid that i am at a loss for how to proceed to fix the problem and allow usage of the blaster. i dont know much about blasters. do they tend to degrade after time and emit lots of noise?

you could try relocating your blaster to another location hoping that the v880 was not as susceptible ...

caseldevries · Post by **caseldevries** » Sat Jul 24, 2004 11:52 pm

I had a similar problem with my TiVo when I first went to video distribution, after a day or two it would quit responding to the remotes from upstairs or directly. Through trial and error I eventually discovered that the IR-emitter had to be either about 1/4 inch above the receiver or used backwards 1.5 to 4 inches away. Even almost directly below it would still work. You might want to try repositioning it( just tape it in the beginning so you can easily move it around).

Hope this helps, Al

jwkxneud · Post by **jwkxneud** » Sun Jul 25, 2004 1:04 am

wait, wait! It gets better!

After getting confirmation that these units are fairly sensitive to RF noise (and being given the obvious clue to use a CCD device to check for it), I pulled out the Olympus and pointed it at the RF unit.

Initially I didn't see any IR noise. Not a peep. The unit only blinked when I hit a button on the remote.

Then I turned on the V880. Whoops! It lit up like fireworks.

The V880 is generating the RF noise that blinds its own IR port via the repeater. This explains the correlation with playback state. The IR process is not cpu starved during playback. Rather, during playback it spews enough RF to blind itself.

So I'll probably start with trying to position the V880 farther from the repeater. If that doesn't work I may need to figure out some sort of shielding. Errr.... conductive but transparent to IR? I dunno. Probably a grounded wire mesh would help a bit.