SVCD compatibility

I have tried SVCD compatibility with three SVCD's downloaded from VCDHelp on the 10:th of July 2002:

	"SVCD NTSC Sample with CVD selectable subtitles, 1 audio track, menus, chapters"
	"SVCD NTSC Sample with SVCD selectable subtitles, 2 audio tracks"
	"SVCD PAL Sample with CVD selectable subtitles, 2 audio tracks, menus, chapters"

I have tested these on the United 3155 and here are the results I got:

SVCD #	Test results
1	Everything played fine, except for choice "#5: play 3 secs from each entry point". When I tried this, the player didn't do anything at all. As this is an NTSC SVCD and I usually use PAL output, the subtitles worked a little strange: If I set the output from the DVD to PAL (the player has to convert from NTSC to PAL), I could not see any subtitles at all. If I set the output from the DVD to NTSC, I could see the subtitles, but not all of them. It seems that the subtitles are located very low on this film, so if there is only one line of text in a subtitle, it is not visible on screen. But if there are two lines, the upper line is visible on screen!
2	The movie played fine, but I could only one listen to one audio track. When I pressed the "AUDIO" button on the remote control, I did not get any sound from audio tracks 2. The only audio track that produced any sound was number 1. Also, I did not get any subtitles at all. When I pressed the "SUBTITLE" button on the remote control, I did not see subtitles from any of the four available subtitles.
3	The movie played fine, except for choice "#5: play 3 secs from each entry point". When I tried this, the player played about one second of the movie and then got back to the menu screen. I could choose audio track! When I pressed the "AUDIO" button on the remote control, the player switched from German to English sound. Also, I could choose and see subtitles! Every time I pressed the "SUBTITLE" button on the remote control, the player cycled to the next subtitle and displayed that! Below, there are screen-shots of the four different subtitles that were available.

SVCD #

Test results

Everything played fine, except for choice "#5: play 3 secs from each entry point". When I tried this, the player didn't do anything at all.

As this is an NTSC SVCD and I usually use PAL output, the subtitles worked a little strange:

If I set the output from the DVD to PAL (the player has to convert from NTSC to PAL), I could not see any subtitles at all.
If I set the output from the DVD to NTSC, I could see the subtitles, but not all of them. It seems that the subtitles are located very low on this film, so if there is only one line of text in a subtitle, it is not visible on screen. But if there are two lines, the upper line is visible on screen!

The movie played fine, but I could only one listen to one audio track. When I pressed the "AUDIO" button on the remote control, I did not get any sound from audio tracks 2. The only audio track that produced any sound was number 1.

Also, I did not get any subtitles at all. When I pressed the "SUBTITLE" button on the remote control, I did not see subtitles from any of the four available subtitles.

The movie played fine, except for choice "#5: play 3 secs from each entry point". When I tried this, the player played about one second of the movie and then got back to the menu screen.

I could choose audio track! When I pressed the "AUDIO" button on the remote control, the player switched from German to English sound.

Also, I could choose and see subtitles! Every time I pressed the "SUBTITLE" button on the remote control, the player cycled to the next subtitle and displayed that! Below, there are screen-shots of the four different subtitles that were available.

	Here you see the subtitle 1, Dutch.
	Subtitle 2, English.
	Subtitle 3, German.
	Subtitle 4, Swedish.

So, to sum up how the United 3155 plays SVCD's:

Plays SVCD's without any problems, as far as I have been able to see.
Supports up to four CVD selectable subtitles.
Supports two audio tracks.
Does not support SVCD selectable subtitles.

If anybody has some coments about the SVCD capabilities of the 3155, just send me a mail and tell me what you think.

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