S&V 999 DVD Player

In June of 2005 I purchased an S&V model 999 DVD Player from Foodtown (a large supermarket chain here in New Zealand). The instruction manual was a bit skimpy and so I've put together this page to help other owners.

Note: The information on this page is for the S&V 999 DVD Player. Since I purchased my player I have seen newer S&V models being sold (i.e. a portable model and model S&V 4313 with a built-in card reader and USB port). I have received many queries from people about these newer models but I have been unable to help as I know nothing about these other models! The information on this page may or may not work for them; I can't give advice about these other models.

Official Specifications (taken from box): 5.1 Channel Progressive Scan DVD / VCD / HDCD / CD-R / CD-RW JPEG Picture CD / MP3 Playback Dolby Digital / DTS Decoder 16:9 Widescreen or 4:3 Aspect Ratio Coaxial & Optical Digital Outputs S-Video / Composite / Component Outputs Karaoke Function 2 Microphone Inputs Parental Lock Function Full Function Remote Control

Manual: The manual is 30 pages long and covers setting up the player, using the remote, basic operations and trouble shooting. No mention is made about the JPEG picture functions, MP3's, Karaoke, etc. Hopefully this page will give you more info about these functions.

Manufacturer: Until I purchased this DVD player I had never heard of S&V. Along with this DVD player Foodtown were also selling S&V TV's and mini-stereo's. Searching the Internet didn't reveal anything about S&V (other than it's a widely used abbreviation for Sound & Vision Magazine).

Support for the S&V 999 DVD Player is provided by Yale Appliance Group Pty Ltd, who are an Australian company. Their support phone numbers are:

The Yale Appliance Group website says: "Yale Appliance Group represents leading international brands, however we are also Australia's premier supplier of Private Labeled products with the ability to source, brand and supply an extensive range of electronic products and whitegoods." From this I gather that "S&V" is just a brand name and Yale Appliance Group have just re-branded generic no-name products. I gather that this is quite common with electronic appliances.

Internal Info: Opening up the DVD player reveals a Sunplus SPHE8200A and SPHE6300A chipset combination on the motherboard. Also included are a pair of Samsung K4S161622H-UC60 16M bit SDRAM chips and an EON EN29F040A-70PC 4M bit (512K x 8-bit) EEPROM flash memory. Unfortunately I can find very little information about this Sunplus chipset as it does not seem to be as widely used as the ESS and Mediatek chipsets. Here are a few sites with some info:

• Sunplus-based DVD players have built in games? See link #1, link #2, link #3
• Inspection of a Daewoo DVD player that uses the Sunplus SPHE8200A

Region Unlock: The S&V999 DVD player has a Region 4 logo on the back of it and the manual says "Regional codes are printed on the rear panel of the DVD Player, only DVD disc with same code can be played". After some hunting on the Internet I found that there is a standard Sunplus unlock code which works for this player:

Power on the DVD player. Open the tray. Key in 9735 on the remote. A secret menu should appear which lets you change the region as well as showing you the firmware revision and other settings. Close the tray to exit the menu.

The "9735" code also works without having to open the tray, but there must be no disc in the player for it to work.

I found that my DVD player was already set to Region 0, which should allow playback from all regions.

I've been advised that the above region unlock information also works on the following S&V models: 4313, 228, 1005, 3270.

S&V Portable DVD Model S&V 12627: The following region unlock instructions were sent to me for the S&V 12627 Portable:

1. Open Top Load Tray and enter 81328
2. It will show CURRENT REGION (Normally 4)
3. If you change that to Region 9 and close the top load tray, you then have a multi zoned player

S&V 999c Model: A couple of people have reported to me that the above region unlock trick doesn't work on the S&V 999c model. The secret menu appears but it's impossible to access the "Region" option. I don't know how to get around this problem for this model.

S&V Portable DVD Model S&V 19262: I've had a report that the above region unlock trick doesn't work on the S&V 19262 model.

S&V 301415 Model: I've had a report that the above region unlock trick doesn't work on the S&V 301415 model. Keying 5168 while having the tray open will access an information screen but you can't access the "Region" settings.

Setup: The manual makes a reasonable job of explaining how to plug everything in and how to use the Setup menu (see picture to the right). If you have any questions about what any of the setup options are about (i.e. aspect ratios, etc) then you will find the DVD FAQ will help you out. My unit worked straight out of the box with just a simple TV hookup (no home theatre or anything complicated).

VCD and SVCD Playback Control (PBC): Both VCD 2.0 (Video Compact Disc) and SVCD 1.0 (Super Video Compact Disc) have a facility known as "Playback Control" (PBC). This allows VCD and SVCD discs to offer interactive menus and the user may control the playback, a bit like interactive DVD menus but the only keys allowed are Next, Previous, Default (usually the Play button), Return (usually the Stop button) and the numeric keys.

The S&V 999 player disables PBC when a VCD or SVCD disc is inserted. Thus any menu is ignored and the video on the disc is started automatically. To enable PBC you should press the PBC key on the remote before you insert the disc. This is a rather annoying "feature".

JPEG, MP3 and MPEG Playback: The specifications mention JPEG and MP3 playback, but the manual makes no mention of this. After some experimentation I have discovered that you can insert a CD or DVD (I can confirm that CD-R, CD-RW, DVD-R, DVD+RW all work ok) that contains JPEG pics, MP3 audio files or MPEG video files. The player will then build a list of all the files on the disc and present you with a simple file viewer.

The picture to the left shows the file listing with folders on the left and files on the right. You move around this display by using the arrow keys on the remote: left and right to take the highlight between the different sections, up and down to move within a section. The inserted disc may contain a collection of JPEG's, MP3's and MPEG files but the file viewer will only show one file type at a time. The current file type is selectable by using the three buttons at the bottom of the screen (from left to right: MP3 audio, JPEG pictures, MPEG videos). You can change the file type being viewed by pressing the right or left arrow buttons on the remote until the highlight appears over the type that you want to change to, then press Enter. To play an MP3 file use the left/right arrow keys on the remote to move the highlight to the right-hand file listing, use the up/ down arrow keys to select the file you want to play, then press ENTER.

Other keys to use while in MP3 mode:

• PLAY / PAUSE - Play or pause the file.
• RAN - Randomly select which MP3 to play.
• Left / Right - Increase or decrease echo.
• Prev / Next - Skip to previous / next file.
• Rev / Fwd - Fast reverse or forward through the file.
• REPEAT - Toggle between repeating one, directory, all, off.
• A-B - Set the start and end point for repeating a section of the file, press again to cancel.
• OSD - Turn on the On-Screen Display which shows you the track number, mute status, repeat setting, playing time. Pressing again will change from showing the playing time to showing the time remaining. Pressing again will remove the OSD.
• MUTE / VOLUME +/- - Change the volume.
• 3D - Show and change the surround sound, equaliser, band, key settings.
• PROG - When pressed while on the file listing you can select up to 16 files which will be played in the sequence you entered (see page 25 of the manual).

The picture to the right shows the file listing when it is set to view JPEG's. Note that files that are in the root directory will appear in the folder called "-", also folders and files are numbered. A note about filenames: Files with long filenames can be displayed / played, but the filenames are truncated for display purposes and spaces are changed to underscores. The player only recognises 3 character file extensions, so JPEG files should have ".jpg" extensions and not ".jpeg". As usual use the left/right arrow keys to move to the file listing and then the up and down keys to select a file to view. A thumbnail of the currently selected JPEG file will appear in the left-hand window. Press ENTER to view the image full screen.

Other keys to use while in JPEG mode:

• MENU - View several help screens that tell you what keys to use while in JPEG viewing mode.
• Left / Right - Rotate the image clockwise / anti-clockwise.
• Up - Flip the image vertically.
• Down - Flip the image horizontally.
• RETURN - Switch from full screen mode back to file list / thumbnail mode.
• ZOOM - Zoom in and out. While zoomed in you can use the arrow keys to scroll around the image.
• REPEAT - Toggle between repeating one, directory, all, off.
• Prev / Next - Go to the previous / next image.
• Play / Pause - Start a slide show of all the images. Press again to pause.
• REPEAT - Toggle between repeating one, directory, all, off.
• RAN - Randomly select which image to display when viewing a slide show.
• OSD - Turn on the On-Screen Display which shows you the track number, mute status, repeat setting, playing time. Pressing again will change from showing the playing time to showing the time remaining. Pressing again will remove the OSD.
• PROG - When pressed while viewing an image it cycles through all the transition options (i.e. wipes, extends, compress, windows, etc). When pressed while on the file listing you can select up to 16 images which will be displayed in the sequence you entered (see page 25 of the manual).
• PBC - When pressed while on the file listing you will get a display of 6 thumbnails along with their filenames and sizes. Use the arrow keys to move around, ENTER to view the selected image.

MPEG mode lets you play MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 files. This means you can view MPEG files that you've created yourself or downloaded from the Internet without having to author a proper DVD. Use the file listing to select which MPEG file to view (note that the file extension must be ".mpg" as ".mpeg" will not work) and press ENTER to start watching it. While you're watching you can use most of the normal DVD playback keys (reverse, forward, slow, zoom, etc). Note that you can only watch MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 encoded video files; AVI, WMA, RM, ASF, etc won't work.

Bugs! Unfortunately it looks like the firmware has some bugs in it. While I was creating this page I was doing lots of experiments with switching between the different JPEG viewing modes, and at one stage I managed to create the display on the left. It looks like the DVD player wasn't sure which mode I was in. Pressing the arrow keys made different coloured boxes appear.