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42 Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About DVD<br />
whereas others can’t discern it at all. Problems have been reported on a<br />
variety of players, notably the Pioneer 414 and 717 models (possibly all Pioneer<br />
models), some Sony models (including the 500 series and the PS2),<br />
some Toshiba models (including the 3109), and some PC decoder cards.<br />
Certain discs are also more problematic, such as Lock, Stock, and Two<br />
Smoking Barrels, Lost In Space, Tron, The Parent Trap, and Austin Powers.<br />
The cause of the sync problem is a complex interaction of as many as<br />
four factors:<br />
• Improper sync in audio/video encoding or DVD-Video formatting<br />
• Poor sync during film production or editing (especially postdubbing or<br />
looping)<br />
• Loose sync tolerances in the player<br />
• Delay in the external decoder/receiver<br />
The first two factors usually must be present in order for the third or<br />
fourth ones to become apparent. Some discs with severe sync problems<br />
have been reissued after being reencoded to fix the problem. In some<br />
cases, the sync problem in players can be fixed by pausing or stopping<br />
playback and then restarting, or by turning the player off, waiting a few seconds,<br />
and then turning it back on.<br />
A good way to test your player is to simultaneously listen to the analog<br />
and digital outputs (play the digital output through your stereo and the analog<br />
output through your TV). If the audio echoes or sounds hollow, the<br />
player is delaying the signal and is thus the main cause of the sync problem.<br />
Unfortunately, this sync problem has no simple answer and no simple fix.<br />
More complaints from customers should motivate manufacturers to take<br />
the problem more seriously and correct it in future players or with firmware<br />
upgrades. Pioneer originally stated that altering the audio-visual synchronization<br />
of their players “to compensate for the software quality would dramatically<br />
compromise the picture performance.” Since then Pioneer has<br />
fixed the problem on its new players. If you have an older model, check with<br />
Pioneer about an upgrade. For more details, see Michael D.’s Pioneer Audio<br />
Sync page (www.michaeldvd.com.au/DV505/PioneerAudio).<br />
Why Does the Picture Alternate Between Light and Dark?<br />
You are seeing the effects of Macrovision copy protection (refer to “What<br />
Are the Copy Protection Issues?”). This is probably because you are running<br />
your DVD player through your VCR or VCR/TV combo (see <strong>Chapter</strong> 3’s
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