KVCD on Cinevision DVP650
 

This cheap Radio Shack model (manufactured by Sonic Blue/Go Video) handles VCD, SVCD and CVD without modification. I was mainly interested in seeing if it could use KVCD MPEG-1 templates. I did not test MPEG-2 templates because I'm interested in lower bitrates, and regular SVCD and CVD is fine for me for MPEG-2 (I use DVD2SVCD for those conversions). I tried a low bitrate CVD, and it looked bad, so I really wanted to get one of the KVCD templates working.

KVCD vs. Cinevision DVP-650

Since I am still very new at all this, I used Red-M's Guide to Creating Good Quality KVCD's (x2) v0 as my base method, then for my subsequent tests only re-encoded the video, muxed and authored my 5-minute clip on a CD-RW (Nero burn). This is because lower-bitrate audio seems to work in all scenarios on my player. (I encoded my audio @ 160Kbps CBR, and reused it for each test clip.)

I first authored each clip as VCD, and if that didn't work, remuxed and reauthored as SVCD.

KVCDX3 528x480 VBR MPEG-1
with VCD Header - No
with SVCD Header - No

KVCD 352x240 VBR MPEG-1
with VCD Header - Yes!

KVCD 352x480 VBR MPEG-1
with VCD Header - No
with SVCD Header - No

Non-standard lower CBR xVCD 352x240 MPEG-1 (@ CBR 1048Kbps as calculated by MovieStacker)
VCD Header - Yes!
Looks good

Standard CVD 352x480 VBR MPEG-2 (@ VBR 1048Kbps)
with SVCD Header - Yes (this was expected)
Looks bad (not expected :( )

My conclusions:

KVCD/xVCD seems to work fine, as long as the frame size is only 352x240 (accepts CBR and VBR MPEG-1). KVCDX3 MPEG-1 does not work. The SVCD authoring trick does not seem to work. On the positive side, audio on KVCD/xVCD does not have to be 224Kbps.

If decide to test MPEG-2 using the SKVCD/KVCDX3/KDVD templates, I'll post my results. My inclination is that KDVD should have no problem, because it should be the same as standard CVD.

Thanks to Kwag, Red-M and all the hard workers out there!

Re: Cinevision DVP650
 

How cheap?

Currently $69.99 at Radio Shack's website here, and there is a $10 rebate coupon being offered there as well.

I recommend the machine with reservations, as mine has a malfunction that prevents the fast-forward/fast-reverse from working; the button just makes the movie skip to the next or last chapter, no matter what I do. It is supposed to go into forward/reverse by holding down the button, but it doesn't work. And to get service, I'd have to send the unit to a dealer in Brooklyn -- too much hassle! I can use the search function instead. ...But that's just my own problem.

On the plus side, it can play MP3s, and works with CD-R and CD-RW (I burned all my test samples on a CD-RW).