Does California electronics firmware exist?

[moonreflection]

First, I'm sorry if this is not the appropriate place to ask this question.  Anyway, this seems like the only place I can find anyone who knows anything about California electronics.  I have the California electronics that works about 6 months.  Now it would not recognize any of the DVD disk.  I turn it on and it would scan for a while then said no disk found.  A month ago, it would recognize after maybe 5 or 6 times turning off and on but now it failed completely.  I thought maybe if there exist a firmware or maybe update that can fix this problem.

I've also started a project on the karaoke players over 6 years ago and play around decoding these disk.  I never completely finish.  It looks like I should finish up my project.  This looks like a good place to get some info.  Good works guys!

[bigboss97]

First, you absolutely at the right place, you can't find a better one  
Bad news: I don't believe that any firmware would help based on the symptoms in your description.
Good news: You don't need another 6 years  
http://www.nabble.com/forum/ViewPost.jtp?post=12859617&framed=y
It's not the latest version, I just wanted to prove that it works.

If nothing can scare you you are welcome to revisit:
http://www.nabble.com/forum/ViewPost.jtp?post=11381366&framed=y

HTH
Phuoc Can HUA

moonreflection wrote

First, I'm sorry if this is not the appropriate place to ask this question.  Anyway, this seems like the only place I can find anyone who knows anything about California electronics.  I have the California electronics that works about 6 months.  Now it would not recognize any of the DVD disk.  I turn it on and it would scan for a while then said no disk found.  A month ago, it would recognize after maybe 5 or 6 times turning off and on but now it failed completely.  I thought maybe if there exist a firmware or maybe update that can fix this problem.

I've also started a project on the karaoke players over 6 years ago and play around decoding these disk.  I never completely finish.  It looks like I should finish up my project.  This looks like a good place to get some info.  Good works guys!

[moonreflection]

Thanks for the reply.  Actually it didn't take me 6 years.    Just 6 years ago.  Then I put it on hold after about a few months playing around with it.  Then I got busy with my work then never go back to it.  Back then I got a different model of Midi-Karaoke player.  Forgot the model.  Anyway, have you ever have a problem with your California electronics player?  Mine was working perfect the first few months I got it.  Then, it will start freezing up on certain songs once in a while.  Now it would not detect the DVD or midi-DVD disk.  It has no problem detecting CD though.  I also wrote a MIDI karaoke player but never release it because I never had the time to make a graphics for the control.  I haven't had a chance to playing around of what you guys made but from reading the post you guys had, seems like you guys are making progress.  

Toan Hoang

[bigboss97]

- I've also given up sometime ago (not 6 years ago) until I found a partner to work on the same DVD.

- What player are you currently using? How are the songs compare to CalElect? Since CalElect is a kind of Vietnames product I guess the other players won't have that many VN songs, right?

- If your player is written in C it will be perfect. You can build your player with the posted source code then you can forget the defect player. To be warned, there are still songs which can't be read properly. But it will be better than your defect player for sure   

- We are not making much progress because basically the project has been closed. Only some fine tunings and bug fixes will be posted from time to time. Of course, there's still one part of the project hasn't moved very far, it's to find a way to add new songs on a CalElect DVD. But that's not what you are interested.

- You don't need any graphic for your control. I did that only for my own interest (challenge) when I could find new feature to add. But it's just wasted of time (very time intensive). What you need is to make sure all functionalties can be activated by key stroke. That sounds very unprofessional in the colorful windows world. But that's the way you make your player programable on remote control. The graphic control is only good for mouse navigation. At the moment, I sing my CalElect songs with my remote on the TV screen without seeing the graphic control.

Phuoc Can HUA

moonreflection wrote

Thanks for the reply.  Actually it didn't take me 6 years.    Just 6 years ago.  Then I put it on hold after about a few months playing around with it.  Then I got busy with my work then never go back to it.  Back then I got a different model of Midi-Karaoke player.  Forgot the model.  Anyway, have you ever have a problem with your California electronics player?  Mine was working perfect the first few months I got it.  Then, it will start freezing up on certain songs once in a while.  Now it would not detect the DVD or midi-DVD disk.  It has no problem detecting CD though.  I also wrote a MIDI karaoke player but never release it because I never had the time to make a graphics for the control.  I haven't had a chance to playing around of what you guys made but from reading the post you guys had, seems like you guys are making progress.  

Toan Hoang

[moonreflection]

Yeah, it's pretty much useless for me to add more songs to the DVD since my player is defective.  The my bet is to modify the players to play the midi-DVD.  I've collect plenty of .kar files over the years.  But none of them compares to the one found on these DVD.  The California Electronic was bought in Vietnam, but it sure wasn't last long for me.  Currently I have the RJ-Tech.  I notice in some songs you can turn on the voice.  I suspect those are probably in MP3 format.  The player I wrote is in C++.  With video playing in the background.  It's just that most player like Winamp and others have nice graphics so I didn't want to release one with none at all.  Also, mine currently highlight the word by character instead of the wiping style with a timer.  By the way, how's the quality of these songs compare when playing in the Windows environment in respect to the DVD machine?  

I do notice that the post was a while back and I join the party a little late.  Hopefully I'll have to time to play with my hobby again.

Toan

[bigboss97]

Those Chinese oldies on CalElect are just right for me. They are exactly for my generation  I've seen a better Taiwan player (based on my favorite songs). But it's a fancy one with harddisk.
There is also other thread talking about MIDI with MP3 player.
Yes, I spent a lot of time to get the wiping working correctly. I just wanted to challenge myself hahaha...
Honestly, CalElect has the most terrible sound I've ever heard on karaoke player. As I said, but it has the right songs. Since XP has its SoftSync all songs sound therefore better than on CalElect. If you have YAMAHA SoftSync it sounds even a little bit better. I'm using YAMAHA CBX-T3 (over 10 years old technology) http://www.quaggas.com/cbx-t3/ It sounds unbelievable good. I got it from (German) eBay for less than 40EURO when I was there. Unfortunately, those old MIDI equipments are still very expensive on Australian eBay.

Warning: The MIDI adapter will cost almost as much as the machine. If your XP has several USB devices you could have lots of troubles. Those adapters come without drivers because XP recognise them. But Vista can't see it and it's purely your luck to find a 3rd party driver. Of course, you have to experience many many Vista bluescreens until you find the right driver.
Let me know when you are in trouble I've gone through all these

Phuoc Can HUA

moonreflection wrote

I've collect plenty of .kar files over the years.  But none of them compares to the one found on these DVD.  The California Electronic was bought in Vietnam, but it sure wasn't last long for me.  Currently I have the RJ-Tech.  I notice in some songs you can turn on the voice.  I suspect those are probably in MP3 format.  The player I wrote is in C++.  With video playing in the background.  It's just that most player like Winamp and others have nice graphics so I didn't want to release one with none at all.  Also, mine currently highlight the word by character instead of the wiping style with a timer.  By the way, how's the quality of these songs compare when playing in the Windows environment in respect to the DVD machine?  

I do notice that the post was a while back and I join the party a little late.  Hopefully I'll have to time to play with my hobby again.

Toan

[moonreflection]

Sounds good.  I've only play with midi keyboard.  I should try these midi tone generator when I have the chance.  So far I found that using the YAMAHA XG SoftSynthesizer sounds better than using Microsft GS Wavetable for the midi.  Currently I don't like using vista so I am not worry about that yet.  The CalElect machine does look cheaply made but they do have some really good songs and correct tempo.  The RJ-Tech's vietnamese songs seems older.  Also, I found a lot of the song's tempo seems to be slower.  

I will try to do the wiping style when I have the chance.  Actually, I love this style too.  Maybe I'll challenge myself doing this.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZd0-0GjlFE

Toan

[bigboss97]

So, you really think I want to use Vista?  
My PC died on last silent night. Then I bought a new one (Acer Aspire L3600), of course Vista, and my Vista died last week, even Microsoft's Safe Mode didn't safe. Now I've XP on it, but still couldn't find the right driver for the DVB-T card .

moonreflection wrote

Currently I don't like using vista so I am not worry about that yet.  The CalElect machine does look cheaply made but they do have some really good songs and correct tempo.  The RJ-Tech's vietnamese songs seems older.  Also, I found a lot of the song's tempo seems to be slower.  

[bigboss97]

Since you want the challenge here is something from me which you can re-use:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/sdl-skin

If your code is not already written with SDL then you will have enough challenge just to get SDL compiled in your environment. But that worths it and you can even make your player platform independent one day

Phuoc Can HUA

moonreflection wrote

It's just that most player like Winamp and others have nice graphics so I didn't want to release one with none at all.

[moonreflection]

What's SDL?  I've never use it before.  Doing a search shows it's Simple DirectMedia Layer.  I should look into it.  Currently, my program is DirectShowD/DirectX based.  I thought about starting a project in WindowsCE too.  This might be good for me to look into since it support WindowsCE.

Toan

[bigboss97]

More precisely, I used Kyra which is built on top of SDL:
http://www.grinninglizard.com/kyra/
Here is the demo:
kyra_demo.zip
Just for you to save a little bit time. It took weeks until I got the demo compiled. You can find my demo source codes (Borland) under:
http://www.huaonline.com/softwares
I've re-arranged them and use some batch files.

SDL has a very good mailing list. I believe that all the mails also go to nabble:
http://www.nabble.com/SDL-f14250.html

I'm not going into too much details. Otherwise we would be out off topic
Phuoc Can HUA

moonreflection wrote

What's SDL?  I've never use it before.  Doing a search shows it's Simple DirectMedia Layer.  I should look into it.  Currently, my program is DirectShowD/DirectX based.  I thought about starting a project in WindowsCE too.  This might be good for me to look into since it support WindowsCE.

Toan

[bigboss97]

That's great, have seen bouncing ball and others before. I'm seeing this for the first time.
But this will be a real challenge because it "wipes" the character in 3D. Have you sung like this before? I'm not sure whether too much effects might confuse singers. You know the situation for sure. Since all karaoke singers are only fun-singers when they can't follow they will start blaming on the timing etc.

It's always good to have something revolutionary. But certain things have established not for no reason. For instance, I've built a text search (by song title) in my player. I thought, since it's a computer player why don't we use the keyboard to enter song and we don't need any printed song list any more. I was wrong. Usually, karaoke singer don't know what to sing and they prefer to look into to the song collection first and browsing the song list is part of the karaoke entertainment. Even those don't sing they love to browse the song list. Since I moved to use song ID I've removed the text search. Lucky, that text search feature didn't require to much programming work unlike the 3D effect

btw, if you want a better song list for your CalElect player, see:
http://www.nabble.com/Generate-Song-List-for-California-electronics-to11394390.html


Phuoc Can HUA

moonreflection wrote

I will try to do the wiping style when I have the chance.  Actually, I love this style too.  Maybe I'll challenge myself doing this.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZd0-0GjlFE

[moonreflection]

You are right about having a song list.  A lot of time we can't remember all the songs we want to sing.  Sometimes the list reminds us some songs we forgot or can't think of at the time.  Also, you can have lots of people looking at it by printing more.  I've seen the bouncing ball and didn't like that.  This 3D effects does seems cool.  But you are right, most singer have a hard enough time following songs.  I thought about challenge myself and maybe have this as an expert option, but it seems like a big challenge though.    I've also playing around getting the word to display from the mp3 files but I can't seems to find many sample mp3 with words on them.  Most you have to pay for it while other players just use their own format.  But first, I'll have to convert my project to VS2005 since my project was started back when I have VS6.0 and I no longer have that on my Windows.

Toan

[moonreflection]

I just tried to convert my project today and looks like the part about reading the ID3 Tag of the MP3 file failed to convert.  Looks like I will have to start over by removing the MP3 support first.

I guess I am going out of topic now.  

[moonreflection]

Well, I finally was able to port my code over to VS2005.  Now I can continue my project.  I search and search but I can't find any demo .mp3 files that contain Lyrics3 v2.00 for me to play around.  Seems like all the mp3 karaoke player out there try to use their own lyric encoding.  Even their lyrics editor wrote to the mp3 their own tag.

Toan

[bigboss97]

I don't know much about MP3+TXT format. But I've noticed some recent portable MP3 players do support lyric text file. What I understood, it displays a text file with the same name. I don't know whether it supports time code or the user has to scroll it manually??? I've no idea.

I don't know what's the most popular MP3+TXT format. But I do know people using MP3+TXT love to convert them to CD+G because it's an industry standard and those CD's are audio CD player compatible.

HTH
Phuoc

moonreflection wrote

I search and search but I can't find any demo .mp3 files that contain Lyrics3 v2.00 for me to play around.  Seems like all the mp3 karaoke player out there try to use their own lyric encoding.  Even their lyrics editor wrote to the mp3 their own tag.

Toan

[bigboss97]

btw, if you use sdl_skin as I suggested you will then be able to use folksSC to covert some of the WinAmp skins for your player.
Here are some of the skins which were successfully converted for my player:
http://launch.groups.yahoo.com/group/softkaraoke/files/Softwares/folksKJ/skins/

Phuoc Can HUA

[moonreflection]

Well, there's one type that's save as Tag inside the MP3 file.  I notice most library supporting has been slowing down the last 4 years so maybe it wasn't used much.  Another would be to save with the same file name with .lrc.  That's more like how subtitle works.  It does have the time code per line, possibly per word.  So, the user doesn't have to scroll them.  I once tried to support CDG too but I didn't like those because I thik the word are stored as graphics instead of text inside the file.  So, you're kinda stuck with whatever graphic text they use to generate the words.  All you do is displaying the graphics at the time specified.  It might be harder to overlay them over video.  

Toan

[bigboss97]

I just went to my friend's place this weekend and he has got a new player from Vietnam, the Arirang Karaoke. It plays MIDI and some songs have chorus (I gues it's mixed with MP3). But the chorus is so loud that you don't have a chance to sing
Hopefully, there's a feature to balance chorus and music.

I found some of my favourite songs which are not on CalElect. As soon as I can find out more I will open a new thread  

Phuoc

moonreflection wrote

The California Electronic was bought in Vietnam, but it sure wasn't last long for me.  Currently I have the RJ-Tech.  I notice in some songs you can turn on the voice.  I suspect those are probably in MP3 format.

[bigboss97]

moonreflection wrote

Currently, my program is DirectShowD/DirectX based.  I thought about starting a project in WindowsCE too.  This might be good for me to look into since it support WindowsCE.

How's your program doing?