LG DK172

I saw an advertisement stating that LG has released reasonably priced DVD player that has both MPEG-4 (DivX/XviD/MP4) and karaoke (echo/transpose) support. It seemed like compination of my other DVD players, Fintec and United. United also has started to have hard times reading DVD discs and picture has some interference (bad PSU). There are region free codes floating around the net, so I believed that was a well spend 80 euros.

First look

	The Box Comes with audio/composite RCA-cables.
	The Remote Small and tiny. F.F/REW/PLAY buttons are better positioned than in RCs for my other players. No DVD Volume :(.
	The Menu Not a usual MediaTek menu.

Inside

	The Peek Overview. From bottom left: mic, PSU, loader, mainboard.
	The Brains Processor board. MediaTek MT1389FE chipset without a serial connector, doh. Claims to be RoHS compliant
	The Dirty Device Loader upside down. The PCB has no markings .

Notes

• No DVD volume adjusting, so you cannot turn down backing track during karaoke sessions.
• Mic input gets easily distorted.
• NTSC DVDs are badly scaled to PAL resolution causing menus etc. look horrible. Did not find any PAL/NTSC/MULTI settings.
• Media tested as OK: CD-RW (ultra speed), DVD-R
• Formats tested as OK: AVI (DivX5, AC-3), subs (.sub)
• Formats not working:
• replace index.html with lg172_serial.zip to get the original serial fw.

Continue to
Part 2: Hardware Hacking (power sw, serial port)
Part 3: Software Hacking (firmware)