Tech: Which DVD player to buy?

Subject: Tech: Which DVD player to buy?
From: GUEST
Date: 12 Sep 03 - 02:29 PM

Note: I'm a member here, but the person that I'm buying this for occasionally looks at Mudcat, and I'd prefer to keep it a suprise. Hence my anonymity.

Hi,

I'm looking to buy a DVD player, but know very little about such things. I'm looking at the lower end of the market (money's quite tight).

I'm in the UK, and the two cheapest models at amazon.co.uk: the Yamada DVD 5520 Multi-region and the Daewoo 9000S5 Multi-region would appear to offer everything that I'd want plus a lot more.

Most of Amazon's reviews for both these are very positive, but a few complain about the picture quality on both models. We're not real film buffs or technology snobs, so anything that is as good as a decent TV picture is good enough for me.

Anyone have any experience of the above models, or recommendations for other good cheap players?

Have you bought a player and regretted it later because it didn't have a certain feature?

Any help or advice appreciated. Thanks

Subject: RE: Tech: Which DVD player to buy?
From: GUEST
Date: 12 Sep 03 - 02:36 PM

If you wait until they develope one that works right, you might never get there.

Subject: RE: Tech: Which DVD player to buy?
From: GUEST
Date: 12 Sep 03 - 02:43 PM

I have no intention of waiting. I was asking advice on buying one now...

Subject: RE: Tech: Which DVD player to buy?
From: GUEST
Date: 12 Sep 03 - 02:57 PM

I've got a Memorex 48-24-48 (read, write, play) that works most of the time, when Windows 98 lets it. (Windows is not letting it do anything now.)

Subject: RE: Tech: Which DVD player to buy?
From: GUEST
Date: 12 Sep 03 - 03:04 PM

Very nice, Guest.

It was pretty clear from my original post that I was looking for advice on a stand alone player to use with a TV.

Thanks for nothing.

Subject: RE: Tech: Which DVD player to buy?
From: Rt Revd Sir jOhn from Hull
Date: 12 Sep 03 - 03:17 PM

I bought a DVD player from ASDA a few weeks ago, it was only £43, picture and sound quality is very good, make is Pacific.
Only one drawback with that model is, it will not play DVD-R's, ie it will not play pirate copies, cheapest one i've seen that does play DVD-R's is a Toshiba, at around £100, though if your'e not bothered about playing pirate copies, i would definetley reccomend the Pacific from ASDA, you get 1 month to take it back if your not happy with it anyway.

Subject: RE: Tech: Which DVD player to buy?
From: GUEST
Date: 12 Sep 03 - 03:22 PM

Thanks, John

That sounds like a great idea. I can't see us ever wanting to play pirated copies, and the one month trial is a good safety net. Thanks a lot.

Subject: RE: Tech: Which DVD player to buy?
From: Rt Revd Sir jOhn from Hull
Date: 12 Sep 03 - 03:27 PM

Your welcome Guest, phone your local ASDA to see if they still have it in stock, if they don't, and you are within travelling distance of Hull, you can have this one for 40 quid, it's about 6 weeks old, and has hardly been used.

Subject: RE: Tech: Which DVD player to buy?
From: Rt Revd Sir jOhn from Hull
Date: 12 Sep 03 - 03:31 PM

Also check out richer sounds, they have a branch in most big cities, but do mail order anyway, they often do special offers, ie last years model etc at a good discount.

Subject: RE: Tech: Which DVD player to buy?
From: GUEST
Date: 12 Sep 03 - 03:35 PM

So you don't want to keep yours John?

I'm a little confused. You say that it's really good, but you want to sell it? Sorry, but I don't really understand.

Subject: RE: Tech: Which DVD player to buy?
From: GUEST
Date: 12 Sep 03 - 03:43 PM

Sorry, I missed that TV thingie business you threw in. I got rid of that a few years ago, as a medium with no message.

Subject: RE: Tech: Which DVD player to buy?
From: Rt Revd Sir jOhn from Hull
Date: 12 Sep 03 - 03:46 PM

It is good, but a friend of mine does pirate DVD's for a fiver each, they don't play on this machine, try ASDA, if they've sold out, and you want one like this, you can buy mine if you want.

Subject: RE: Tech: Which DVD player to buy?
From: Rt Revd Sir jOhn from Hull
Date: 12 Sep 03 - 03:48 PM

TV thingie business?

Subject: RE: Tech: Which DVD player to buy?
From: M.Ted
Date: 12 Sep 03 - 03:58 PM

I just bought a couple DVD players at Target for $34.00 each--they are Portland brand, and actually work better than the Phillips that I paid $172.54 for about six months ago. I don't know how things are on your side of the pond, but here, DVD players get cheaper and cheaper each time you go shopping--I suspect it is because play/record units will soon be available at the price the "Play only" units had once been and everyone is dumping them before they become worthless--

Subject: RE: Tech: Which DVD player to buy?
From: okthen
Date: 12 Sep 03 - 03:58 PM

The cheaper one of the two doesn't mention a remote, but these are pretty standard, at £50 you're not likely to get anything much cheaper. The info doesn't mention scart leads, but you should be able to pick up a set from the market for about £5.
All in all I'd go for the Daewoo, simply because I know the name, in the end you get what you pay for,but the specs look OK.
One thing to bear in mind is before you play the DVD make sure it is clean, use a soft antistatic cloth, as you might get fron an opticians (do not use toilet or kitchen paper, it has microscopic pieces of metal in)wipe in a circular action from the inside to the outside (opposite of the way a vinyl LP was recorded).If you rent from a video shop, check the disc at the shop, if it has loads of scratches on it ask for another.
DVD is a better quality product than video tape but the disc can at times "hang" if there are fingerprints or worse still chunks out of it.
Hope this helps.

Subject: RE: Tech: Which DVD player to buy?
From: GUEST
Date: 12 Sep 03 - 04:17 PM

Thanks okthen, it does.

I've got a spare SCART lead, so that isn't an issue. The Yamada (sneaky name) does have a remote.

In terms of cleaning, I assume it's the same as with audio CDs? I have a number of CDs that will only play on certain players around the house.

It seems to me that cleaning the lens on the machine is as important as cleaning the CD itself. The CD player in my car (which was the cheapest one I could find) plays everything, including those that a far more expensive stand alone Sony player rejects.

Subject: RE: Tech: Which DVD player to buy?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 12 Sep 03 - 04:20 PM

Tesco had quite a reasonable looking DVD player for about £45 the other day; and I bought one recently from WH Smiths for about the same, and it works fine. There seems quite a number of ones around that price.

Slight thread drift: I was thinking of getting a DVD player to put in my PC, as a companion to the CD player and writer I've got. The one I was looking at says it plays every type of DVD "except DVD+R" - is that likely to matter? Is that a format that I'm likely to need to be able to access? (The odd thing is, when I looked up "DDV+R" in a book, it said that it allowed "more compatability with existing drives and players".)

Subject: RE: Tech: Which DVD player to buy?
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 13 Sep 03 - 02:49 AM

Multi-region IS a good idea even if you think you will not be playing other region DVDs. Coz, eventualy, you will. Particularly if money is tight. Imports from Japan and America are often considerably cheaper than European ones. Both ones you list look good. Being able to play VCDs MP3s etc is also a bonus. I have mine attached directly to a cheap (£40-ish) Dolby 5.1 surround sound as well so I can also use it as a stand alone audio CD player. IE - not through the TV. Check if the ones you are considering have surround out if you want to do this.

Happy purchasing:-)

Dave the gnome

Subject: RE: Tech: Which DVD player to buy?
From: okthen
Date: 13 Sep 03 - 03:32 AM

McGrath, BEWARE, the DVD player you hope to put in your PC should play all discs + and - R as for region if you play region 2 discs all the time no problem but if you buy region 1 discs (for instance on Ebay from USA) the DVD ROM will only allow you to change regions 5 times and then it is fixed to the last region you play. At the moment I don't think there's a way round this as it's burned into the DVD rom firmware, there is software on the net to allow you to play "region free" but it's going to cost, I haven't done the sums but I doubt if there's much difference between the cost of software and buying a seperate DVD rom.How much was the DVD you were looking to get?

Subject: RE: Tech: Which DVD player to buy?
From: GUEST
Date: 13 Sep 03 - 02:57 PM

Thanks everyone.

I think that I'll go for the Yamada DVD 5520 Multi-region

I'll let you all know about the performance if anyone is interested.

Subject: RE: Tech: Which DVD player to buy?
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 13 Sep 03 - 03:10 PM

I don't know anything about the company, but try this site.
Giok

http://www.empiredirect.co.uk/popups/btopenworld.htm

Subject: RE: Tech: Which DVD player to buy?
From: GUEST
Date: 13 Sep 03 - 03:16 PM

Giok,

Amazon does everything cheaper than that, but thanks anyway

Subject: RE: Tech: Which DVD player to buy?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 13 Sep 03 - 05:13 PM

You sure about that stuff about only being able to change regions five times, and then it's fixed, okthen? Only I haven't come across it in my reading about DVD regions, and it's the sort of thing that rumours tend to crop about. Not that that's likely to be an issue for me - I'm unlikely to buy many DVDs from outside region.

Subject: RE: Tech: Which DVD player to buy?
From: okthen
Date: 13 Sep 03 - 06:56 PM

McGrath, yeah that's straight up, all DVD rom's start out region free,and you could show 100 region 2 discs no problem then play a region 1 disc and that's one change of region, go back and play region2 and that's two changes. I had a problem along these lines a few months back where I had 4 changes showing with one left so I wanted to set it to region 2 and it wouldn't let me, ended up uninstalling all my DVD software, reinstalling, and then playing the region 2 disc, it accepted it but is now fixed to region2.
I might get a external DVD rom but money is a bit tight at the moment which is another reason I'm not buying region 1 DVDs from Ebay, it's a shame 'cos they are often cheaper (including postage) than over here.
I don't know if non movie DVDs are region free,somehow I don't think it applies.Like I said, there are ways round the region barriers but the download costs money,(about $50 I think)and I could buy a DVD rom for that and just keep it for region 1. I suggest you ask the retailer before you buy. My stand alone DVD player came set to region2 but I changed it HERE but now all the machines I see are multi-region so it doesn't apply but it's still a useful site if you need to switch off the macrovision.
Hope this helps.

Subject: RE: Tech: Which DVD player to buy?
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 14 Sep 03 - 07:38 AM

Out of interest we were in the local Woolies yesterday and they had a DVD with remote control, on screen display, plays all the formats etc. for £49.99 including 10 films! 5 x DVDs with two films on each. Noy exactly classic cinema but a start to a collection;-)

Cheers

DtG

Subject: RE: Tech: Which DVD player to buy?
From: Rt Revd Sir jOhn from Hull
Date: 14 Sep 03 - 02:31 PM

PS. Another good thing about the ASDA one is, it says HELLO, when you switch it on.john

Subject: RE: Tech: Which DVD player to buy?
From: Rt Revd Sir jOhn from Hull
Date: 15 Oct 03 - 08:51 AM

Richer Sounds are now selling DVD players for £29.95, I doubt they will ever get much cheaper than that, they have a website, www.richersounds.co.uk
john

Subject: RE: Tech: Which DVD player to buy?
From: early
Date: 15 Oct 03 - 10:04 AM

mcGrath the best option IMHO would be for you to fit a dvd writer to your pc as this gives the obvious advantage of enabling you to back up huge ammounts of data or video (4.3 Gb) in about 14 minutes to blank or rw dvd's also you can make region free dvd's with them thereby circumventing the limits on changes of region on the dvd rom especially now as dvd writers are cheaper than cd writers were just a couple of years ago ( nec dual format writers currently around £100

Subject: RE: Tech: Which DVD player to buy?
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 15 Oct 03 - 11:15 AM

My existing one as mentioned earlier stopped playing some audio tracks a week back. Decided to replace both DVD and surround rig. I can now thoroughly recommend the combined DVD home cinema system by LG from Currys at £160. 2 extra inputs as well so the TV and game cube are plugged in as well :-)

Cheers

DtG