I’ve been hemming and hawing about getting a DVD player for months now but I think I‘m going to buy one in a day or so.
My reasons for not having done so before are: [ul][li]I have so damn many VHS movies already []I’ve got a primarily JVC A/V system []JVC DVD players are not among those that are dropping in price[/ul][/li]The player I’ve found is the XV-M567GD. By all accounts a good player with a bevy of functions. MSRP is $349.95. SAM’S Club has it for $199.95.
Here’s the thing, it’s a 3-disk changer.
Now I like to watch TV and I like to watch movies, but really, a 3-disk DVD changer? I already have a 6+1 CD player, so it’s not going to expand my systems audio-capabilities. I’m trying to decide if it’s worth it to buy this thing. Sure, it’s kinda neat to get yet another gadget with more/different balls-and-whistles than my friends might have, but I’m not playing “keeping up with the Jones’ “ here, or I would have bought something years ago. I’m looking for a player for myself. This one has the features I’m looking for and is a JVC, but I wonder if I might not be better served to buy something else and not risk the technical issues involved in the more-moving-parts = more-things-to-go-wrong/break dilemma. ‘Course, I’ve had nothing but years of happy listening and watching with my other products from them (including the 6+1 changer), so I guess I don’t really know what my hang-up here is, other than JVC is one of the only companies building multi-disk players and it leads me to wonder why.
First let me say I havea JVS 501 for about two years now and it has been very dependable. Now, I cannot for the life of me think of a reason to have a three disc changer for your DVD player if you are not going to be using it as a CD player as well. You can probably invent a story as to why it would be nice, but in reality it is not worth it if it is raising the cost of the player.
I can think of reason. Say you have a 2 disc movie. One is over, it says “Insert Disc 2” and you don’t have to get up, just press a button on the remote (this is America, after all). Also, I have a JVC SVHS deck, and man, this thing is nice. I think JVC tends to be one of the better brands when it comes to all the home theater stuff, and $200 is reasonable. I say go for it…
A 2-Disc Movie??? Do they actually exist? Maybe Roots, which I remember was like 10 VHS tapes. What I think would be most useful is a DVD player that could read either side without having to turn the disc over. Now THAT’s the way to go.
If you yourself can’t see any immediate appeal in it, I’d say the chances are VERY slim that you’re ever going to run across a reason that will justify the extra money it most likely costs.
The guy 2 desks away from me has one. He says he throws movies on and sits around all day in his underwear without having to get up and change disks. I don’t care if it’s a 2-disk set or not: isn’t it a bit goofy to complain about having to get off the couch once every 2 hours? I say go for single-play. Leave the changers to music CDs.
This year I bought a $200 Toshiba DVD player. I’m just blown away every time I use. I can’t imagine how a $1000 player can be much better. I now own 15 movies, 3 of which I already had on VHS. I do my research before purchasing. I was pretty damn close to buying the Kubrick box set until I learned about the limited effort that apparently went into creating it. A remastered box set is scheduled for release this summer.
I’ve had a Toshiba SD-3109 2-disc DVD player for about a year now, and I can say I’ve rarely used the changer and it’s a feature I could do without. I didn’t really consider the changer a big selling point, I picked this player because it had all the other features I want and it was the best player I could find in my price range. The price of the player you’ve found seems pretty reasonable. I don’t think you’d save much, if anything, by finding a single-disc player with all the same features.
The only multi-disc movies I’ve come across had the movie itself entirely on one disc, with the special features on the second disc. I don’t know of any that you would have to change discs in the middle of the film.
This usually the case, though there a couple movies (like Ben-Hur, The Ten Commandments) that are long enough to either require two DVD’s or a flip to the other side. Of course, switching on those rare occasions isn’t that big a deal to me–it’s basically an intermission. I also have a few large multi-disc sets (Ken Burn’s Baseball has 10 DVD’s, the X-Files seasons have 7 a piece, From Earth to the Moon has 4), but they’re so long, you don’t generally watch them all in one sitting anyway.
Well, after further research, I’m gonna go ahead and buy this machine. Like I mentioned, I’m partial to JVC for system unity so I’ve somewhat limited my options as far as that goes.
Now, I’ve found 3 JVC players that are readily available, and the cheapest of those found on Egghead/Onsale, Best Buy or Circuit City, is the single disk player that is the model down from this one. It runs ~$250.
Why spend more money for the more basic model? The other one out there runs, well, it varies from ~$790-950, so that one is right out until I get my 63" Sony Trinitron HDTV…which will be sometime next decade.
Thanks for all the input, folks, I really appreciate it. Mods, if you like, you can close this or leave it open for others to discuss multi-disk players as they may…
Speaking of, I made a pre-emptive picked up of a 2-disk set of the movie Se7en (seven) where one is the movie, the other is all the extra scenes and outtakes and commentary and whatnot. I guess this might be something where I would stop the movie, jump over to the other one and check the bonus info, then jump back to the movie and continue. Granted, this probably will never happen, but it could, and that’s the important thing.
Yeah, Ben Hur’s a flipper, as are a few others. But that doesn’t really utilize the changer at all (though I do hate flippers; one side always seems to get smudged, and it’s not the easiest to tell side from side).
I don’t think I’d get one (just a personal preference). I’m happy with mine only having room for one at a time. If I’m moving onto the disc of supplementary material after watching the disc with the movie, I usually feel like getting up in between. But again, that’s just me.
I stand corrected, there are a few multi-disc movies. But they all seem to be “flippers” - you have to turn the disc over to finish the movie. A changer can’t flip a disc, so they wouldn’t be much help unless you had two copies.
