So I have $125 to spend on a DVD player. What should I get? Which features are essential and which are unnecessary?
Many thanks offered in advance.
That amount is small enough that the features on competing models won’t really vary much. You’re looking at an entry-level single-tray model from Toshiba, Sony, Zenith, maybe Panasonic, I’d guess. Possibly a 3-disc changer from Apex or some other third-tier brand.
I have a Toshiba that cost that and have been quite happy with it.
My sister just got a Samsung (I just hooked it up tonight) and I have a Sony. Both were in your price range. I’d recommend Sony, myself. I’ve always had good luck with their CD players.
I don’t know much about DVDs to be honest, but make sure you get one that will play “VCDs” as well. I daresay that a DVD player in your pricerange will have that feature, but make sure. I got a VCD movie off of eBay and I was glad that my DVD player could play it. You can find some oddball titles on VCD only, so I hear.
If you want multi-region capibility plus PAL to NTSC conversion, the Cyberhome 500 is a pretty damn good model.
I used to own a Malata (before it overheated and blew up…a defect common to that brand) and never thought I’d see such perfect PAL conversion til I saw the Cyberhome. My discs of “Christiane F.”, “Dellamorte Dellamore”, and the 2-disc “Dawn Of The Dead” look absolutely perfect.
Cyberhome also supports DVD-R, CD-R, VCD, and almost everything else besides. The functions are very quick, and the picture quality is right up there with any name brand model…just as good as Toshiba or Panasonic, a small notch below Sony, and heads and shoulders above RCA. For 70 dollars, it’s a pretty good workhorse player.
We have a couple of Apex ones and they look great. They were fairly cheap too, around 100 bucks, quailty is excellent too. It also support progressive scan and 5.1 surround sound.
I’m not one of those obsessive home video people who can go into great detail about sound & video quality and all that. All I can say is that I got a Toshiba SD2109 a few years ago and it’s about as perfect as you can expect from home electronics in that price range. Great image quality, good sound, all kinds of outputs, completely intuitive interface, totally trouble-free. I’d recommend it to anyone.
I don’t think they make that model anymore, but a quick check at buy.com indicates the equivalent is the SD-2800.
my friend has an apex model at home and at work, and he says that they can’t be beat. right now, one of the electronic chains, can’t remember which, has them on sale for 49-59 bucks.
I have this player also, got it for Christmas. I will point out that in addition to playback of the discs that Keith Berry mentions it will play mpeg and jpeg CD’s. It has component output jacks (of course I don’t have anything to hook it to) as well as progressive scan output, and it also has Dolby and DTS 5.1 outputs too. In addition, I was in Best Buy the other day and they have a rebate offer until Feb 1, so it ends up only being $50 (I took my receipt in and had them exchange it out, fortunately I had saved the box for the UPC code). I checked Best Buy’s website, but I can’t find the 500, only the 402, so maybe they’re closing them out?
Take care,
GES
Is the Cyberhome 500 all-regional? If not (or even if it is), what are some other good all-regional DVD players? The local small town video store in Austin has a lot of really great foriegn movies, but hardly any of them will play on US regional DVD player. I’m in the process of looking for one myself, and the cheaper the better (I’m kinda broke, but damnit, my VCR has eaten too many of my tapes and I NEED MY MOVIES!!!).
Don’t get an Apex: mine broke, they made me send it into them for repair and they won’t send it back, and they won’t answer my letters to them. I’ve been without it for about 9 months now with not a single word from them and over 20 letters and countless phone calls from me. And since they won’t allow others to repair their machines (they apparently won’t sell parts), you’re stuck sending it to them. Unless you think of it as disposable, it’s a waste of money.
I can’t begin to give them a low enough recommendation.
Fenris
The good thing about Apex is that is the brand of player known for being very easily firmware-hijackable. (Is that even a logical sentence?) Anyway, Apex is a good choice for an entry-level player, something you want to use to hack the firmware to easily watch imports, or a backup player. Personally, I use a PS2 and a DVD-ROM drive, but my parents are happy with a Toshiba 5-disc changer.
Elvis, not only do you have to worry about the region code, but also the video format. If those DVDs come from Europe, they’re going to be in PAL and R2. If those DVDs are coming from Japan, they’re going to be in NTSC and R2. (Those are the two major places I was thinking of imports coming from, although I suppose you could have some from R4 and PAL (Australia) or R4 and NTSC (South America), or even some R6 and PAL, I think, (China), or R3 and once again PAL, I think, (Singapore, Indonesia, Indochina).) Anyway, if you are looking at movies in PAL format, you’re going to need someting that can also do the video conversion on the fly as well as being region-free.
Another Apex owner here. I have two, I love them, and both are now able to play discs from any region. One of them also has Macrovision disabled. (NO, I’m not planning to break any laws with it-- I just didn’t want to pick up an RF modulator.) FWIW, I gather PAL is no problem with that player, the VCR I run it through should be able to convert it. Haven’t tried that yet.
$58 each. I love them.
Just for kicks and giggles, I opened one up and it looks like your basic off-the-shelf DVD-ROM drive in there. Sould be fairly simple to replace at home if it fails.
There is a VERY helpful Apex forum out there-- I think posting the url here would be iffy in the eyes of the mods due to it’s content, but it should be easy enough to find…
Thanks for all the tips. I will admit my ignorance and say that I am a bit confused by this talk of PAL and NTSC and regions. My main concern is being able to play the widest range of DVDs possible.
Also, does it matter what kind of TV I have? Are DVD players compatible with pretty much any recent TV set?
Chris: PAL and NTSC are video standards. The USA uses NTSC and the UK/Australia/New Zeland use PAL: it has to do with the screen shape: if you play a PAL video on a NTSC screen the tops of everyone’s heads will be chopped off (IIRC)
Some DVD players (the dreaded APEX for one, the luvvly DAEWOO 5800, which I happen to own, for another) can convert PAL to NTSC and back.
DVDs have (for reasons that I find to be BS) region codes: secret codes that say “Don’t play me unless you’re a Region 1 Player”. If you’re in the USA, you’re region 1. The UK is Region 2, Australia/New Zeland is region 4.
However, some players in the USA (and many in the rest of the world) are “Region Free” players: they can play DVDs from any region. The aforementiond DAEWOO and hated APEX have several models which are (or can be made to be—I’m not telling how to do so here. Do a GOOGLE search if you care–region free.
Frankly, if you don’t care about DVDs from the rest of the world (and if you’re in the USA, most stuff comes out here first, so you may not) just get a regular player. Sony has several excellent models, but if you DO care about non-USA released DVDs, get a region free one that can do PAL to NTSC conversion.
Regarding your TV, in a perfect world, you’d have one with an S-Video jack that you could plug the DVD player into (it’s sort of a round socket about 1/4" in diameter). If not, you should have one with video/audio in RCA jacks. If not, you’ll have to buy a converter, but as far as I know, there’s at least a small loss of picture quality.
Hope that helps!
Fenris
I was going to start a DVD advice-asking thread, but I think I’ll hook onto this one, instead.
I bought my first DVD player, a KLH (model forgotten) about two years ago. It worked most of the time, with an occasional skip or freeze, mostly on beat-up rental disks. Then, after about eighteen months it suddenly quit working – simply could not detect that a disk was in.
So, I go to CostCo at at the bottom of the food chain, about $80, was another KLH model. A bit up from it was a Go Video DVP850 for $95. “Aha,” says I. “I’ll move up in price and to another brand in the hopes that it will work better.”
Big mistake. The player has never played a disc without at least occasional skips or break-ups at some time during the movie. Some discs it freezes at exactly the same spot each time, most commonly at a chapter border. About one disc in five it won’t play at all – brand-new out of the box and it claims “disc error.”
The importer is here in town. When I get the replacement, I’m going to drive over it with the car and drop it off at their location to show just how dissatisfied I am.
So, what I am looking for is a simple DVD player. I am not interested in a changer. By the time I get something that can use S-video or Dolby 5, I can get another one anyway. All I want is something that will play what I feed it! (pant, pant) Any suggestions?
DD
Chances are, if ChrisM only has $125 to spend on a DVD player, ChrisM probably does not own a TV capable of taking advantage of Progressive Scan. (The cheapest progressive-scan-compatible TV I’ve seen cost $1299, on sale.)