My current DVD player won’t play several of my DVDs. At some point during play the thing starts pixellating, the sound goes whack, and then it locks up or else shows a ‘not playable’ screen.
These are all new DVDs, not rentals, and they are clean and scratch free as far as I can tell. So I think I need a new DVD player.
I don’t have high definition, the TV is old. And I won’t be replacing my (large) DVD collection with Blu Ray or anything like that. So it just needs to be a good basic DVD player. I don’t want to spend a bundle on special features, just to be able to watch all my DVDs.
I googled around looking for a DVD player that is really good at error correction. However I can’t find any site which rates DVD players that compares that feature. Sony claims (in their marketing glurge) to have specially good error correction, but I found a tech site on DVDs/electronics that counter-claims that sony’s really isn’t very good and says panasonic’s is better. But panasonic dvd players aren’t especially well rated on Amazon. Also, the DVD player descriptions on Amazon talk a bunch about “upconverting” HDMI (isn’t that a copy protection enforcement scheme?) and various types of connections. So I’m confused.
Advice on what DVD player to get would be welcome.
Upconverting is basically making DVD players work with Hi-Def sets, with a near Hi-Def signal that is – through either HDMI cables or component cables.
If you don’t have a hi-def set, upconverting really isn’t an issue for you.
I don’t know from brands, but these days your run of the mill DVD player (upconvertable or otherwise) run about a dime a dozen. That’s barely an exaggeration.
You could probably pick up a quality DVD player at any box store or even a local shop for anywhere from $50 to $100. No one of them is going to blow any other out of the water for quality or features or anything … but you’ll be able to watch your movies.
I have an Oppo player that’s several years old and still impresses me. The cool thing about the Oppo is it will play and upscale DVDs, but also play formats like AVI and Divx, display JPEG photos, play MP3s, etc. This one has 253 reviews with 4.5/5 rating:
Oh, and upconverting is intelligently resizing the video to the match resolution of high-definition televisions. DVD spec is 720x480, an upconverting player will size the video to match your 1376x768 or whatever TV. It’s sort of voodoo in a way; making something out of nothing, but the results are decent.
Jack Batty, I did know that there are reams of reasonably-priced DVD players out there with basic functionality. That’s why I was asking for a differentiator.
I guess nobody knows of a site which compares reasonably-priced DVD players for their error correction capability?
control-z, your player sounds great, and I will add it to my “consider” list, but multi-format isn’t really what I’m looking for. All my dvds are just ordinary standard commercial dvds.
My old DVD player had a lot of trouble with quite a few of the Netflix disks that had been used a lot, even if I cleaned them properly.
I finally decided to get a Sony DVP-NS50P player, and it has been excellent. It was touted to be very good at error correction. About the only ones it won’t play were cracked.
That model may not still be available, but it’s worth a look. It was reasonably priced when i got it a couple of years ago.
I can’t recall, but I think I Googled “error-free DVDs” or something like that, and found a place that compared them. Too long ago to remember for sure.
Thanks KlondikeGeoff. I’d about decided to try a Sony, despite that one site that dissed them. Everybody else seems satisfied with them. Maybe that bloke got a lemon.
