I am finally in the market for a real DVD player, after too long using my laptop as my only option. Being new to the actual player thing, I don’t have any idea what I should be looking for in a quality piece of equipment. I don’t really need any bells and whistles, I don’t plan on having an HDTV anytime soon or anything like that. All I want is a basic player that plays movies well, has good color and contrast (I’ve heard that a lot of players don’t show deep blacks), and whatever else I need for a quality viewing experience.
So, what should I keep my eye out for? Recommendations of specific players is certainly welcomed. Thanks.
If all you are after is a cheap player that reliably delivers a picture as good or better than normal broadcast TV, then ANY of them should do, even the no-name supermarket specials. For slightly greater peace of mind you might want to go for a known brand name, but when the things cost less than $50 bucks they’re almost disposable anyhow. I just got a Toshiba SD350E and it’s better than my old Tosh which cost four times as much about five years ago.
Any entry-level Sony/Tosh/Hitachi/Samsung/Panasonic/Pioner/Phillips/etc. will do the job very well. Spend more and you get more, but then it very much comes down to what display and/or home cinema amp you are going to hook it up to. Key things to check are that the connectors on the back can somehow be hooked up to your TV or whatever using something better than composite (so SCART, RGB or Component, usually), that it fits into the spot you want to put it, and that you can make sense of the remote. Also can be worth checking that you can dim the garish lights on the front of some of them, and prog scan is nice if you have a plasma or LCD TV.
If you are after a ‘decent’ player rather than just a competent one, get ready for lots of research. I eventually gave up and just bought a cheapy one, and the Tosh looks bloody good with my 42" plasma screen, so there you go.
The blacks thing I have heard of, but I understood it to be more of a problem with cheaper displays (esp. plasmas) rather than players. IMO if you can get good deep blacks off a TV signal or from your laptop, you are likely to get them from pretty much any DVD player.
I also like my Toshiba. Sonys have been more problematic.
I recently bought a player that also does Divx, etc. movies. I love this. I just take any old clips in Divx, mpeg, etc. format and dump them on a CDR or DVD-R and it plays them. No conversion or authoring.
I did get an el cheapo one though. Next time I’ll get one of the Phillips Divx players.
The happiest I’ve been with a DVD player has been my Cyberhome DVD. Cost me $35. Plays mpegs (VCD), jpegs, mp3s, and cds, so it’s very useful. I do wish it played DivX, however. It’s also fairly compact, so I can travel with it. In fact, we also bought a cyberhome travel DVD with screen for traveling. Works great.
Try to get a player that can display PAL disc on an NTSC TV. Try to get a region-free player. Together, these two features avoid two layers of extra hassle, and allow you to watch import DVDs from Europe and whatnot on your US TV. Even the cheap off-brand DVD players can do this. Actually, the cheap off-brand players do this more often than the famous-brand ones.
My JVC converts PAL to NTSC, and that was just a little feature mentioned as an aside in passing in the manual. Unfortunately it’s not upgreadeable ti region-free without hardware changes. I wish I’d done a little more research when I bought it.
Oh well. It’s behaving a little oddly. Time to buy a DVP-642 or something.
BTW, SCART is a European standard for connecting home electronics. I’ve never seen one in an Canada-specific or USA-specific model. But you may find one at a place that sells ‘international’ models.
Progressive scan is a good feature if you plan on HDTV down the road - you’ll get a better picture. Won’t make any difference w. a normal set
Look for Component outputs (as long as your TV can accept them)
Consider a multi-disc changer model
3/2 pulldown is must
You can possible replace your CD player with a decent model that plays CDs, DVD audio, Super Audio CD, mp3 CDs and DVDs, etc. Make sure it supports the formats you want and has enough sound output options to plug into a home receiver if you have one.
Consider a same brand model to your TV/VCR (you may be able to use only on remote between the different devices).
I bought a Philips DVP-642 and it stopped working after 6 months. I had barely used it in that time.
Unfortunately, I have some PAL disks from Australia (but they are region 0), so I need a player with a converter and I haven’t been able to find a different one. Maybe it’s just such a fringe feature that it’s never mentioned in the specs. I may have to buy another Philips and just get as much extended warranty as I can.
If you do look for PAL/NTSC conversion, make sure that it’s actually conversion, and not just support. I believe that some players will play back an NTSC disc as NTSC, and a PAL disc as PAL; they need to be hooked up to a TV that can display accept both NTSC and PAL signals. You want a player that can convert PAL to NTSC.
I see many players listed, for instance at Only Best Rated, and the specs can be maddeningly unclear at times. This is where sites like VideoHelp come in handy. On the other hand, if the vendor’s site provides a PDF of the user manual, that can answer a lot of questions.
I’m not too well versed in all of the technical aspects of DVD playing and players, so I’m going to make my advice sweet and short:
If you’re going for a DVD player that holds more than one disc at a time, for the love of God, buy something that alternates between the discs quickly and with ease. My DVD player (a Sony CD/DVD player DVP - NC615) takes a couple of seconds to do this, and I love the hell out of it. My roomate’s player probably takes up to ten seconds. My sister’s previous player was the worst, as trying to figure out how to alternate between discs 1-2, 3-5, and then to 5 seemed to take a minute each time, and then the actual alternating another 5 seconds.
Avoid avoid AVOID Toshiba!!! They used to make great players (my 3950 lasted for 2 years and was still going strong when I traded it in) but their latest models have been utter pieces of TOTAL JUNK with poorly designed features, and they’re guaranteed to break after only a month.
Panasonic seems to make good players, if you can live with the paucity of features (most of them are missing simple things like zoom and even “time remaining.”)
My lastest toy is a Pioneer 383S multi-region, NTSC/PAL compatible, plays MPEGs & DivX, and just about everything else. Picture quality is great, menu functions work well, and it loads very fast (this can be an issue with some players, which can sometimes take up to 30 seconds to load a DVD!)
Biggest drawback: It doesn’t seem to like the “White Rabbit” function. That is, on many DVDs, you can set up the movie to display an icon that appears every few minutes – hit “Enter” when the icon appears (in The Matrix it looks like a white rabbit, hence the name) and you’ll be shown a deleted scene, or a piece of behind-the-scenes footage, or something similar. At least, that’s what’s supposed to happen…with the Pioneer, 90% of the time it just makes the icon disappear. :smack: