DVD player reccomendation

Faqa · Post by **Faqa** » 2004-08-17 11:14am

Here's the deal - Currently, my family's thinking of buying a good DVD player. Enter the 21st century and all. Unfortunately, I know shit-all about DVD players. That's where the more altruistic among you come in...

Any names I should avoid? What should I look for in a DVD player? What techno-babble do I need to learn? Basically, some shopping guidelines so we don't get scammed.

Please?

General Zod · Post by **General Zod** » 2004-08-17 11:29am

nowadays dvd players are as ubiquitous as vcrs were. if all you want is something that'll do the basics than any $50.00 toshiba dvd player will suffice really. the best advice though is to go with the more major brands and stay away from no name labels. toshiba and sony have some fairly decent sub-$100 players out there that will handle most formats. i'd also recommend getting a regionless dvd player if you plan on watching imported movies (ie - dvds that were made in the europe, or asia). as some players will only play movies from some countries.

if you want to do anything more complicated, you have to be specific. otherwise sony and toshiba are probably the most reliable brands out there.

Faqa · Post by **Faqa** » 2004-08-17 11:41am

There's no tape-DVD combo device, is there? I mean one that doesn't suck?

Otherwise, I just wanna play em' and access the special features. No recording or anything like that.

So:

-Regionless.

-Go with big names(Sony, Toshiba).

Anything else? BTW, what do you mean by movie 'formats'? Different types of discs, or programming on the DVD itself?

Thanks for the tips!

General Zod · Post by **General Zod** » 2004-08-17 11:54am

Sony Stuff is usually fairly high quality, and their dvd/vhs combo players go for under $200.00.

by different formats i meant if you plan on playing cd-rws, or dvd rws on them. most of the newer players will accomodate rewritable media.

DaveJB · Post by **DaveJB** » 2004-08-17 12:05pm

Faqa wrote:There's no tape-DVD combo device, is there? I mean one that doesn't suck?

I've owned two, one from Samsung, the other from Sanyo. Neither of them sucked (the Samsung one couldn't read DVD-Rs, but it was made in 2001, before the format caught on), so as long as you don't go with some no-name brand, a Tape-DVD combo thing it should work fine!

Only problem is that you can't record something onto the tape while watching a DVD, but I don't know how much of a concern that would be.

phongn · Post by **phongn** » 2004-08-17 02:05pm

You can get a cheap one, or a not so cheap one or an expensive one, it depends on what you want to do and how good your monitor is.

Sony is typically overpriced and their lower end isn't so good.

If you have a monitor with component input, you might want to get a player that does progressive scan. (Warning: some of the cheap progessive-scan players do a poor job of it).

Zenith's DVB318 is ~$160 at Amazon and has a built-in Faroudja DCDi interlacer/doubler and DVI output if you want something nicer than the cheap stuff.

Faqa · Post by **Faqa** » 2004-08-17 03:14pm

If you have a monitor with component input, you might want to get a player that does progressive scan. (Warning: some of the cheap progessive-scan players do a poor job of it).

Zenith's DVB318 is ~$160 at Amazon and has a built-in Faroudja DCDi interlacer/doubler and DVI output if you want something nicer than the cheap stuff.

"Component input"? "Progressive scan"? "Interlacer/doubler"?

Me caveman. Me no know you techy speak.

Seriously, I really do know shit-all about the subject. Could you please give those terms in layman's terms?

Thank you.

phongn · Post by **phongn** » 2004-08-17 04:05pm

Faqa wrote:Seriously, I really do know shit-all about the subject. Could you please give those terms in layman's terms?

Okay, there are a few different ways to plug in a device into your television.

RF: also known as "cable." Usually seen with a threaded female plug. The audio and video signals are mixed together in a single cable. Least quality and no DVD player I know of has one built-in.

Composite: also known as phono or RCA. This usually consists of three plugs. One of them carries the video signal, the other two carry the audio signal. The video plug usually is color-coded yellow, the audio ones red and white. Sometimes there is only one audio input, for mono sound.

S-Video: also known as Y/C. This splits the video signal into two paths, one to carry the luminance (brightness) and one to carry chroma (color). It uses a single cable that resembles a computer keyboard cable.

Component: This splits the video signal into three discrete cables. One of them carries luminance (which is also green), another carries red and another carries blue. Sometimes called YCrCb or YPrPb.

DVI: the information from the DVD is sent directly to the DVD in digital form; the TV thus has the job of converting the digital signal into the analog image you see.

There are devices that will convert a composite signal into RF if your monitor only has the "cable" input. There is some degradation in quality.

Now, television output is done by lines, not pixels as in a computer monitor. Interlaced output means that the monitor will output first the even lines and then the odd lines alternating. Each complete half-image is called a field. Thus, at any given moment it only has half the image onscreen -- but since it shows ~60 fields per second your eye is tricked into seeing a fluid image. Progressive scan means that the monitor will output each line sequentially so that you see the entire frame at once. This requires component or DVI input on your TV.

Interlacer/doubler: Most televisions can only output 480 scanlines. For those televisions that can display progressive scan, the built-in deinterlacer will take two fields and construct a single frame from them before sending it to a TV. HDTV televisions, however, are sometimes capable of displaying 720 or 1080 scanlines. The line doubler in that player can cleanly stretch the 480 lines on the DVD to 720 lines on a higher-quality monitor.

Now, you probably don't need that Zenith. A cheap DVD player will do you fine and look better than any VHS deck.

Faqa · Post by **Faqa** » 2004-08-17 04:39pm

phongn:

Thanks! A DVD player isn't just any toy - it's educational!

More seriously, my TV's apparantly capable mainly of composite imaging. If I run things through the VIDEO-1 channel, I can apparantly get S-VIDEO capability, but my digital cable box already has that slot. Why annoy it?

Ah, well. Composite's apparantly plenty for nooby me.

If anyone still has patience left, can I get an explanation of the difference between a video-1, video-2, video-3, etc. "Device Channel" system and the "AV" channel my VCR currently uses? Is it just a digital-analog difference?

Again, feel free to ignore the question if your patience is up.

Vertigo1 · Post by **Vertigo1** » 2004-08-17 05:06pm

"Video 1, etc" are just inputs on your TV. Any decent TV will have multiple inputs to allow you to hook up more than one device into the TV without having to resort to daisy-chaining them (which degrades the video and audio quality simply because the output will be no better than what the device its plugged into is capable of putting out).

At any rate, I've had nothing but good experiences with the Sanyo downstairs, but I suggest you stay clear of the Panasonic players. Theres one downstairs that plays just about anything you can put in there that doesn't require a proprietary video codec, but it can't read consumer DVD media (ie: burnable media that you buy in stores) worth a crap. I've got the entire series of Gargoyles burned to 7 DVD-R disks and the damned player only reads half of the mpegs correctly. (And before anyone bitches at me, I fully intend on buying the first season boxset in December...) The rest, it reads as parts of an mpeg stored earlier on the disk. (and before anyone says something, they play just fine on my PC). It also has the nasty habit of locking up when displaying pictures (and it will clip anything larger than 640x480) when you leave it on a single image longer than 10 seconds. Stay away from anything by Philips as well. Like RCA, they use the cheapest components possible, which often fail at the most annoying times.

Daewoo is another brand I've had good experience with. My only beef with it is that if you leave a movie paused for too long, it'll lock up. Just hit stop (it will remember where you stopped, and start playing from that point in the movie when you hit play) and you're fine. I have one of these players in my room. What I really like is that it has an old-school headphone jack right in the front. (the really big headphone plugs you see on the older headsets)

Lastly, STAY AWAY FROM DVD/VCR COMBO PLAYERS! Every single one of them are utter SHIT! Particularly the VCR side. They have the nasty habit of blowing drive motors (meaning it won't accept any video tapes, and will spit them right back out). Every single one I've seen uses really fucking cheap components with a big ass price sticker slapped on them. They are absolute garbage, and if one side fails you're stuck with a very expensive doorstop. For the price of one combo player, I can buy two DVD set-top players and two or three VCR set-top players and still have money left over.

Faqa · Post by **Faqa** » 2004-08-17 05:52pm

Ah, crap, another question. Sorry, guys.

My current VCR and TV are "multi-system"(I live in Israel, so I needed that to play American-style videos). Is that even remotely connected to "regionless"? Or are they two seperate features?

Thanks for all the info so far!

phongn · Post by **phongn** » 2004-08-17 06:39pm

Okay, a quick primer on television transmission standards. There are three ways to display television signals. The one used in North American and Japan is called NTSC. Much of Europe and Asia uses PAL, except for the French and a few others who use SECAM. None of them are compatible with each other.

In your case "multi-system" probably means that it can accept input in the above formats. Regionless DVD players are something different

Faqa · Post by **Faqa** » 2004-08-18 04:20am

Ah, so 'regionless' refers to a different type of input? Where multi-system refers to input primarily from a VCR, a regionless player refers to input from the discs themselves?

Crap. Will I need a 'regionless' TV as well to make this work?

darthdavid · Post by **darthdavid** » 2004-08-18 04:25am

Faqa wrote:Ah, so 'regionless' refers to a different type of input? Where multi-system refers to input primarily from a VCR, a regionless player refers to input from the discs themselves?

Crap. Will I need a 'regionless' TV as well to make this work?

No. The regional encoding on the discs only affects the player.

phongn · Post by **phongn** » 2004-08-18 12:41pm

Faqa wrote:Ah, so 'regionless' refers to a different type of input? Where multi-system refers to input primarily from a VCR, a regionless player refers to input from the discs themselves?

No. Region encoding is a method the movie companies use to restrict playback of DVDs by geographic area. Regionless players ignore or override that region restriction. However, DVDs can still be encoded in PAL, NTSC or SECAM. A multi-region player can convert from one format to another on-the-fly so that you could view a PAL DVD on an NTSC monitor, for example.

Jade Falcon · Post by **Jade Falcon** » 2004-08-18 12:48pm

Faqa, do you live in the UK?

If so, Richer Sounds are selling the Toshiba SD-330, a rather nice little player in Multi-Region format for approximately £60. I got it to replace my old Samsung 807. If you don't live in the UK, keep an eye out for this player.

Faqa · Post by **Faqa** » 2004-08-18 01:36pm

Phongn:

Well, we pass from reccomendations to curiosity, but is the reason for this a deliberate insertion or just a forking of world-wide standards? Cause if it's a deliberate insertion, it seems pretty, uh, retarded....

Jade:

Nowhere in the U.K. MY PM is not only a liar, but also a thief, a bully and a fatass(we're talking multiple Moores/Limbaughs here...). Blair at his best could not hope for the amount of coverage this guy gets. Further, while Blair fellatios Bush, my P.M is in the position of having Bush fellatio HIM! Hah!

I'm pretty sure I mentioned my country of origin in this thread, if you're curious. But no, not in the U.K. Thanks for the thought, though.

phongn · Post by **phongn** » 2004-08-18 01:39pm

Faqa wrote:Phongn:

Well, we pass from reccomendations to curiosity, but is the reason for this a deliberate insertion or just a forking of world-wide standards? Cause if it's a deliberate insertion, it seems pretty, uh, retarded....

The region system is deliberate, originally intended so that you couldn't buy a DVD in Japan and play it in North America or Europe, for example. Regionless players, of course, get around that.

The encoding system is different for a variety of reasons having to do with a bunch of different factors. It wasn't to lock people out.

Jade Falcon · Post by **Jade Falcon** » 2004-08-18 04:59pm

Ah right Faqa, I see it now.

No matter, I still recommend the Toshiba SD--30, its a smart player.

Terr Fangbite · Post by **Terr Fangbite** » 2004-08-18 05:50pm

I got a magnavox dvd player. While it doesn't have bells and whistles of other players, it cost me 50 bucks, it plays dvds great and it looks good on my tv shelf.