Revhead Posted September 26, 2004 Posted September 26, 2004 Want to buy my father a cheap DVD player for his birthday. He lives alone and has a 48cm TV with AV only inputs (as I remember). There is no sound system involved so really he just requires the capability to play discs. I noticed Big W has a Digitrex unit on special for $64 - only 2.1 but that doesn't really matter in this context. It is multizone which is a good point but it doesn't say whether it plays DVD -R or not - I burn mostly -R discs. Has 12 month warranty. Anyone have any experience in this area?
Mr.Bitey Posted September 27, 2004 Posted September 27, 2004 Hi Revhead, I read somewhere that the digitrex is the australian version of the magical APEX players in the US (i havent used/seen one myself). Depends what your wanting it to do.. I baught a Viewmaster 967 $125 due to it being the best of the cheapies that had excellent compatability with DVD-R (i tested it on a heap of bodgey media i'd burnt), its PQ in terms of sharpness was pretty good (on par with my denon 3000) over s-video, however its colour decoder was not as good - not able to display magenta particularly well (I think it was) - compensated for via its inbuilt ajustments for colour/hue/tint/cont/bright - not a bad little unit at all! - can also downmix to stereo. I dont know if it downmixes DTS however (certainly can pass it).. I'd suggest taking a few of your troublesome dvd-r's and trying them out on the players! - the dvd's that pixelate or pause, skip chapters etc etc.. on the crappuiest princo media :-) Cheers, Bitey
Revhead Posted September 27, 2004 Author Posted September 27, 2004 Thanks for that. Yeah I was thinking about doing the test and I've sure got a lot of those Princos. Trouble is with a lot of the department stores they are not really set up for giving the units a test run. I have noticed Strathfield Car Radios flogs cheapies too as does Dick Smith. For $64 bucks you can't expect much, but you at least expect it to work!
Mr.Bitey Posted September 28, 2004 Posted September 28, 2004 Revhead, Ive had good luck at tandy - two stores here in adelaide didnt mind me running a heap f discs through.. I ended up buying 2 from one store (although had to return one due to a fault and got a different brand instead).. The store manager was happy as he was able to sell more of that player as he could tell people it was VERY compatable with dvd-r's! (he told me when I returned the player).. Just be careful, even different models within the same brand can be very different. In returning one of the fault dvd players (a digitor), the replacement was a newer model - it was no where near as good at playing dvd-r's - so I had to try a whole heap until I found one that did work well (voxson).. these were all in the $120 mark - they are all under $100 now.. Just ask the sales person and go when theyre not busy - shouldnt be a problem! Cheers, Bitey
dilligafocau Posted September 28, 2004 Posted September 28, 2004 I noticed Big W has a Digitrex unit on special for $64 - only 2.1 but that doesn't really matter in this context.It is multizone which is a good point but it doesn't say whether it plays DVD -R or not - I burn mostly -R discs. Has 12 month warranty. Anyone have any experience in this area? <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I bought three of these for family members 16 months ago & all are going strong. They will play + & - dvdr, vcds, svcds mp3's & even mpeg/jpeg files dumped onto a cd/dvdr. The remote is well made but very directional with good range. The max fast forward speed is 16x. It will not read DL dvd'rs (Verbatim). No front display which is understandable given the 'mini' footprint.
Revhead Posted September 28, 2004 Author Posted September 28, 2004 I bought three of these for family members 16 months ago Thanks for honouring me with your first post. And thanks too for the info - that's reassuring to hear. At the price and with those credentials I don't think I need look further. It all sounded a bit too good to be true and I was just a bit worried that it would not play burned DVDs. Anyone else top this unit?
bigdongers Posted September 30, 2004 Posted September 30, 2004 I havnt bought one but cant you return it to Big W if it doesn't do the job? but really at $64, how could you go wrong??
Revhead Posted October 24, 2004 Author Posted October 24, 2004 Just as an addendum . . . As well as playing every crappy disc I put in it, this unit is region free and also appears to be macrovision free. Just for the hell of it I tried recording from DVD to VCR the other day and surprise, surprise it works! I should add that I only tried recording the one disc.
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