Recommend me a good DVD player....

[Proplus]

OK...my standalone el cheapo DVD player is starting to pack in (skipping a lot, and can never play the last 5 mins of a DVD!!), so I'm on the look out for a good/decent DVD player.

There's so many available now, its got me all confused.

Requirements:

- plays DVDs, DVD-Rs, VCD, SVCD (thats about all I need I think)


Would like:

- DivX (and any other formats like Xvid)



I've heard about Kiss players and some have LAN ports, these any good? Budget-wise, not really spending much on other things lately, so I can stretch to around £300+ if its very good and can record as well (preferably onto DVD-Rs).

Oh.....and where would I get it from? Would prefer from an actual store so I can play with it a bit first.

[Stephen B]

another good ol cheapo

Targa DP-1000 from lidl £50

ultra slim card reader, divx, xvid avi NP

[DavidM]

I've got the Kiss DP-1000 myself... and am also very impressed with both the player and kiss's support (1 day to organise collecting via ups at their expense - and only about a week to return .. nice!)

[Proplus]

I'm looking at this:

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Produ...oductID=118024

any good?

[Alex]

No idea about that one I'm afraid, but generally Toshiba are good for cheap DVD players (£50-75), Pioneer and Cambridge Audio are good for the £100-200 price range, and Panasonic are supposed to be very good for DVD recorders.

I have a Pioneer 565, which is the model before the current Pioneer DV575 going for £100 from Richer Sounds, and I really like it, especially for sound quality. If you want a DVD recorder then its worth considering getting one with a HDD in it as well, muchly useful for stuff you just want to record to watch later, but don't necessarily want to keep.

As for shops, much as they are only box resellers, Richer Sounds in my experience can't be beaten for after sales customer service - the took back my amp when it broke and replaced it like for like with a new one on the spot.

One thing I would say is that I have a Relysis DVD recorder - it was around £150 and it really is quite pants - colour bleed everywhere, poor shielding and generally lacking in definition. Can't really say much about the sound quality as I let my amp do all the sound processing there, but try to avoid getting the cheapest of the cheap if you can afford it.

This may be worth a look, at £290 from Richer Sounds but may lack some features present on other DVD players. I suppose it depends on what you're playing it back on too - on a £100 21" Alba telly it wouldn't really be worth spending the extra, but on a decent Panasonic/Toshiba etc widescreen jobby the difference will be more obvious. If features are more important than quality then the one you suggested looks like a pretty good deal to me.

Anyway, enough of my ramblings. Hope that lot is of some help!

EDIT: As something of an afterthought, what might be a good plan would be to get a cheapish DVD recorder (say the Panasonic DMRE-55 for £150 or the one you suggested) and then get a better quality player - maybe one with DVD-A and SACD support - like the Pioneer DV575. That way you'd get a reasonable recorder, but really good playback of 'bought' DVDs, as well as something that could play CDs well if you hooked it up to a decent surround bit of kit. Of course you could just buy the DVD recorder, then if you were happy with the quality you wouldn't need a better player as well, and so could save yourself a hundred quid. Food for thought maybe.

[Stephen B]

Originally Posted by Proplus

I'm looking at this:

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Produ...oductID=118024

any good?

sorry to seem rude, but why ask when the link you provided shows you questions and answers from about a dozen people, I would have thought all the info you need is right there rather than hoping someone reading this thread owns one

[Aaron]

I have a Pioneer 565, which is the model before the current Pioneer DV575 going for £100 from Richer Sounds

Another vote for the Pioneer DVD575. I picked one up from Richer Sounds for £100 as a birthday present for my dad and I was really impressed by the quality of the picture and audio.

Not only is the quality good, but it plays pretty much anything you can throw at it - DVD-R, DVD+R, SVCD, DivX, mp3, WMV, DVD-A, SACD, etc, etc ,etc.

It all sounds too good to be true for £100, but it's not.

I don't see the point of DVD recorders, personally. The quality of the recordings isn't great and I think that PVRs are the way forward for recording TV.

[Alex]

Originally Posted by Stephen B

sorry to seem rude, but why ask when the link you provided shows you questions and answers from about a dozen people, I would have thought all the info you need is right there rather than hoping someone reading this thread owns one

Problem is, that what people have said on there are only facts about its tech specs etc, and nothing about it's quality. Someone on here might have bought one and found that it was good/bad quality.

[DavidM]

As I said previously, i've the model down from that - the DP-1000... and really like it

[kushtibari]

If you're going to be spending £300 I'd consider the Panasonic DMR-E95 recorder. Its being replaced by a newer model so has dropped to just over £300. I'm not hugely impressed by the newer one.
I bought one of these a couple of weeks ago for my folks - 160gb HDD and DVD-RAM, DVD-R record and playback. Its got onboard DTS with a digital optical out. Its also got memory card slots so you can archive your pictures to HDD or DVD (which is why I got it for my folks as they've no PC). Quality of recoding is superb, you can't tell the difference between the original and the recording. Playback is very good as well, although you'll obviously get a bit better quality from a play only machine. Plenty of editing features as well, divide, chapters etc.

[5lab]

to be brutally honest.. why not spend yer £300 on a cheapy shuttle (or similar), stick a dvd burner in it, and a good gfx card (by which i mean, with nice tv out support, not nessesarily good at 3d), and use that? its definately an option if you want to view dvds + divx + record dvds..

[Stephen B]

Originally Posted by 5lab

to be brutally honest.. why not spend yer £300 on a cheapy shuttle (or similar), stick a dvd burner in it, and a good gfx card (by which i mean, with nice tv out support, not nessesarily good at 3d), and use that? its definately an option if you want to view dvds + divx + record dvds..

so how is that better than a 50 quid player that plays all formats, and has component output and RGB scart ? . I have never seen a decent tv output via s-video on a graphics card yet, only benefit I can see is the dvd burner bit to be brutaly honest

[5lab]

ati do good tv out to component video, which is a nice solution..

he said he wants to spend £300 and would like a dvd burner, so thats a solution i provided him with.. also saves buring your divx's to cd before watching them, and can be turned into a tivo box with minimum (£0 with freeware software) cost, and thats just cool!

[Stephen B]

been down pretty much all the aforementioned routes myself ,and have settled for a 50 quid player, have a 900 quid HDMI player that gets used about 5% of the time, my Shuttle was kinda cool hooked up to my plasma but that soon wore off, my point earlier was that unless you are using a highdef component signal or pc monitor signal to your display, tv out via s-video sucks on anything bigger than a 24" telly in my experience.

heck just offering advice, bottom line is unless you can utilise the networking and burning capabilities of the Kiss player most of the time, there is no point spending more than 50 quid

[nvening]

Go to Sainsburys and pick a sony or panasonic or toshiba up for £50. I saw a nice sony one (which i bought for £200 years ago but it is nice and was new when i got it) the other day for £50 and a multiregion Panasonic for £60 and a 28" widescreen panasonic with the panasonic dvd for £350!!!!!!!