Sub £20 DVD players - current offers (merged)

firewalker2

B&Q are offering 10% of everything in store (it seems) if you use the voucher at the tills. we bought tiles at the weekend, got 10% off and then realised we'd forgotten the adhesive/grout etc.we went back and got 10% off that lot too. It's a good deal!

ianian99

heard today from a freind in dundee that woolis have a 4 disc dvd player at £20. haven't had the chance to look locally yet. This is the first multi disc dvd player i've heard of.

FGZstar

ianian99 wrote:

heard today from a freind in dundee that woolis have a 4 disc dvd player at £20. haven't had the chance to look locally yet. This is the first multi disc dvd player i've heard of.

Thanx I was lukin 4 a multi disk one 4 my bedroom. Do u know if it has DVD-RW

krishna

Is there any significant difference between a £20 DVD player and one significantly more expensive? I need to get one for the charity I work for. It won't be used a great deal, but need to be able to play DVDs from UK and US - not feature films, but reference/non-fiction stuff.

Also can all DVD players play audio CDs? Again, need CD player, but if DVD player doubles up as CD player then probably don't need to get separate CD player.

Thanks

xplo5iv

Krishna

Expensive DVD players will provide better sound and picture quality, particularly when used in conjunction with expensive hifis and large screens. For normal use, save your money and get a cheap one. To be honest a cheapo DVD player I have still looks pretty reasonable on my 72" projection screen. (But not as good as using DVI - another subject)

For your use get a cheap one. They still often come with a good warranty and they all play CDs, but note that if your screen isn't on you can't always tell what track you're on! (depending on the display/ lack of on the player)

Jonathan

machofairy

xplo5iv wrote:

Krishna

Expensive DVD players will provide better sound and picture quality,
Jonathan

I am not entirely convinced that this is true ... maybe just what the big brands want you to believe in order to justify their high prices. On the other hand, I believe the dearer ones usually have better build quality and will probably last longer the then 16 months I got from my Medion dvd/divx player that I got for £50 (cheapest player of its type at the time)

However, I find that the cheap ones tended to play more media types and are more friendly to cheap DVDR/CDRs. If you want to make sure it plays DVDRW/CDRW and is multiregion without any modding, go for a cheap one.

seth

machofairy wrote:

I am not entirely convinced that this is true ... maybe just what the big brands want you to believe in order to justify their high prices. On the other hand, I believe the dearer ones usually have better build quality and will probably last longer the then 16 months I got from my Medion dvd/divx player that I got for £50 (cheapest player of its type at the time)

However, I find that the cheap ones tended to play more media types and are more friendly to cheap DVDR/CDRs. If you want to make sure it plays DVDRW/CDRW and is multiregion without any modding, go for a cheap one.

The more expensive units use A grade chips, the chips are tested and graded in the factory.

The power supplies for expensive kit is better and the connectors are usually better quality as is the drive assembly.

Having said that the gap between expensive and low cost kit is closing and it not that big now.

The main thing that pulls video quality down on DVD is the macrovision used to prevent DVDs being recorded onto Video tape. If you disable the macrovision on a player there is a visible improvement in picture quality. Many high end monitor will not work with macrovision and so this is a legitimate reason to disable this "feature".

The life if these units is now very short. Less than a year for Divx as faster CPUs and new codecs (that require faster CPUs) appear all the time.

I have an expensive players and some cheap one there is not much difference, and the cheap one play most anything

However the new QPel encoding for DivX / Xvid requires an updated processor and codec set.

To answer your question, I would recommend a cheap unit with a good garantee. For most Tv less that £600 you will not be able to notice any difference.

Seth.

buggu

xplo5iv wrote:

Krishna

Expensive DVD players will provide better sound and picture quality,

Not true, according to which magazine they basically produce the same quality output. The only reason to buy an expensive dvd player would be for the extra features ( even they are being provided in some cheaper brands) and for realiblity (again dvd players dont normally go wrong early on compared to other electrical items) or build quality ( especially the remote or the buttons which may be flimsy)

B4UgoZzz

seth wrote:

The main thing that pulls video quality down on DVD is the macrovision used to prevent DVDs being recorded onto Video tape. If you disable the macrovision on a player there is a visible improvement in picture quality. Many high end monitor will not work with macrovision and so this is a legitimate reason to disable this "feature".

Seth.

Hi Seth,

I was wondering how it is possible to disable macrovision?


Cheers, Wilf.

BexTech

Some players allow this via a hack similar to the region hack.

You could buy a scart lead with macrovision remover circuit in from https://www.sonel.com for example.