Help choosing USB DVD or Blu Ray Player to play AVI's

sshnuke

Our Sony DVD player is on it's last legs so i've been surfing around to find a replacement.

Requirements:
- Able to play avi's (divx/xvid) from a USB stick or drive
- Scart socket or component outputs for my jurassic crt tv
- Have to stick with budget which is £30-50

Does anyone have any of these players and would they recommend them please?

Toshiba SD2010 £30 (Currys) - Seems like a good all rounder.
Toshiba SD2010 DVD Player with USB: Amazon.co.uk: Electronics

Nikkai Mini DVD Player - £50 USB feature looks like it will play anything
Mini MPEG4 HDMI DVD Player with USB and Card Reader : DVD Players : Maplin Electronics

Phillips DVP3520 - £45 Is a Which Best Buy and has play resume for up to 5 DVD's.
Multi Region Philips DVP3520/05 DVD Player + Connect: Amazon.co.uk: Electronics

There are a couple of low end blu rays as well:

LG DVX582H - £52
LG DVX582H HDMI DVD Player featuring USB Plus: Amazon.co.uk: Electronics


Toshiba BDX1200 - £50 Was originally £120. Being discontinued and can be bought from other sites for £50.
Toshiba BDX1200 Blu-Ray Player with BD Live: Amazon.co.uk: Electronics

I didn't know you could get so much for £30-50 and I just can't decide.


Thanks!

bungle4by4

i have a panasonic bd75 blu ray, from richer sounds at 59.99 and stream vids straight from my network. it even reads my NAS drive and it works very very well.

http://www.richersounds.com/product/blu-ray/panasonic/dmpbd75/pana-dmpbd75

sshnuke

Thanks Bungle. I'll add it to my list!

VoucherMan

I got a Xenta one a couple of years ago - I was just after a region free player. It plays a lot of formats including AVI.

It has a USB port but I don't know if it plays straight from it. Can test it later if you might be interested.

sshnuke

hi voucher man... these players can play off a usb stick but i've read they struggle with AVI's in HD. i think i want one with more capabilities but thanks very much for your kind offer!

hanwellmike

I have the Philips 3520 and it's a good player. It won't play all files types from a flash drive but plays most. The player does not have shuffle mode when playing music CD's /dvd's which is a shame. You could do worse.

almillar

Lemme just check - you definitely want component, as in red, green blue phono plus red and white? Depending on your TV, if you do have component, you might get a better resolution out of it than SCART, so that would definitely be the connection to go for. Composite though (just yellow for pic, red and white for sound) is rubbish and you should go with SCART.

sshnuke

hanwellmike: thanks. good to know at least someone else has one of these players. thanks for recommending and for the tip about the shuffle. i've taken features like shuffle and resume playback for granted and i'm rather surprised they're not standard features.

almillar: thanks you thank you thank you for asking about the tv output connections. i thought i had component but i just checked and it's rubbish composite. groan.

So that's goodbye to the toshiba BDX1200 which only has hdmi & composite. ah well i suppose it narrows down the selection.

thanks again.

almillar

Yep, very few CRT TVs will have composite. Best quality for you then is RGB SCART - usually the SCART 1 of a TV is RGB. Make sure the DVD player is set for RGB.

A.Penny.Saved

sshnuke wrote: »

hanwellmike: thanks. good to know at least someone else has one of these players. thanks for recommending and for the tip about the shuffle. i've taken features like shuffle and resume playback for granted and i'm rather surprised they're not standard features.

almillar: thanks you thank you thank you for asking about the tv output connections. i thought i had component but i just checked and it's rubbish composite. groan.

So that's goodbye to the toshiba BDX1200 which only has hdmi & composite. ah well i suppose it narrows down the selection.

thanks again.

Does your TV not have any Scart connectors? Those are large rectangular connections which are usually black coloured with 20 pins holes. Composite is only better than a RF connector in terms of quality. Most hardware does support composite, whereas Scart is only supported by older DVD players and many Linux Satellite receivers, some of which can play media files.

Having something which plays HD won't be much use unless it scales it down to standard definition. For HD stuff you should be looking at a media player which can be purchased for as little as £20. However, they won't usually play optical disks. There are a number of different chipsets available and some are more limited than others. The latest is the Realtek 1186. Check for MKV header compression support, because it can mean having to remux files to play them on some hardware.

Information on all available Media Players is here.

Check forums for opinions on any that interest you.

almillar wrote: »

Yep, very few CRT TVs will have composite [Component]. Best quality for you then is RGB SCART - usually the SCART 1 of a TV is RGB. Make sure the DVD player is set for RGB.

His TV must be very old if it does not have a Scart connector. It must be "built to last" :rotfl:

almillar

A.Penny.Saved - he states in his very first post that his TV does have SCART. He had component (5 plugs) confused with composite (3 plugs).