Recommendations on a DVD player?

[prolyfik]

I stopped by the electronics store today to look at DVD players. There is a HUGE selection in DVD players, brands & models... Has anyone had a great experience with a certain brand/model? Any brands/models to stay away from?

I'm looking for a basic player that will handle DVDs and music CDs.

Thanks

[frobbit]

In my experiences, the cheaper the player the more it will play!

Obviously the build quality ain't gonna be top notch, but as it is just going to be sitting by your TV it's not much of an issue.

If you can find a model that can play Divx that would swing it for me, but aside from that most budget models play all discs and formats and 9/10 are multi region out of the box.

[roddy]

With electronics I've decided the best option is to buy a cheap model name-brand. I previously had a 400Y 'Malata' DVD player, which was as cheap as I could get at the time without buying the white one with pink buttons, and that was fine for about 9 months and then steadily deteriorated until I got rid of it at 12 months. Next was a 800Y Sony - at the time the cheapest players were around 300Y, but I splashed out on the name brand and that one's being going strong for over 2 years.

Re: Problems playing DVDs - often it's a physical problem with the disk - the hole is off-center, or the material is too light and thin. I've been told trying to play badly-made disks can damage the DVD player, which sounds entirely plausible to me, given the noises mine makes sometimes. One of the reasons I wouldn't spend a great deal of cash on a very good DVD player.

Roddy

[snarfer]

My roommate had a pirate DVD actually shatter inside his computer. He had to bring it to the repair shop. The thing wouldn't even open up any more.

[roddy]

Or: Save Roddy a trip to the shops . . .

You can now get DVD players with built in memory card readers and USB sockets, so that you can put a video file onto an SD card / mobile hard drive, and watch it on your TV via your DVD player. I want one of these. Like this, but a standalone DVD player, not a portable with screen.

However, I've failed to find one on zol.com.cn - I can find the dvd players, but trying to refine the search with keywords like USB / 读卡 come up blank. Are these available in China? Has anyone seen them? I wouldn't be adverse to trekking up to the third ring road and going to Gome or Suning or somewhere like that, but I'd like to know I've got a reasonable chance of finding what I'm after.

I know I could run a cable from computer to TV, but I'm trying to avoid the addition of any more cabling to my life. I already have enough to tie up the entire PLA and swing them round my head . . .

Oh, and does anyone want to buy a 3 year old Sony DVD player

Edit: Ok, immediately after posting I found ones like this which say they have USB + card reader, but annoyingly don't specify which cards they read. Any recommendations?

[niubi]

this may not be what you might be interested in, but i thought i would throw it out as a possibility: a network dvd player with usb, ethernet, and wifi connections made by a friend of mine in shanghai - on the pricey side though. check out neodigits x-line

[roddy]

However, I've failed to find one on zol.com.cn - I can find the dvd players, but trying to refine the search with keywords like USB / 读卡 come up blank. Are these available in China? Has anyone seen them? I wouldn't be adverse to trekking up to the third ring road and going to Gome or Suning or somewhere like that, but I'd like to know I've got a reasonable chance of finding what I'm after.

Follow-up on this - my DVD player finally gave up the ghost - which was fair enough, after I think three and a half years. I had a look on Joyo.com to see what they had in the way of DVD players with USB sockets, and there wasn't much, but they did have these at 278Y, which have the USB socket and at under 300Y I figured it was worth a try, so I ordered one. Joyo did their stuff and delivered in good time (late Saturday order, Monday afternoon delivery). And the DVD player . . .

Works! Build quality isn't great, has an annoying blue-LED lit front, remote control isn't very responsive and the menus are a nightmare, but it plays discs and I can stick downloaded TV shows / movies onto a USB and it plays them - sometimes in a kind of stuttering manner, with both audio and video breaking up and audio becoming noticeably out of sync with the actual lip movements. Seems to depend on what bit rate the file is encoded in - one at 943kb/s is playing fine, while another at 1371kb/s was unwatchable. Plays, as far as I can tell, only DivX stuff. Doesn't recognize my mobile hard drive, but my USB drive works ok. Needs mp3 audio, not aac.

So it's not a complete success, and I wouldn't recommend the USB function to anyone who would seriously object to not being able to play some files, or needing to re-encode something on the desktop, but it's a pretty nifty add-on to a cheap DVD player. Joyo is out of stock now though - guess I got the last one . . .

[johnmck]

There does exist one very rare function on a DVD player that I think is worth having. It is button on the remote control that when you press it, it makes the film go back 10 seconds. I find this really useful when watching Chinese language DVDs, if I miss a word I press the button to repeat the sentence.

The function is it is so rare that the salesmen in the stores have never heard of it and the only way to know if it exists on a particular model of DVD is to read the manual. I have found it on some Sony and HP players (attention not all models of Sony and HP have this function).

[mr.stinky]

i went for the NIVS brand cd/dvd player at carrefour for 168 kuai.

it plays cd's and dvd's, what more do you need?

and if it breaks, will make a great cupholder.

oh, yeah, the text on the remote (comes with batteries) is in english.

[roddy]

Just got myself a new one of these from Amazon.cn. You can now get DVD players with USB 2.0 sockets, and while I haven't put this one through it's paces yet it seems to have no issues with stuttering that the old one had. It does have limits - won't handle .mkv files and it rejected one file as it didn't like the resolution, but for popping downloaded stuff onto the proper telly, it's not bad.

I was also tempted by this, which plays RMVB files - ie, what TV shows from Verycd tend to be in. However I decided I wanted something that would play DVDs.

[cui ruide]

I think I walked into the local Carrefour and bought the cheapest thing they had (less than Y200, maybe less than Y100?)--simple, no problems.

[flameproof]

I would only buy a player that can play also AVI with the various codecs (that is DivX, XviD, H.264 etc.)

To check that I would burn one DVD with the various codecs and try the DVD in the shop.

I almost never watch TV or DVD, but I download some US TV stuff (My Name is Earl, The Sarah Connor Chronicles) which I did brun to DVD (until recently since I bought a media HDD now)

PS: H.264 is sort of HD and not very common, but it's getting more and more. My media HDD can't play it, back to the PC screen then....

PPS: In china RMVB is quite common and I would also burn one of those to the DVD.

[roddy]

Very rare to see devices that can play back RMVB I think. That media player I linked to is the only one I came across.

If you were buying a new DVD player now wouldn't you go for one with a USB socket? Save you burning DVDs, although I guess you might want them for your collection.