Hope this helps.

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You can always take a mainstream DVD, CD and an MP3 CD with you to an electronics store during a quiet time to see if they meet your specifications. It can be hard in some stores since they crank JBlow.

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Porn is pretty taboo I would say, so trying the discs on my sister's dvd-player doesn't make it any more taboo I think, I wasn't asking and she wasn't around, and I didn't forgot to remove the disc

Edited by - Gunzo on 4/22/2005 7:38:08 AM

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Having brought and used various mid-to-low-end players from the early days of DVD (from Hong Kong, Canada, Europe and USA), my best experience is with a no name Chinese player called Vsonic. After 3 years of use it's still going strong. I took it across the Atlantic and back. It plays NTSC/PAL prefab VCD/DVDs from all regions and to either NTSC, PAL or VGA monitor. It plays DVD+/-R and RW fine (except un-closed discs, of course). It works on 110/220V, 50/60Hz. I've not yet come across a disc that would play on some other player but not this one.

Progessive scan (not tested), component output (looks beautiful!), optical 5.1 output (sounds great). And most importantly, very forgiving on low quality or worn/abused discs.

But alas, the presentation of the product is below average. The shop that sold it couldn't find the right manual, the supplied cables look crappy (but they work). The player itself looks a tad on the cheap side (but it's solid enough to suvive repeated relocations including twice transatlantic) and worst: after about a year of use the door doesn't fully close on its own any more.

Moral of the story: the cheap, and cheap looking, players could be better than your typical mid-to-high end players from major brands. I only wish this player will last forever, but when it dies, I will go for another cheap player.

Yeah Baby!

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The cheap players are "all-eaters".

High end players might produce a better image on a big screen but if you watch your DVDs on a normal TV you should go for a cheap player because it has a much better error correction.
High end players are much too sensitive to scratches.

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I just assumed that more expensive players got better lasers and error correction. My stand-alone DVD-player I've got now was pretty cheap, around 120$, I also tested these discs on another even cheaper player, around 70$... and both players froze and scrambled the image equally. So cheap isn't necessarily all-eater.

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If the DVDs in question starts normally but consistently freeze, stutter or scramble (random rectangles) at a certain point than neither cheap nor expensive players will solve your problem. I don't believe expensive players have any better optics or laser. AFAIK, pretty much every player in the world contain the same optics made by a handful of OEMs. The brand name manufacturers have stricter QA so it's less likely you will get a duh from a brand name. There are many desirable features on expensive players, but I don't think reading marginal discs is one of them.

A common problem with players is mechanical misalignment, here brand name products may or may not have an edge over cheap players. The problem you hear about PS2 is all misalignment, and the complaint is aimed at Sony charging an unreasonable fee (in many but not all cases) for the "repair". Otherwise I don't think the PS2 drive is any worse then fancy $400 players.

Yeah Baby!

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