Looking for a DVD Player

[physics_ninja]

Since my old dvd player is constantly skipping while playing discs, I have decided to take advantage of any upcoming Labor Day sales and buy a new dvd player.

So I though I would tap the collective wisdom of the boards to find a good one.

What I am looking for:

1) Something not too expensive. But I am willing to pay more for a quality product.
2) Perhaps one of those multi-disc players.
3) Or maybe on of those vcr/dvd combos.
4) And I wouldn’t mind a region free player (or one with a known hack that doesn’t involve downloading a program to make it region free) so that I can play the dvds for the new Doctor Who.


Any suggestions? Problems to avoid? General Comments?

 

[DerianCypher]

Well.. I'm not too familiar with the region free portion but I have a bit of info on the rest. So long as you purchase a DVD player by a known brand (sony, magnavox, etc.) your are going to get a good product. It seems anymore that DVD players are finally at the point where if you get a moderately priced one ($50-$100) you'll get one with progressive scan and it won't skip. As for a combo I'd avoid it if I were you. The VCR side tends to go bad pretty often on all the ones I've seen, and so you're better off just getting 2 seperate machines so u don't have to replace your DVD player when the VCR portion goes bad.

If you want, the DVD High Definition up-convert players are becoming reasonably priced.. you can get a very good one by samsung for about $200.

That's pretty much my $0.02

DC

 

[freebfrost]

I heartily recommend regionfreedvd.net.

I got my last DVD player there and it's worked flawlessly. They even have comparison notes on each player on how well it performs compared to other products they offer.

And Doctor Who works perfectly on it!

 

[Zander]

I got a region free Toshiba one from Amazon and I'm pleased with it.

If you want to watch British DVDs, you'll also need a TV that is PAL compatible. Nowadays, most TVs are both NTSC (US) and PAL (UK) but it's worth checking first before you get a multi-region DVD player.

 

[Romnipotent]

Checklist:
Known name (Pioneer, Sony, Onkyo, etc)
Region Free
Div-X compatable
DVD+-RW
MP3
CD-RW
SOUND: S-Video, Optical, and RGB out
VISUAL: Stereo out, 5.1 channel out, Optical
EVERY SOUND FORMAT AVAILABLE (its nicer that way). eg. Dolby Dig, THX
VCD
CD
DVD (well der)
USB and Memory cards (optional, but good for home movies and slideshows)

 

[physics_ninja]

Thanks for the comments so far.

What exactly is div-x and why should I care?

Note: That isn't meant to sound snarky. I really am interested in what you have to say about it.

 

[Romnipotent]

its a video format, reasonable compression to quality. Good for *cough* home movies