Advice on stand alone DVD player

Computer Hardware
#1

Perhaps this isn’t the right forum to ask this but considering everyone on this board knows so much about DVDs in general anyway I guessed you’d probably also know a lot about stand alone DVD players.

The case is that I have a fairly old DVD player at the moment, but I want to buy a new one. The only problem is that everywhere I look for information this information seems to be different for the same models at different places where I look.

Anyway, that’s where I wanted to ask you for advice on which stand alone DVD player I should buy if I want to spend between 150 and 250 Euros. It should be able to play All types of CD-R and CD-RW, also DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD+R, DVD+RW, and all the other stuff like MP3, JPEG, VideoCD, perhaps even DivX and Mpeg4, etc, etc.

Another important thing is that it has either an optical output or a coaxial output (for connection to my amplifier/receiver) and of course good quality in playback of all formats it offers to play back.

If anyone can offer some help that would be great! Thanks…

#2

this is a hard to answer

I myself have a sony dvp-905s, which is pretty good an not really cheap. But you can notice that in the image quality and the sound.
It plays everything, except divx.

I bought this player because dvd is for me quality. I don’t want to compromise that with more options.
What i read about the divx players, in many test, is the fact they can do a lott, but the quality is lower. But perhaps you can live with that.
So take a few dvd’s and test them in the shop, then pick the one you like best

#3

i think the Apex 1500 is a good fit. it also plays everything except divx, and most allow simple firmware upgrading for region-free, macrovision-free, RCE-immune playback.

#4

Thanks for the replies! I guess you’ve got a point there about quantity of playback options not always meaning quality as well. I can do without options like DivX playback or WMA playback, but I think that nowadays at least the following should be possible to play on a standalone DVD player:

CD-R, CD-RW, DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD+R, DVD+RW, VCD, MP3 and JPEG.

What I notice a lot by the way is that most DVD players that should (as the manual says) only be able to play DVD-R and DVD-RW also play DVD+R. This is of course nice but it makes it harder for you to pick out a DVD player to buy as you never quite exactly know what to expect until you’ve already bought it.

If anyone has additional tips, advice or perhaps even experience with anything that can help out I will be glad to hear about it. :slight_smile: