Are Very Cheap DVD Players a Waste of Money?

[maretta]

My Dad wants a DVD player for Christmas.

He's having an operation next year and will be laid up in bed for a while. He just wants to watch a few films in a smallish room with an average upstairs room kind of tele. He doesn't need to be able to record etc.

Are the #30 DVD players worthwile or am I better off spending a little bit extra?

Thanks

Had ours for over a year, present but must have been a cheapo, no probs whatsoever.

I think it depends on what you want. We just bought a dvd player for £28 from Aldi. It works fine with proper dvds but doesn't like copies. It plays dvdr and cdr fine - its just that the encoding on "proper" dvds effects copies that are made from them and this causes jumping and freezing on our cheap dvd player.

Apparently not. Ours was £30 and fine if you don't want something all singing and all dancing. Martin Lewis - BBC's money saving expert says so.
And according to dh, "There's no point in spending big bucks on them because the technology will be upgraded soon to higher capacity blue laser DVDs, requiring getting a new player"

bought ours for £50 about a year ago - clearly the 'cheap' ones have got cheaper - we've had no probs at all.

Thanks for the help. This is all really useful.

We have two, an expensive one and a very cheap one. The cheap ones plays all the dvds whereas the expensive one has problems paying all the dvds. The expensive one was a Sony and the cheap one is a Mako????

I got my mum a cheap £30 last xmas and it is still working fine no probs at all, also plays copies as well as real DVDs