Can somebody advise me on DVD players please?

[Socci]

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Cant help sorry, mine is cheap and nasty,

just bumping this up for you

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You can get a decent Panasonic player-only for under £100. I'll see if I can find you details.

Latest Which report best buys:
Goodmans GDVD157 - £50 from John Lewis or Index
JVC XV-N412 - £70 from Powerhouse

Recorders are still £200+ and they don't recommend getting one yet.

"Tempting as these may now be, there's a good reason why you might want to wait before taking the plunge. There are several recordable DVD formats. These look the same but work in slightly different ways, but, more importantly, not all formats are compatible with all players. So you could end up recording a format which you cannot play in another machine. For most people, it's worth waiting until the situation settles down, and a single format becomes the norm for home recording and playing of DVDs."

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Yes, as long as when you say recorder-only you really mean player-only?

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We got a DVD/video combined player from LG - wasn't horrendously expensive, probably isn't made to last but it's done us well so far. Hasn't got a huge amount of bells and whistles, but in a year or two we want to get a DVD recordable once the format has settled down and didn't want to spend a huge amount now.

We've had an LG DVD player before and it lasted the regulation 5 years before it got a little tempermental. Seem "good enough" for a budget player. Hope that helps

Ours is the LG DV1010 - seems to go for around £150.

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Oh, previous one was an LG cheapy (around £40) and lasted about 5 years as I said

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LOL

I'd recommend going as super cheap with a sensible brand from a sensible place as possible.

Even the cheap ones are good these days, and if you're not putting it through a high end amplifier driving a high end telly, you'll be perfectly happy and less miserable when a child breaks it.

Stall for a year or two and then get a fancy recorder thingy or a DVD player with hard drive so you can record telly onto hard disc.

If you have / are given DVDs from all over the world, you may want to check that your proposed DVD player is 'region free'. Some are locked to only play DVDs from Europe, and this can be a pain if you want to play DVDs from the States, say.

Ironically, often the cheaper ones are either 'Region Free' or there is a very easy (secret) series of keypresses you do on the remote control to change the region coding.

If you have run out of space under the telly, a combined DVD /: VCR might be the answer. These combo units can also (rarely) integrated a Freeview digital TV tuner. 9Don't ask me for models though, I haven't bought What HiFi or Home Cinema magazines for yonks).

Try Richer Sounds

For Christmas we treated ourselves to a JVC multiregion recorder and after a few hitches trying to figure out how to connect it, a freeview box and a video to our TV, it is fantastic. (If you need to attach this many things you need to check your TV has enough scart points at the back) (also we can't record on the vcr any more but that's fine as that's why we bought the DVD-R)

It was about £190 from digital-point, one of the big internet sites.

I decided to get a recorder as our 'very old cheepie from comet' vcr is definitely on its last legs and I knew that once I started to buy DVDs for the kids I wouldn't want to replace the vcr.

i am really happy with it, and the JVC one will play all formats and also will take an input from a camcorder. Also very shalow - is avail in silver to match our TV.....

The quality of recorded stuff is much better than on our vcr and you can put hours and hours on the same DVD if you take lesser resolution - handy if you want to record stuff while away on hols or something.

I plumped for DVDs that you can re-write on which are expensive initially but I can't really see how you'd bother putting corrie onto something you couldn't write over....

The JVC one also has this MAGIC feature called timeslip where you can start recording something say at 8, arrive downstairs at 8.10 and start to watch it while it continues recording the programme - no need to wait until 9 to start watching until 10 if you see what I mean - all over by 9.10 in this example

there is a slightly cheaper machine made by lite-on avail in argos and amazon that everyone rates but can't take the input from the camcorder, and says it's not multiregional but apparently you can fudge it using the remote control settings. Make sure you get the most up to date version (was 5006 at christmas time) as earlier versions didn't have all these features.

I got my Pacific DVD player from ASDA for less than £30 - play back only - and it has been cheap and great! It does everything more expensive ones do, so why pay a fortune?

We got our first one from Richer sounds - around £70 at the time. We bought a cheap second one earlier this year so kids could watch them upstairs on the day of ds2's baptism. Turns out the cheap (£24.99) from Argos, is the same make as the one we originally bought. Have had no problems and are happy with both. So I think I'd choose to pay less and use the money saved on something else!

I got one from Tesco for £25 and it's very good. Really small and very classy looking. I think it's a Hikona which is probably why it was so cheap.

cheap ones from comet seem to be region free.

Asda do DVD players at £25 & £30.