42 out of 42 people found this review helpful.
Nice for the price. Progressive Scan, DVD,MP3, VCD,Photo
Date of Review: Apr 22, 2006
The Bottom Line: It's better than the DVD player that I had and costs a lot less.
"When I was a kid, we didn't have DVD players." I said to my 12-year-old when we brought this home. "How did you get by?" he asked. "Well we played outside, we were kids. It wasn't like it is these days. Then when DVD players did come out they were large and expensive. Now get over here and show me how this remote control works, because I can't figure it out."
I'm really not that old, but things do change quickly. For instance, the last time we purchased a DVD player we spent a couple hundred dollars on it and it had features that broke within a month.
This Memorex DVD player has a really good selling feature…the price. We found this on sale for $35 (regularly $50) and felt that if it breaks quickly then so be it.
Appearance
The equipment in our entertainment center is visible so the appearance was everything when choosing the DVD player. We needed a silver player and the smaller the better as far as I was concerned.
This is the perfect size for us. It is long enough to fit nicely in the stack and thin enough that it doesn't take up much room.
The two buttons on the front glow blue which looks kind of neat, but it's super bright. It's easy to find the eject button in the dark.
The other nice thing is that it has an attractive face. Nothing glows and the words don't appear on the screen until it is turned on.
Progressive Scan
We recently purchased a big screen TV and we were so disappointed with the appearance of the movies that we almost returned it until my husband realized that our original DVD player didn't have progressive scan. You can't do high definition without it.
Progressive scan doubles the amount of video information sent to your TV resulting in higher picture quality. For us, this feature meant the difference between a blurry picture and a crisp one.
This feature can not be used on TV's that don't support high definition. If this feature is turned on with a TV that doesn't support high definition then it will cause artifacts to be displayed in the picture. If this happens, manually turn off the progressive scan switch.
Copy Protected
This has a technology that prevents DVD's from being copied. If you hook the DVD up to a VCR you may get a distorted picture.
Remote Control
I'm not real fond of the remote control. It requires two 2 AA batteries which are not included. I don't understand why remotes haven't progressed more. There are tiny little gray buttons crammed together with the words written in all caps in miniature font. This is difficult to see in the day, impossible in the dark. It's not designed for a large hand.
Set-up
The directions are extremely simple and go into great detail on how to hook the DVD player up. There are large illustrations with wires named.
The directions also go into detail about connecting the DVD player to a home theater system. From the directions, we learned of an alternative way of arranging our speakers which works out better for us.
If you place the DVD player near a radio tuner, the radio broadcast may be distorted.
What it supports
This is a Region 1 DVD player and supports: DVD video, Video CD, Compact Disc Digital Video, Compact Disc Digital Audio and Kodak Picture Cd.
MP3
Play a MP3 CD, random playback, forwarding to or skipping tracks, selecting folders, repeat.
The company does not guarantee playback of all MP3 discs due to variations in recording and so forth.
CD
The CD operations are the same as listed in the MP3 section. An addition for this is photos.
DVD
This offers some standard features but you'll notice they only work with DVD's that have the features programmed into the disc. This information is provided on the jacket cover of a DVD.
Title/chapter search
Skip to the chapter you want but I've found that this only works on DVDs that set the DVD up in chapters.
Repeat playback, A-B repeat
This lets you mark a starting point and an ending point. Once the DVD is through with that section it will repeat it again rather than advancing. For example, if you were playing this in a doctor's office, you may put it on a circle so you don't have to get up to restart the movie.
Audio menu
This changes the language but is determined solely on what is offered on the DVD.
Subtitle menu
This turns subtitles on and off but is only available on DVD's that supply them.
DVD Menu
Press the DVD Menu button to enable this feature. Not available on all DVD's.
Zoom
Options are x2, x3 but not available on all discs.
Angle
Angle will change in one to two sections but only available on certain discs with more than one camera angle.
Parental Control
This feature prevents kids from watching things that the parents consider inappropriate for their age. In such cases, the DVD could not be watched unless a password is entered. The default password is 1234. If you forget the password you have to contact customer service.
Use it or Lose it
The instructions say:
If you do not use the DVD player for a long period, the unit may not function properly in the future. Turn on and use the DVD player occasionally.
Placement of Player
Apparently moisture and temperature play a big roll on how well this works.
The instructions cover placement of the player a lot. It's important for the player to have a lot of ventilation in an area that doesn't get drafts of cold air or heat. The instructions even mention to keep it away from amplifiers which produce heat.
Picture Quality
We think this picture is fine and have no complaints. The instructions indicate that the optical eye should be cleaned ever 1,000 hours since the picture quality diminishes when the optical reader gets dirty. This will probably cost more to have done than the unit costs.
Overall
For a mere $35 we now have a higher quality DVD player than we had. As far as I am concerned, I'd rather have a $35 DVD player and replace it next year with better technology.
For me, the style, price and features meet my needs and we're happy.
