I am currently into my 2nd DVD player. My first was a JVC, which I had for about a year-and-a-half. The DVDs started skipping, so I sold it for $25 and bought a new one instead of trying to have it repaired. I've had this one (a Sony) for almost 3 years and it's still going strong. I'm very happy with how long it has lasted, considering that I probably use it between 10 and 20 hours a week.
My question is this:
"Who among you has a Super-Duper DVD player (you know, one of the ones with all the bells and whistles)?"
Both of my players have been standard versions: play, fast-forward, reverse, slow forward and reverse, frame-by-frame, multi-angle . . . the usual stuff.
Is it worthwhile to get one with a bunch of optional features (like zoom ability)? Or does the novelty wear off after the first month or so?
I suspect that I will need to buy a new one within the next 6 months, so I need some advice.
Well, IMHO, if the thing plays your movies, it's doing its job.
I think the extras are like leather seats on a car - not really vital, but surely a great status symbol.
I played with Zoom for a little bit, and I do admit that I still use it occasionally, but I wouldn't miss it if it weren't there, I can tell you that. Save yourself some money. All the thing has to do is let you watch movies. Everything else is gravy, and gravy is bad for you (all that fat and stuff... yech.)
I use my X-Box to watch all my DVD's on.
It has all those features you mentioned....including zoom.
I love it!
Those "Super" features are rapidly becoming standard. $40 Apex's have more features then many high end players though, which amuses me. They can play SVCDs, VCDs, MP3s, DVD-R+R-RW+RW-RAM etc etc.
I would be hard pressed to invest in a $40 DVD player. You might as well flush the $40 down the toilet. "They can play SVCDs, VCDs, etc." for about a month, and then it will cost you more to repair it than you paid to buy it.
My father got a small Sony DVD player a year ago. It came as a bonus for getting another account in his bank. It works quite well, and it even supports MP3 and VideoCD, which I think are quite interesting features. No zoom, though.
My dvd player is a pretty standard Toshiba from '99 (graduation gift from a former girlfriend, it was $300 at that time for the player) it is still going strong. Only problem I have with it is that it won't play low quality dvds (retromedia dvds for example) or recorded dvds (which is a pain since in my spare time I am on a local comedy tv show and we get copies of the show put on dvd for us and I can only watch them on my computer). I plan to purchase another player eventually though for another room in my house though and at that time I will choose one to resolve that problem
Burgomaster,
I only buy the cheap ones, usually from WalMart (Apex and the like). You can get a great one for about 50.00 that includes things like zoom. Everyone that I've ever owned has had zoom and I've never paid much for them.
And the Apex DVD players can be easily hacked to play DVDs from any region. Fantastic stuff.
I've been using an Apex, one of those super cheap players, for 2 years now with no problems. It hasn't seen extremely heavy play, but hey, it was cheap and lets me play any region DVDs. It has also been moved around a lot, as I moved and as stereo stuff moved.
A Sony is my primary though. The picture quality of the Apexs are OK, but they're not good enough for me to say a Sony or Panasonic or what have you isn't worth the money.
me, i just use my dvdrom or playstation 2 to play dvds, i've never really had the need for a proper dvd player, though i want one [who can say no to more dvd players?] mainly because i suspect that the quality would probably be a bit better and i'd prefer a proper remote [my ps2 remote is busted :( ]
my friend has some wierd chinese brand dvd that sports all the extras and was fairly cheap, i guess.
the most important extra to have on any dvd player is the karaoke capability! plug in a couple of microphones, pop in your favourite karaoke dvd/vcd and let the fun begin. let me say that 'hit me baby one more time' never gets old after the 8th time in a row [please shoot me now!]
if one needs a better excuse to get drunk, i'd like to know it!
I've been using a cheap Apex player for almost two years, and it still works like new. I've moved once since I've owned it, and even hauled it out to parties on a couple of occasions. It plays everything and it has lots of bells and whistles. I've even connected it to a projector, and found the picture quality to be excellent at eight feet wide. The only reason I bought the cheapo player was that I wanted to get into DVDs, and likely couldn't afford a better machine for a few months. This was supposed to be temporary. Since then, I've had opportunity to replace it, but I just can't see a reason. Same with my Sylvania VCR. At the time I bought it, it was a 4-head stereo VCR for less than a mono price. Still works great, almost five years later, as does the Sylvania TV I bought with it.
Back to the Apex, I think the reason they can make a cheap player that does everything is that they adapted as many readily available components as possible. I can't say for sure, but my player looks to be built around an internal DVD-ROM player designed for a PC. Some of the savings are surely in the reduced cost of developing the product. I can also imagine that in many expensive machines, the brand name accounts for much of the price. I would even wager that top-of-the-line brand-name machines don't cost significantly more to produce than cheaper machines of the same brand with fewer features.
Apex is also aiming for a different market than the other brands, and has, until lately, had little competition in selling an affordable player.
I think only in the past couple of years have we been seeing the true cash value of DVD players. Everybody who simply had to have this luxury item has already paid the inflated early prices and the expensive machines are not moving as they once did. Now, as DVD players become standard household equipment, the market is opening up to the poor and the thrifty, with prices that look like a bargain compared to what came before.
It might be by Scottish heritage, or that I'm slowly turning into my dad as I age, but I've reached the point where I have a pretty good idea what it should cost to produce and market something, and I will simply refuse to pay more.
Post Edited (11-03-03 10:53)