Page 1 of cheaper dvd players more compatible with discs???

i have two dvd players a £300 pioneer dvd656a with dvd audio/sacd and all the rest and i also have a cheapo portable tv with built in dvd player from sainsburys , now can anyone tell me why that discs that wont work on my mates toshiba sd220e or my £300 pioneer dvd656a or my pioneer dvd writer that they were recorded on play absolutely fine on my cheapo sainsburys dvd player!!! am i missing something here??

its called the `sods law` effect

jc808

Quality makes must be more `protective` of copyrights/region codings etc.
Cheaper ones obviously don`t give a stuff !

Cheap DVD players often use standard DVD-ROM drives as their mechanism. Those are usually more tolerant of `iffy` media than the proprietary drives fitted to posh decks.

Mike

On the subject of `cheap` players,I can`t be the only person truly sick to death of colleagues advising me they`ve just bought another Lidl/Makro/Asda neverheardofit69 and how brilliant it is because it "plays everything".
Like that is the mark of a truly brilliant DVD player.
No mention of picture quality,sound quality,build quality,connectivity,styling etc.
Truly strange how some people,who wouldn`t dream of having the cheapest unknown make of washing machine for example,are willing to accept this in a DVD player.
Like a DVD player is a DVD player is a DVD player.
Weird.... :/

Bowfer - seems to be a favourite theme of yours that brands mean quality, etc. I think most folks are amazed that the cheapies at £40 etc can do everything and sometimes more than the recognised brands - anything above video quality and they`re pleased. Can`t fault them on that - to be able to buy a box that allows you to play films from all regions, play music and look at photos all for £40 - was unthinkable a year back.
Seems like inverted snobbery to me that to be good its got to be branded - nobody had heard of Sony,Tosh etc 30 years back - well sub the Japs for the Chinese and thats whats happening.

Spartacus

Quote:
Seems like inverted snobbery to me that to be good its got to be branded

If anything it the people I refer to (in my experience) that are guilty of the inverted snobbery.
They honestly think they have managed to somehow `pull a fast one` and have managed to find something that is equally as good as anything out there.
They haven`t.
They`ve found a cheap piece of kit that may well do a job,but that`s as far as it goes.
Like I said people seem to have got it into their heads that a player is a player.We all know it`s not the case any more than a car is a car.

The simple fact is that there are only so many ways you can skin a cat, or in this case design a DVD player - they all have to meet the same basic specifications, but I agree that higher-end players are gonna do things better (eg the new Devon DVD2200 has separate processor boards for video and audio, budget players lob `em all together on one chip).

As an example of how crazy the budget end DVD player situation is, there are no external cosmetic differences between the Compacks DVD5000 and the Cambridge Audio DVD55. One costs £60, the other £150. Both have identical casing, but the Cambridge has better quality components under the lid. The Compacks has a "cheap and nasty" MediaTek chipset (capable of .mpg, .mpeg, .jpg, .mp3, .vob playback), the CA has a superior make, but plays less formats and needs a hack to play VCDs. Both do Progressive Scan, but the Compacks does Progressive Scan PAL, via either the SCART (yes, really) or component video. The Compacks can be made VCR friendly, the CA cannot.

Now tell me which player is most attractive to the man on the street ?

In addition, if "basic players" are so cruddy, how come quality companies like Toshiba and Pioneer are running scared by releasing entry-level players for £80 ? Totally unheard of this time last year.

I agree some of the cheap players are totally shoddy. But don`t tar them all with the same brush - some are total bargains and well worth their weight in gold - and yes, that includes some of the £30-plus players (Westy bought the £38 Tevion DVD player at Aldi and loved it) :)

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