Page 1 of Alba DVD 103 - Not playing certain disks

I`m new to DVD and have just purchased the Alba DVD 103. I am having problems playing a R2 copy of "Go" but all of the other R1 / R2 disks I have appear to work fine. Is the problem likely to be a standard fault of the 103 or is it just my player? Is it common for DVD players to have problems playing certain disks?

Any help would be much appreciated.

hi rich i tried go on an alba 103 and it didnt work for me either when disc was inserted it would go straight to the extras menu instead of the root would not display the root menu at all and you couldnt select any of the speacial features i was not impressed.

there is a thread on the forum somewhere titled alba 103 warning saying that it wont play r1 t2 ultimate edit or stuart little either. there have been players that have been tripped up on certain discs ie matrix but a firmware upgrade normally sorts them out. im sorry to have to tell you but i think you will struggle to get an upgrade for the103 most budget players have some sort of problem in my experince. dont you find the picture a bit blocky sixth sense in my mates 103 is terrible better picture on vhs.

sorry to bring you all this crappy news but if you just bought it try taking it back maybe, i have heard on the forum that argos are selling pioneer 525s for around £130 and theese are a much better player for that sort of money some, good news though your alba 103 does play mp3 discs and is multi reigon out of the box but i would still not want one good luck what ever you decide.

Hi Rich,

I bought an Alba 103 four weeks ago and have just taken it back. I too was new to dvd and thought bargain £140 and bought it. Problems encountered are as follows:

Reported T2, Stuart Little discs not playing.

RCE discs do not work as its multi out of the box, not region selectable.

Columbia Tristar discs ie :Go? don`t work ie: cannot access menus properly (so bye bye to extras and press resume to watch film). - Alba have admitted apparently.

Picture quality is good against VHS on my grannys telly but against branded players it is really awful. Films such as Arlington Road (backgrounds), Aliens (smoke effects) and Drop Dead Gorgeous (most of film) suffer from pixellation horribly.

Technical support are worse than terrible. Very friendly but DVD knowledge = zero. Big time. To illustrate how little knowledge - I had to explain what RCE is.

Alba have admitted that the preferences menu you can only select when no disc is present has a fault.

One for the future - if RCE extends to region 2 you will have bought a nice silver doorstop.


Sorry to go on and to all you Alba peeps out there but in my view the player went from hero to zero in three and a half weeks. From oooh multi out of the box and mp3 to ooops RCE problem and general world of s***.

Just to confirm that i am not associated with Alba in case anyone thought I endorsed there products.

Final thought - where did you get your player from?

Hope this helps

Thanks for the advice. I bought the machine from Argos and that is where it will be going back to. I must admit that my first thoughts were that a region free DVD player from the box - great, but the possibility of RCE affecting R2 disks in the future is a real downer.

k m8
stuart little will play on your player when you get to the menu highlight play, and press the resume on your remote and the disk will play ok .

l8trz