Page 1 of Alba DVD 103

fter much pfaffing, reading and searching including and ill-fated trip to argos where they wanted to give me a bush player which probably was the same but they didnt know - I finally found and Alba DVD 103 for £139 in Toy s R Us and havre to say for the price I am exceptionally happy as it played my R1 discs straight out of the box - it also switched to R2 no problem - guess it must auto-sense or something.

After much pfaffing, reading and searching including and ill-fated trip to Argos where they wanted to give me a bush player which probably was the same but they didnt know - I finally found and Alba DVD 103 for £139 in Toy s R Us and havre to say for the price I am exceptionally happy as it played my R1 discs straight out of the box - it also switched to R2 no problem - guess it must auto-sense or something.

Quality is very good both for picture and sound. The only thing I might be picky on is that I need to investigate its handling of My R2 Apocalypse now where it appears not to be able to find the extras...
Not a big problm as my DVD-rom can deal with this :-)

In summary - if undecided - buy one - for sub £140 you cant lose (Toy R us told me they would take mine back if I wasnt happy).

BR

Scott.

Take it back! Alba 103s are evil!

Seriously, I bought one from ToysRUs in September and took it back last week. (it has been replaced by a Pioneer 530 from Techtronics for £198 already chipped). Initial impressions were similar to yours, but the shortcomings of the player as follows became too much to handle.

The player will not play RCE discs, and as I had to explain to THE WORST TECH SUPPORT CABBAGES ON THE PLANET what RCE is I doubt very much that they will solve the problem if RCE ever makes an appearance on r2 discs.

On the above point the guy I spoke to said `we are not supposed to discuss multi-region issues`. That is like my local garage saying ` We can talk about any aspect of your vehicle except for the engine`

Picture and sound quality are good compared to my Granny`s VHS on her black and white mono portable television. I thought that it was good until I saw other DVD players being demonstrated. Several discs that I watched; Drop Dead Gorgeous, Aliens, Arlington Road all had horribly pixellated backgrounds at one stage or another. Sound quality is only average.

Alba admits that it has a problem with Columbia Tristar discs in that it will not access menus correctly.

They also admitted to me that the preferences menu accessed when no disc is present `does not work`

Other discs like T2 UE and Stuart Little don`t work properly.

Take the player back, throw an extra £50 onto your refund and buy a player with a renowned brand from a company who knows what they are doing.

I too made the mistake of going to Argos to buy what i thought woul be an alba player but i got a bush instead. I didnt bother until i found that it was crap.

It failed to load a couple of times. Pausing the bloody thing caused the piucture to fall out of sync with the audio.Took it back full refund got a LG 3200 E and now i`m happy Cheers Steve H

hey chester i was compantplating buying a 530 what r they like will they cotput pal 50 from r2 dvd to tape to vhs many thanks any info much app

MickeyMCD,

As far as I know the 530 will output pal 50 but don`t quote me on this.

Your best bet is to email the guys at www.techtronics.com - they answer emails within an hour or two and know their stuff. By the way I bought my 530 from them for £198 - multi region chipped and macrovision disabled - so that you can record to VHS. Even delivery was free and it only took 5 days.

Hope this helps shout if you want more info.