Page 1 of Which dvd player

Fed up with watching DVDon my pc and have been trying to choose a player for months.

My shortlist is the Pioneer 444, Panasonic RV41, Sony ns300 or the Tosh220.

Everytime i think i`ve choosen one i read a bad review or hear of problems with discs/reliability.

What do you recommend?

I also intend to hook this up to a Yamaha RX-V430RDS receiver and Eltax speaker package for home theatre. - Anyone any comments on this receiver as an entry level kit?


Many thanks

The Sony is an entry level player and thus pared to the bone a bit. I`m pretty sure the Panny is gonna be replaced soon with the RV42, but reports on the RV41 have been good.

This leaves the Tosh (still new, so many people haven`t formed an opinion yet) and the Pioneer (heard nowt but good things about this).

If it were me, it`d be the Pioneer, and you can get it in multiregion form for £200 if you shop around (eg http://www.homecinemaheaven.co.uk).

Note that none of the players you mention can be hacked via a remote control : they would need to be chipped if you want to watch discs from outside Europe.

Thanxs for the advice

For info,..
the yelo 800 auto-senses all regions inc. RCE, plays vcd, svcd,cd-r, cd-rw. mp3... and everything I`ve thrown at it. Even DVD too. It may look a bit cheap though and I suppose it is `cos at Amazon it`s just gone down to an amazing 119!! Elsewhere it`s 150-60 but even still 200 at some places.. total dvd gave it 95%, dvd review 9/10 and What Vid/TV a best buy... and that was all when it was £200! Pic and sound excellent. Built in 5.1. and DTS too. Even comes with scart, svhs and vid, l/r (what R they called...?) leads. I can`t complain.

Ste

Can anyone, who has just bought one, say if the Yelo still macro free?

Thanks,

I have just bought one (Saturday) and the Macro option (auto/off) is still there.
However, not everything has recorded but I think it`s poosibly the way I`m doing it or a pal/ntsc issue.
Anyway the answer is yes.

Wonder if you can help me...
on the back there are the full 6 audio channel outputs as well as composite, scart etc.. there is also a co-axial connector. is that one lead that would go to an amp with all channels????

cheers

ste

Amazon is now selling the Pioneer 444s for £159! Not sure if it`s already multi-region enabled. Can anyone comment?

It`s more than likely that the Amazon version of the `444 is not multi-region, sadly.

I understand from Home Cinema Heaven that the `444 has now been replaced by the DV350, so you may want to look that one out instead.

I was bought one of these players as a gift, and I can confirm that my Pioneer DV-444 from Amazon is NOT multi-region. I`ve looked into getting it chipped, and there seem to be three options:

* a fairly difficult surface-mount soldering job with a new chip
* shipping the unit to somewhere to be reflashed with different firmware (seems to require an expensive cable/upload software/copy of firmware combo)
* some sort of plug-in firmware upgrade that goes in the tiny slot underneath the "control" connection on the back

I definitely don`t like the idea of some bloke on a market stall delving around in there with a soldering iron, and I`m not too keen on shipping it anywhere due to packing, postage issues.

If anyone knows a cheap reliable way of updating these machines in the London area I would be super grateful to hear about it...