Cambridge Audio DVD 86 > Reviews > Cambridge Audio DVD player with HDMI

Author's product rating:   

Picture Playback	Excellent
Sound Level	Excellent
Range of Features	Excellent
Durability	Excellent
Value for Money	Excellent

Advantages:	HDMI Out, DIVX support, mp3 support
Disadvantages:	Too many buttons on the remote !  Slow eject button response .

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

This stylish and reasonably priced DVD player from Cambridge Audio retails for approx £150. For a DVD player with HDMI (Digital) out, that is one of the more reasonable priced models on the market at the moment.

The player will take a moment to recognise disks, but once it has found which format the disk is, I have found playback to be flawless. It can play normal DVDs (PAL), also DVDs from the USA (NTSC) and DIVX encoded video. Although I have not tried it, it can apparently play disks with mp3 music on them.

If you need to set the unit up beyond just plugging in cables, then the basic on screen configuration is straightforward.

You will need to refer to the manual for the advanced configuration of the unit (if you have a complicated or non-standard HiFi setup). Just connecting this unit up in the most obvious manner - SCART, etc, will get you a picture and audio through your television, but for those with a surround sound setup, you may need to tell the DVD player what sort of signal to send down the fibre optic or digital output, and what sort of picture to display, be it widescreen or 4:3, and so on.

I have played lots of DVDs, and some CDs on this player, and although a bit slow to detect the disk, it works well every time - even when the disks have given me problems on other machines.

The only faults I can find with this DVD Player lie with it being slow to respond to the eject button on the front panel - it is almost as if it is getting lost in some software loop trying to work out if you really want the tray to be opened... Yes... That is why I pressed the eject button!

The remote control seems to be a fairly standard design from Cambridge Audio. I am afraid I find that there are too many buttons too close together on it. That makes finding play, pause, and so on tricky when you are in the middle of watching a film...

These flaws aside, I still think this is well worth the £150 I paid for it, and would still recommend it to others.