DK Digital DVD-500 DivX DVD player

...but later came across this DK Digital DVD-500 DivX DVD player after the prices have dropped. It only cost £41.98 (61.52 Euros) from SVP Communications (AKA Blank Disc Shop).

-= The Player =-

The player looks sleek with a black and silver design. Black at the front with silver at the top and bottom curving in towards each other at the middle, which I think looks really good. The player itself looks quite durable and ...
...display shows the numbers in green and other details such as TRK, DVD, etc in red. I think it's very easy to read. It alternates between track number and time. I would prefer if I could change it to not do this in case it distracts me.

-= The Remote Control =-

The remote control is extremely light and seems rather cheap but I think that it doesn't look 'tacky' like some others I've seen. The buttons are also very small ... more

I've wanted a DVD player that was capable of playing DivX files for a while because of all my anime and por...errr....other video files..., but the players cost more than normal DVD players so resisted for a while. I've seen brands such as KISS and Yamada but later came across this DK Digital DVD-500 DivX DVD player after the prices have dropped. It only cost £41.98 (61.52 Euros) from SVP Communications (AKA Blank Disc Shop).

-= The Player =-

The player looks sleek with a black and silver design. Black at the front with silver at the top and bottom curving in towards each other at the middle, which I think looks really good. The player itself looks quite durable and the tray isn't flimsy like some I've seen. The LCD display shows the numbers in green and other details such as TRK, DVD, etc in red. I think it's very easy to read. It alternates between track number and time. I would prefer if I could change it to not do this in case it distracts me.

-= The Remote Control =-

The remote control is extremely light and seems rather cheap but I think that it doesn't look 'tacky' like some others I've seen. The buttons are also very small but there is enough space between them to avoid accidentally pressing the wrong button. At first glance, it is very difficult to find important buttons like Play / Pause, Stop, etc. but I think that they are easy to find once you have gotten used to the remote. The symbols and text are also quite small so you would have to look closely if you have bad eyesight. The only buttons that stand out are the Let, Right, Up, Down and 'Enter' buttons, but the 'Play / Pause' button is at the very bottom right so I can locate it easily.

It also has useful functions like 'Step', 'Slow', 'Shuffle', 'Zoom', etc. It's very responsive so long as you point it at the centre or the right side of the player with nothing in its path because the infrared receiver is on the right. It takes two AAA batteries which are included.

-= Playing DVDs =-

It takes around 15 seconds to load up a DVD once the tray has been retracted. I think this is acceptable.

The player is set to Region 2, meaning I would only be able to play Region 2 and Region 0 DVDs. I tried a Region 1 DVD and got a "Wrong Region" error on screen. Region 2 is used in the UK and Japan. Region 0 can be played on all players but I have a selection of Region 1 (U.S.A and Canada) DVDs so I needed the player to be Multi-Region. I found the instructions to make the player region-free on the net. All I had to do was the following:

1. Turn power on
2. Eject tray
3. Press 1 0 3 0
4. Press 0 (for Region 0)

After the steps, the On-Screen Display will show "Region 0" and the player is now set to Multi-region so it can play DVDs from all regions. That is very easy to do and is definitely much safer than having to do a firmware upgrade to make it region-free.

DVD discs with minor scratches play flawlessly but ones with deeper or too many scratches causes the video to skip or worse yet, freeze completely. I've found that some scratched up discs freeze the player completely. Sometimes it manages to move a bit but it would keep happening. The player has completely frozen on me and pressing the 'Power' button to turn off the player is no good because it's a standby button. Unplugging the player then plugging it back in was the only way that managed to get the disc out. I would have liked a main power switch at the back or something to deal with such situations. Maybe make it deal with scratched discs better. My dad also has one and his one freezes on discs that have no obvious scratches every so often. Not sure why but it doesn't happen too frequently.

It doesn't retract the tray when I press the 'Play' button but it's nothing important. Some DVD players are smarter and do this but it's a minor niggle.

-= Picture Quality =-

Picture quality is excellent but it is also determined by what you are playing and on what screen. Most 'original' DVD or VCD movies would be excellent to very good quality. All I can say is that whether playing DVDs or files with this player, I've found that there is no loss of quality.

-= Playing DivX and Other Files =-

To play 'files', once you've loaded the disc, the player will give you a screen where you can navigate from folder to folder, then file to file to select which you want to play. The SMART NAV is not able to display more than 11 characters for each file name so and this is a bit annoying as for you might not be able to see what the file is if the first set of characters is. For example a file with a name beginning with "AFILENAME -" and then a number, you would not be able to see the number. It would have been better if they made the file names scroll across so I could read the whole file name or display more. A lot of files I have are named using a title followed by a number so it is a bit annoying. The menu can also seem a bit slow to navigate compared to other players as it doesn't seem instantaneous when you press a button to navigate. Instead of highlighting the selected file, it marks it by bevelling the box, which at times makes it harder to tell which file you selected.

When you've found a file you want to play, just press 'Play' or 'Enter'. Once it has finished playing a file, it will move to the next one. I've found that the DVD-500 plays DivX files well with no loss of quality. These were DivX files on CD-R and DVD-R. These files are highly compressed Video files in the AVI format (has the extension .avi). I've also managed to play Mpeg (.mpg) video files but found that the player does not support WMV (Windows Media Video) and simply skips the file altogether.

The player is also able to play MP3 files. A few niggles with playing files though is the navigation. Although easy, it still does take a second (possibly half a second) to move from track to track so it's definitely not very zippy. I cannot navigate to choose another song while a song is playing. I have to stop it first but I would have preferred to be able to navigate to the next song during playback. These are only minor things and shouldn't stop you from buying this player.

It displays JPG images fine and you can even rotate them but smaller pictures will become pixellated (blotchy) because they are enlarged quite a bit on screen.

-= Playing Audio CDs and MP3 CDs =-

No problems with playing music CDs and MP3 CDs. It has all the usual CD player functions such as shuffle, repeat 1 or all, repeat A-B (set point A, then set point B and repeat what's between A and B), and even program up to CD 99 tracks to be played or MP3 tracks. Plays with excellent clarity with that bit extra bass thanks for the subwoofer.

-= DivX DVD-500 Player put to the test =-

It played the majority of the formats I threw at it. I've tried the following:

• DVD Video (Original Region 2 and Region 1 / movie on DVD-R)
• DVD-R (With movie burnt to disc & DivX / Xvid / MPG / MP3 / JPG / WMA files, Nero Digital Audio DVD)
• DVD-RW (With DivX 3.11, 4, 5 / Xvid / MPG / ASF / JPG)
• CD-R (with DivX 4.02 / MP3)
• VCD (Original / One made with Nero from a bunch of MPG files)
• Audio CD
• DVD+R (Por...I mean...movie on disc)

The DVD-R discs I used were Ridisc DVD-R's with a G03 dye. These discs are rubbish but they played fine in the player. Ridisc DVD-R with G04 dye (dark purple) also play fine.

I've found that DivX 3 Low Motion files that didn't play at all. I've come across two Xvid files that would not play but to be fair, it was one movie so I can count this as one occasion. These two files were accompanied by .srt which is a subtitle file. When the player went over the .srt files, it very briefly told me "DivX subtitle file selected" or similar but the avi files would not play and were skipped so it was no good even if it recognised the .srt files. There's some sort of incompatibility here but I'm not sure what. The file plays fine on my computer so it's not a problem with the file so the only solution I can think of is to re-encode the files into something that the DVD-500 can play. That and maybe upgrade the firmware if there's one available.

I've found some DivX 3, and the odd XVID files accompanied by SRT (subtitle files) didn't play even though it seemed to recognize the SRT files. I've found a few of my AVI and MPG files did not play smoothly and the audio was slightly out of sync but I have concluded that the files were badly encoded as most files of the same format play fine.

The specifications state it supports DVD+R discs. However, when I tried to play a DVD+R disc, even though the machine picked up on what the disc was (i.e. DVD) and 'tried' to read it, it never managed to start playing. This was a 2.4x (maximum speed) DVD+R disc, which plays fine on my computer.

It also supports Nero Digital Audio DVD discs, which you create using Ahead Nero burning software. It plays fine but I see no point in using this format as you can just put MP3s on your DVD as files. I don't even know what the difference is between this Nero format and just burning MP3s onto the disc as it looks the same.

I've found my ASF files to play without sound. ASF is pretty poor quality and I don't use it much anyway so I'm not too bothered. After further testing, I've found that NTSC AVI files with a frame rate of 29.97fps do not play and are skipped. They were DivX 3 files but I've also tried re-encoding the files into Xvid but that didn't work. MPG files with a frame rate of 29.97 play fine though. Many of the files I tested were around 23.8fps but other files I've managed to play range from 19fps to 25fps (PAL). If you have an old TV without NTSC support, then video plays in black and white. You cannot set the player to play NTSC to resolve this as you can with other DVD players (including other cheap ones).

-= Other =-

This player has 2 microphone sockets, which not a lot of DVD players have. You can adjust the volume and amount of echo for this with controls at front of the player. I like the way they made the Volume and Echo dials. They start off inside the player, so you press them in to eject them. When you're done adjusting, you just push them back in. The microphone socket works fine.

The player can't resume playback of a DVD once you've stopped. This might be frustrating for those whom often press 'Stop' by accident and find that they will have to search for the part where they left off. Luckily, the searching facilities are quite easy to use allowing you to search by Chapters or time (only good if you know when or roughly when it was up to).

It also has the usual parental controls and stuff but not really for me since I don't want to have to turn it off whenever I want to watch po...errr...DVDs of an adult nature. *cough cough*

-= Conclusion =-

If you have a lot of movie files in DivX, Xvid, or MPG format on your computer, on CDs and DVDs, then this is the ideal DivX DVD player to own. It looks good, plays lots of formats, has lots of features, even though it lacks a few which I think it should have, and you can even have a karaoke party with it.

It managed to play most formats okay with one or two niggles but there may be firmware updates to solve the issues in the near future. The only major problems I've had were the machine freezing and when playing scratched discs and not being able to restart it without pulling the plug, and not being able to play DVD+R discs, or possibly, certain branded DVD+R discs.

It's a great machine to have with lots of functions. There are many more on the market but if you see this one or a higher model somewhere, it's worth considering.

Thanks for reading! 

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