Goodmans GDVD100

Author's product rating:   

Picture Playback
Sound Level
Range of Features
Durability
Value for Money

Advantages:	Plays all disc formats
Disadvantages:	Average picture quality

Recommend to potential buyers:

no

Full review

Ohhhhhhh, I am about to do something I’ve never done before. I’m very nervous about being a virgin. I don’t want to do it wrong and embarrass myself. If I am not careful, it could be quite a painful experience.

Oh well, I guess I’ll just have to lie back and think of England, take the plunge, burn my bridges, and all those other clichés that mean “get on with it you stupid woman”.

I am going to write an opinion about something I don’t recommend – yikes! I know it’s unheard of. I only write about things I love – Lush, Twirls, books and Mr Chuckle.

But I don’t want people to fall into the same trap as me – oh no. I fell in love with this good looking, sexy beast. He offered to do sooooo much for me, but when push came to shove, his performance was sadly lacking.

No. I’m not talking about Mr Chuckle! I am talking, of course, about my DVD player, the Goodmans GDVD100. We bought it at Argos. It cost £250, but it came with a rather nifty TV stand type thingy with inbuilt amplifier and three speakers (including a sub woofer for boom-tastic bass).

******Looks******

It looks rather gorgeous actually. It is silver, and very slim and sexy. It has a black display screen on the front, a headphone socket and some nice unobtrusive buttons.

What lets the looks down is the rather sad orange spinning disc display thingy that comes up when a disc is playing. It’s very cheap and tacky looking.

The cabinet is a silver-grey colour with a glass door. It has shelves inside providing plenty of room for the DVD, a video recorder and our Digital Cable TV box. It has two speakers, one on each corner and a sub-woofer at the bottom of the cabinet.

Allie’s verdict 9/10

******Features*****

At first glance, the GDVD 100 is absolutely feature-packed. It plays DVD, CD, CDV and CDR. It has the added bonus of including a built in MP3 player. I have a lot of MP3 discs and CDVs, so this was one of the big pluses for this machine and swayed my decision to buy it.

The machine can be converted to all region play using a simple remote control hack. You press a combination of buttons on the handset and it allows you to change the internal settings to make it compatible with US discs. You can also bypass the security features that normally make it impossible to tape from DVD.

It has multi-speed picture search, two stage picture zoom, supports angle changing and is DTS compatible.

Allie’s verdict 9/10

*****Outputs******

For the technical among you, there are two sets of AV phono outs, plus optical and coaxial digital outputs, an RGB scart socket and S-Video out. There’s no built in Dolby Digital decoder, but it is really made to plug directly into the supplied cabinet or a Dolby equipped stereo or suitably equipped television, using the optical feed.

For the non-technical, like me, most of the outputs are designed for the American market. I only require the simple scart socket instead of the more exotic socketry. The sockets for the sound component are just like the phono ones on your stereo.

Allie’s Verdict 5/10

*****Performance*****

Oh dear. This is where the GDVD100 falls down. The performance, particularly in picture playback, is sadly lacking.

Visual Performance
Picture quality on this machine is rather poor, even for a budget machine. The picture lacks clarity, particularly on darker films, which look awfully gloomy. Don’t try to watch Se7en on this baby! There is very little definition.

It can also be subject to some annoying picture interference, occasional pixellation (which seems to be caused by a slowness or glitch in MPEG decoding) and clunky layer changing which can result in a considerable “hang” which is quite noticeable. These are what the more technical among us (not me) refer to as “digital artefacts”!

The picture is at its best when viewing bright coloured subjects, like digital cartoons. Toy Story looks bright and crisp when played on this machine. It has trouble, however, with more subtle colouration, like skin tones.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying the picture is unwatchable not by a long shot. It is vastly superior to video in every way. However, by DVD standards, it is below par.

Allie’s Verdict 6/10

Sound Quality
The sound quality is good when the player is plugged into the speaker cabinet supplied with it and our television’s stereo sound is used at the same time. This gives a vague facsimile of surround sound, as sound is coming from five speakers, although the speakers are static and omi-directional.

Regular and more discerning DVD users, however, would soon want to move up to a more sophisticated player with true surround sound capabilities.

The amplifier provided has four preset channels, which allow you to set different stereo and bass values for playing different films or MP3 discs. Your television and video sound can also be routed through the amplifier.

The bass bin is surprisingly effective and does pad out low end sound well.

The GDVD100 handles MP3 and CD playback very well and sound is fairly comparable to any reasonably priced home CD player.

Allie’s Verdict 7/10

*****Handset*****

The remote control handset for the GDVD 100 is quite large and clunky but the main buttons are intuitively arranged in a circle pattern and easy to use.

However - and it is a huge however - the quality of the remote itself is very poor. The beam is very narrow indeed, meaning that it is only really effective if you are sitting directly in front of the machine. If you are sitting slightly to one side, you have to stick out your arm and keep pressing the button until you get the right angle and it decides to work.

According to Goodmans’ service department, this is a standard fault in cheaper remote control units and is due to use of low-end budget components, not a breakdown that can be fixed.

The remote also contains an eject button which ejects the DVD tray, but be very careful about accidentally pressing it if you have the cabinet door shut!

Allie’s verdict 3/10

*****Conclusion*****

I had high hopes for my DVD player but it has let me down in a number of ways. It is adequate. That is about all that can be said for it. It performs better than a VCR and you don’t have to rewind. But you can get much better for your money these days.

Take my advice – give the Goodmans GDVD a miss and shop around very carefully. Scour the DVD user websites and magazines and take note of personal recommendations. If you buy a budget player, don’t expect miracles. And if you want the true cinema experience, don’t expect to get it without laying out quite a wad of cash for a decent sound system and widescreen television.

As far as the price of this unit is concerned, however, it should be pointed out that this model is now more than a year old and budget DVD prices have fallen drastically in recent months, so you could pick up a player of this quality for as little as £100 now.

Allie's Overall Verdict 39/60

Thanks for reading :O)

 ajools/alliechuckle 2002