All DVD players produce an excellent picture. Compared to the best VCR, a DVD picture is streets ahead. So what's the difference between all the different makes, then? Can you really justify shelling out £500, when a £200 model gives just as good a picture?
Review magazines will rate DVD players by the "features" they have, including sound quality. If you're only interested in a DVD quality picture, and sound at least as good as you get from broadcast TV anyway, then you'll probably not be bothered about other bells and whistles.
This was my first DVD player. I'd already studied "Which This?" and "What that?" magazines and made a note of their best buys. But when I turned up at my local box shifters (Comet, Currys, Scottish Power) they didn't seem to be stocking those particular models.
In the end it was almost a random choice. I was reluctant to go for the cheapest one there, and the Hitachi had a nice silvery look to it. It cost me £199 on 26 Jan 01.
It supports VideoCD and CD as well as DVD. I played a compact disc, and it sounded fine to me through my TV's nicam stereo speakers.
I like the handset. It has straightforward buttons for navigation, rather than one of those fiddly joysticks I've tried elsewhere.
The player has options for zoom (x2 and x4) from any of 64 positions over the screen. It can play back up to x32 speed. You can repeat a particular segment over and over; you can bookmark up to three positions, to which you can easily return; and you can set it to play DVD scenes (or CD tracks) in any order you choose. But for all I know, most other players will do this too.
One thing that surprised me was the output behaviour. Coming from 10 years of S-VHS video, I had always believed that S-video was king. Certainly superior to a mere scart for VCR use, and I always made sure my TV had an S-video input. Yet in the DVD world the scart (RGB) lead gave a noticeably better picture than the S-video one. It even said so in the manual, so it isn't just me. I don't know if this is true generally, or just for Hitachi models.
Overall a very satisfactory purchase.
More details
Ease of Use
Very Easy
Ease of Installation
Very Easy
Remote Control
Good Quality
Instructions
Helpful / Easy to Follow
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