Roadstar DVD2221K

Author's product rating:   

Picture Playback	Satisfactory
Sound Level	Poor
Range of Features	Limited
Durability	Satisfactory
Value for Money	Poor

Advantages:	Cheap
Disadvantages:	Doesn't work well enough

Recommend to potential buyers:

no

Full review

As a DVD player, this is fine. But I bought it for the karaoke function, and that's where the problems are.

For starters, although the player had digitial audio output, it doesn't carry the microphone signals. So if you have to use the RCA 'normal' audio outputs for karaoke- probably not a big deal for many, but it caused me a bit of head scratching when trying to get it to work with my (cheap) home cinema amp, until the truth dawned.

So having connected the player up to the RCA inputs on my amp, I tried playing one of the supplied karaoke discs and 'singing' (others might not call it that) over the top. Plenty of accompanient coming out of the speakers, but not my dulcet tones. Turn the mic input volume knob on the player up to max-still no joy, despite the microphone being right up to my mouth.

Then I spotted the volume control on the DVD player remote, and found that if I turned this right down to 1 or 2 (out of 16), and turned up my amp to compensate, I could then hear myself. However, with the amp turned up so high, you could also hear interference.

I did try looking in the manual (mine was version 2), but that referred to a microphone setup page which didn't exist.

After speaking to a Roadstar/Alba support person, who said I had a faulty unit, I took it back to Argos. However they had discontinued the player, so I got my £90 back. Actually I was pleased, as I had seen that you could get it for £50 direct from the Roadstar website. So I ordered another one from Roadstar.

Well, you should have seen what they sent me. The top cover of the player was all bent out of shape, they front face was coming away at the edges, there were scratches where previous owners had missed the DVD slot, the manual was back to version 1 (the most recent is 3), 3 of the 5 supplied discs were non-standard (DVD style cases instead of CD), and it was just generally shabby. No wonder they are selling them off cheaply.

And of course it didn't work any better than the Argos one. Needless to say, it's going back tomorrow (Roadstar have arranged pick up).

Basically, it looks like there's a design fault with this model- the level of the microphone inputs is not set high enough with relation to the DVD audio, so it's almost impossible to get the correct balance between the 2 sources.

As a replacement, I've ordered a Sunfly K-Box karaoke box from eBuyer for £18, which you just plug in between your TV/amp and existing DVD player. Fingers crossed...