The DVD player that I opted to buy was a very inexpensive Sony DVD Player DVP-SR310P. There were actually 2 DVD players on sale that day at roughly the same price (~$25+taxes) but I opted to go with the Sony primarily because of the "Sony" name (even though I'm not what I would consider a Sony fan-boy). The other DVD player was from a "no-name" company and had an HDMI output. This Sony DVD player has only the RCA output as well as component output. Since I didn't have any component cables, I was more interested in the RCA phono output. I was a little worried that I didn't have any spare RCA phono cables lying around but the Sony DVD Player DVP-SR310P includes the RCA cables (yellow for video and red/white for audio). In fact, the unit includes everything to get started (minus the television of course). In includes the DVD player unit itself, the remote control, two AA batteries for the remote, and the RCA cables to connect to the television set.
The user's guide/instructions for the DVD player can be found *HERE*.
Even though the remote control has settings that allow you to use it as a remote control for your television set (and from other manufacturers), I wasn't able to get the remote control to work with my non-Sony television even though the manufacturer of my television is one of the listed manufacturers on the remote control instructions.
According to the specifications, the DVD player supports:
Video: MPEG-1 (Cyber-shot data)/MPEG-4 (simple profile)/Xvid Photo: JPEG (DCF format) Music: MP3 (except for mp3PRO)/WMA (except for WMA Pro)/AAC/LPCM/WAVE
Supported extensions: “.avi”, “.mpg”, “.mpeg”,“.mp4”, “.jpg”, “.mp3”, “.wma”, “.m4a”, “.wav”
Supported discs: DVD, DVD+RW/+R/+R DL (+VR mode), DVD-RW/-R/-R DL (VR mode/video mode), Music CD/Super VCD, CD-R/-RW
I tested it with DVDs and DVD-R and didn't have any issues playing them whereas my older DVD player would give me an error message with some of my DVD-R videos.
One of the features of this DVD player is that it has fast and slow playback with sound. However, the fastest that it can go and play sound is 1.4x so I generally don't use it. The minimum slow playback speed that it will support and play sound is 0.6x. The increments for the playback with sound go up/down in 0.2 increments so the possible options are 0.6x, 0.8x, 1.0x, 1.2x, and 1.4x.
One of the features that I like about this DVD player is that it has multiple disk resume. What this means is that if you're inserting DVDs into the player and you stop the DVD at a certain point to insert a different DVD, the DVD player will remember the point that the other DVD was stopped at and resume from that point on (if you press "Play" on the remote control). I tested this with 4 DVDs, inserting, removing, swapping them in and out and the DVD player remembered the exact point where each of the DVDs were stopped and resumed from that point onwards. I'm not sure what the maximum number of DVDs are in which it will resume playback but the DVD player that my parents have would only resume the previous DVD inserted so when you insert the third DVD, their DVD player would forget the playback location of the first DVD if it was later reinserted.
My only negative point about this DVD player (excluding the fact that even though my television manufacturer is listed on the remote control instructions but the remote control doesn't work with my television) is that I find the ejecting of the tray to be a bit loud when I compare it with the older DVD player that my parents have or to my computer's CD/DVD tray.
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I just purchased one of these as refurbished, from Factory Direct. Quite honestly I think you have given it a fair review . . . almost exactly as I would have given it (except for the parent part ;) )
ReplyDeleteI paid the same price as you and given its purpose as a no-frills player, I'd say it is money well spent. Yes I will be buying a "better" player in a while, but I will be keeping this as my backup. It is small, light and able little guy.