DVD-Player Reviews

i bought one of these from cosco for $...and loved the overall set. however, whenever we played a dvd, we had to turn the volume up to its highest level in order to get normal sound. we called panasonic and they finally said it was a defective set and to return it,etc. the pasasonic people were less than friendly and could have cared less about the problem. we went to circut city and looked at the same set. guess what? the same problem with the sound when playing a dvd. the bottomline is that panasonic is no longer welcome in our house and we'll never buy anything from them again. they don't care about the customer or care about making anything right.

I bought this tv to stand alone in the bedroom. It is not hooked up to an amplifier. There is a problem with the DVD sound - you have to turn the volume WAY up when watching a DVD.
In addition, you can hear the DVD humming when it is playing.
The TV picture tube has been replaced once and is now on the fritz again. It will suddenly go black (no signal) or just loose the signal and play "snow" or just come and and out of focus. Debugging this one is tough. I do not recommand it as a TV or DVD player.

loses brightness after a few hours, then too dark to see on screen adjust tools-- then resets every time you turn it off-remote control is ridiculous--the secret service guy carrying the "football" with the president has less steps to program a nuclear strike than a panasonic user to brighten his tv

BUYERS, BE AWARE.
I had 2 DVD players made by Pioneer. They are nice machines... for a little over a year. Then the warranty expires. The problem these players seem to have has to do with poorly designed dual laser pick up (one - for DVDs, the other one - for CDs and Video CDs). The first player I had stopped playing CDs and Video CDs, I got the other one - this one stopped playing DVDs.
On the positive side - the picture is very good, so if you are after a short-term buy go ahead, otherwise look for another brand.

I purchased the DVC603 for two reasons, to be used as a DVD player and to replace/consolidate my Sony five disc CD player. After using it now for five months I'm now not so happy with my decision. Although it does a great job playing DVD's (as almost all DVD players now do) it does a poor job functioning as a CD player. If a CD has the slightest scratch it will skip and about 30% of the time when I put a CD into the player it has trouble reading it and opens back up again, very annoying. Finally, if your like me and you like to load five CD's, hit randon and let it go beware, it takes a long time to shuffle between CD's. Unfortunatley I had to go back into the garage, unbox the old CD player and bring it back into the house. Now I'm stuck with a five disk DVD player.

I've had this DVD player for 18 months now and have experienced no problems. DVD's look fine and CD's sound quite good. No problems with skipping, the only issue I've come across is that sometimes the unit has trouble picking up a CD/DVD in a slot. After reopening and hifting the disc a little the problem is resolved.

A total disappointment! I second the Sept. 22 review with how poorly this machine works and how terribly annoying and frustrating the system works (or does not work).

Don't buy. A more expensive single dvd player is the better way to go.

... but I hate to admit it. Today, I removed all my disks from the player for the 5th time in the year I owned the sony. I had it in the authorized service center 3 times and sony even replaced my unit once and was about to again for the same problem, putting the disks back wherever it felt like instead of where they belong. Not just the EZ play disk, but anything I watched. One of the times I had it repaired, the service guy told me he had 7 other units currently in for the same thing.

Trouble is my unit is hooked up to my whole system and when the movie was over, we turned the whole system off. With all those repairs and replacements no one ever asked how we were turning the unit off! It might have been in the manual -- which I did read, but I don't think I realized the difference between powering off from the remote and via the a/v system. After reading Jeffreys post I tried it a few times and it did put it back correctly when I powered off from the remote and did put it somewhere else when I did it the other way. Thanks Jeffery!

Other than that I loved the unit, it plays great, quality is great. It does spin around back and forth a lot when it first goes on and as Jeffreyp14 said, disk explorer isn't what it's cracked up to be. It was easy to add the titles with a keyboard, but I lost that info when I first had it repaired (ha!) and didn't bother to do it again. I think disk explorer had found 5 titles. It also does begin to play when you turn it on, but I believe there was something in the manual about that being the default and it could be changed. If I remember correctly, doing that, did work. Lately though, I've been too busy trying to find my disks to care about that.

The putting dvd's back wrong was my only complaint and it appears that's been resolved. I'm going to hold off on returning it (again) and make sure that was the problem. Assuming I get the same results in the future -- I'd recommend the unit. I'd even give it 5 stars except for the fact that no one ever told me about powering off in any of the numerous and lengthy phone conversations with Sony. You'd think someone besides Jeffery would know!

Contrary to what others have said, my experience with this DVD mega-changer has been excelent.

I think some of the problems mentioned stem from the user not understanding how the machine works. For example, a person in one of the previous reviews said,

"It also likes to drop the one you had in the easy slot (the 'plus one' slot) into other available slots, and I have to go looking for it"

This only happens if you turn the player off physically at the machine (also, if there is a power failure during,say, a thunder storm) instead of a power down with the remote. Powering down with the remote allows the disk to be removed from the dvd drive and placed back on the carosel.

Picture and sound are excellent on my 53" Sony rear prujection tv.

The only complaint i have is with the disk explorer feature. But then i bought a good number of my dvd's years ago before title info was included on dvd's, anyway.

1. RF out does not work. Had to connect TV to S-video.
2. It would record for a while, then fail and render the blank DVD unusable.
3. If you leave the machine recording on a blank, when it reaches the end, instead of stopping, it renders the DVD unusable.
4. Machine crashed numerous times, necessitating pulling the plug out and putting it back in to get it back.
5. Finally got a short show recorded and finalized. It would not play on a Pioneer Elite DVD player, although DVD-R's created with a panasonic DVD recorder worked fine on the Pioneer.
6. I wish these DVD makers would add a PS/2 keyboard jack on the front, as their remotes are painfully impractical at inputting text.

I'm very disappointed. Box is headed back to the vendor tomorrow.

It takes for ever to start up and recognize the discs. Sometimes it just 'hangs' - it just seems to be doing something but doesn't respond to any of the controls, after about 5 minutes it returns to life... very annoying to say the least.

Sometimes the D-R1s 'finalization' process makes discs unreadable. This just kills me. I spend hours copying my home video to DVD-R, think I'm all done, I can watch it fine before the finalization process, but after I add a title and finalize it toasts the disc (supposedly high quality - Memorex). Nothing will read these discs, not even the unit itself. I've lost hours of my time this way.

One of the main reasons I bought this unit is because it has an IEEE1394DV input. Sadly, like many other features on this thing, this sucks. The quality of recordings made via the IEEE1394 is WORSE than those using the standard video input. It seems to pause, or hesitate, every now and again, which makes the audio sound terrible. My DV camera is a high quality Sony. I don't see this problem when I copy DV to my PC using an IEEE1394DV cable. So I guess this is the fault of D-R1.

This DVD-Recorder happens to work very well. I know a few people have reviewed it and said that if they can get it to work, it works for a few minutes and then stops, but there is something they are not doing right...waiting.

You simply can not use this DVD-Recorder just like you would a VCR, where you can turn it on, and then immediately start recording something. I'll tell you how I figured that out. One time I set it to record a show that started at 9:00pm, so I put in a DVD-R and turned the power off. Well at exactly 8:50pm the unit turned on (at first I thought I did something wrong, but I didn't) and you could see the Zeros for the counter on the front of the unit (00:00.00). Then at exactly 9:00pm they started to count up to indicate that it was recording. Bottom line is that the Toshiba DR-1 needs about 10 minutes to warm up before it records something, otherwise...if you record right away...then you will get the problems that people have talked about. Once I learned to be patient and turn the unit on in advance (like if I am going to copy a VHS tape to DVD) I never had a problem with it again.

Oh and by the way, I have used VERY cheap DVD-R's like "Princo", "Ritek", "Optodisc", & "Dup-EZ" (mostly Princo) and they all work fine. Only thing is you should really go with what the manufacturer recommends for DVD-Ram, that being: Panasonic LM-AB120U (for 4.7gb single sided), and Panasonic LM-AD240U (for 9.4gb double sided).

There is one thing I am not crazy about, but I think that it happens to be this way with any DVD-Recorder. You can't do any editing (like cutting out commercials) if you use DVD-R, or DVD-RW (DVD-Ram only). You also can't edit if you are dubbing, like if you are recording from a VHS tape that has commercials in it and you want to pause them out while you make the DVD. It just doesn't work for some reason. But if you are recording a show on TV through the DVD-Recorders tuner, then "pause" will work just fine. I wish you could edit a little better, but I have learned to deal with it.

Lastly the "Timeslip" feature is just amazing (this too only works with DVD-Ram Discs). Let's just put it this way, if you are recording a show that is on from 3:00pm to 4:00pm and you get home early at 3:30pm, you can watch the very DVD-Ram disc that is currently recording from its 3:00pm start time and it will still finish the recording until 4:00pm. If that was a VCR you would either have to watch from 3:30 to 4:00, then at 4:00 rewind and watch the first half hour, or you would just have to wait and watch it all at 4:00. With DVD-Ram technology, you can watch the same disc that is currently recording.

That is amazing, and if you just leave a DVD-Ram disc in the unit while you are watching TV, you can pause live TV and rewind it and even fast forward it up to the point where you initially paused it. Then you can finish watching the program whenever you want.

So just have a little patience and you will love this DVD-Recorder from Toshiba. I think it's the greatest.

The Toshiba D-R2 would have been more appropriately named the Toshiba R2-D2 because it's just as quirky as the robot of Star Wars fame. While the interface isn't the most user-friendly, it shouldn't take very long for the average user to become familiar with it, though it did take a while to learn how to edit a title. While recorded picture quality is adequate, the main problem with this machine is its uncanny ability to record entirely through a disc without detecting "disc errors" and then during the finalizing process (DVD-R) discs, you commonly get the message "DISC MAY NEED CLEANING OR IS DAMAGED PHYSICALLY".
As I've been using DVD recorders for almost two years, I didn't think that brand new DVD-R discs required cleaning, but I cleaned a couple anyway. No cigar. After trying to record approximately 40 DVD-R discs FOR VIDEO on this machine, from both Fuji and Ri-Data, I've had to throw away almost 45% of the discs. If you like to spend much money on discs, this is the machine for you. It's highly doubtful that I was unfortunate enough to purchase two bad batches of discs, from two different companies no less. Rather than contacting Toshiba, I threw the D-R2 into the trash with the latest disc it couldn't finalize successfully. To provide company for the Toshiba D-R2, I also tossed the Philips DVDR-75 recorder, another nearly worthless machine that has caused many people much grief. Does anyone know of any DVD recorders manufactured to be relatively grief-free?

The Toshiba DVD recorder has too many great features to list in small review.If you are new to DVD Recorders or not willing to learn. Then get one desgined for dummies. But once you learn all its features, you will be rewarded with the finest quality recordings. Yes this unit has a 150 page manual, as well as two smaller ones. That alone should give you a clue as to how many features this has. The remote, does not have the strongest signal. However, you could always replace it with a universal remote. It does have some oddly labeled buttons. But once you learn them , all is fine.

The virtual keyboard that is used to name your DVDs. Is your standard "QWERTY" keyboard. Should you make a mistake there are a delete, backspace, and clear keys on the Keyboard. One odd feature is that you must press the PAUSE button for CAPS LOCK. But once you know that,it's simple to use. Just be sure to press the * key after you named your DVD disk. You are NOT able to edit chapter information on a DVD-R with ANY DVD RECORDER using DVD-R Disks. That's why this unit uses DVD-RW and DVD-RAM disks. Those disks are used for editing. The picture quality is excellent. There are three noise reduction units to prevent blocking and mosquito noise. Unless you record in the six hour speed you will not have to use them. In reply to the person who thinks this unit is difficult to use. He obviously needs a simple plug 'n' play tinker-toy unit like the $200 Gateway.

I have to admit the first couple of days were frustrating because this DVR is capable of so many things-more than I need! After reading the manual thoroughly, the dots did connect. I have owned it for over a month now and really have been enjoying it. This is my second DVR, first being a Magnavox which was a fair unit at best.

I bought the 2026 from Target two years ago and up till yesterday, I hadn't had any problems from the unit. Yesterday, I tried to look at a movie and...nothing!!! I tried the plugs and the power cord but they were correctly connected. The owner's manual was a joke. The worst part is that my movie is stuck in the player. I know this player is the 2027 and it may not happen to you- but do you want to take a chance?

These Memorex DVD players are junk. They are full of great options but they DON'T last long at all. My family had 3 of the 2026 model that each lasted less than 6 months...two of them played less than 10 dvds before crashing. There was a reason Target only carried that model for a few months before Memorex upgraded to the 2027. This model is also junk. Mine is less than 1 year old and no longer plays MP3 discs. It plays DVDs but does not function like it's supposed to. I won't ever buy Memorex again and I would strongly suggest the same.

I recently purchased a Memorex DVD player, and let me say that I am quite pleased with it. I was hesitant to purchase the item at first, but it was at a price that I just couldn't resist! Am a professional audio/video technician, so I am, needles to say, very picky when it comes to purchasing electronics. I am pleased with the plethora of functions integrated into this unit for such a low price. While I will admit, it is not the best brand on the market, the technology is comparable to to that of many much higher priced DVD players. I also appreciate the simple operation that this product offers. My children can operate it without much hassle, and it even incorporates a parent control lock, so my children can't watch movies that I would not approve of. I have never been much of a Memorex fan, but I must give them credit for their accomplishment. They have managed to produce a low-cost, high-quality piece of equipment, that I am proud to own. Memorex, Hats off to you!!

I'm an RCA fan. I have tons of RCA products. This DVD player has some real problems though - the infared eye only works if you point the remote straight at it. If you are at an angle it doesn't work. I exchanged for another and same behavior. Stay away from this unless you want to move around the room to find the right angle to pause your movie.

While the rest of this player seems to work fine, I found a problem when only analog stereo sound was plugged into the TV speakers. DVDs begin playback with no dialogue track. To fix this, you have to go into the player's internal menu system and change the digital out sound setting - even though there isn't any digital sound out connected! It must be an internal bug, but it's annoying as heck to have to go change this setting back and forth every time you put in a DVD.

After several years of playing DVD's on my Playstation 2, I decided to upgrade to a "real" DVD player. I didn't want to spend a whole lot of money for a one, so I original bought a Sony NS315. The Sony turned out to be a huge disappointment, so I decided to try the RCA. It was an opened box special at ... and [$$$] more than the Sony, but a much better player in my opinion. Hook up was a snap. There are 3 different input jacks for both audio and video plus a jack to hook up an audio receiver. All my DVD's play with crystal clear clarity. With a touch of a button on the remote control (this player has a "real" remote control unlike the "only good for a paperweight" one that came with the Sony), you can add subtitles, zoom, forward/reverse up to x32, etc. The player has a range feature in which you can soften the loud sounds of those action pack movies, so you don't wake up the neighbors at night. Also this player plays all my CD's, CD-R/RW, and MP3's without problems.

The hinge where the screen meets the base is very weak plastic, and after watching about 8 movies over the course of 3 months on the product it broke. Initial's customer service is a nightmare to deal with. I recommend you stick with name brands like Sony or Toshiba, who stand by their products.

I think it delivers great performance for the price. Good color, brightness, sound. We've used it in cars with the supplied cigarette lighter adapter, in planes, and conected to a TV. It plays all DVDs we've tried on it, including DVDs made with our Panasonic DVD recorder (I noticed another reviewer was not able to do this--you've got to finalize DVDs on the Panasonic--a procedure not inuitively obvious since it's buried deep in the manual). My only complaint is that the battery only lasts about an hour and a half. I'm looking for a spare batery to remedy that problem.

Just recv'd my player today and I'm really impressed.. not only does it play my dvd+r's but it also plays my dvd+rw's I made on my philips dvd recorder. The picture is crisp and the colors look great, the audio even sounds good for such tiny speakers, I was suprised just how loud it will go and still sound good. I highly recommend it to anyone looking for a player on the go.

I have heard nothing good about this type
model, and since Apex refuses to stand behind their
product, I refuse to waste my money on it.

This was a pretty good DVD player for its time, and has served me well over the past two years. Only two or three of my 300 DVDs will not play on it. It also plays VCDs and SVCDs well.

The small size of the unit is another plus.

But it doesn't seem to play burned DVD-R, so I'm going to have to replace it.

Before buying this DVD player, I had another one installed in my van. It skipped, locked, and did not play half of my DVD's. Since I had this one installed, I have not had any problems. I read the other reviews, and I can understand the problems with the poor customer service. I would not base my purchase decision based on one bad unit. Mine works great, and I have never had the need to call customer service. On my old DVD player, made by a different company, their customer service told me everything from it is a bad DVD, to they didn't manufacture it, and would not support it.

This is the DVD player to get. If the one you get does not work, just return it to where you bought it, don't bother with the customer service.

If you're looking for a multiple DVD/CD player, do yourself a favor and buy a higher quality unit than this one. First of all, it's very, very slow when loading or changing disks. Also, it will not automatically switch disks without programming it. If you put in 5 cds and expect it to play all five in a row, you will be disappointed. So it makes a terrible CD player. My 15 year old JVC CD player is 20 times as fast at reading a disc and going to a particular song. Plus, the toggle thing on my remote works only about half the time. The picture and sound quality are fine, but the damn thing won't even display how much time is left on a cut or a disc. You've been warned...

I bought this component to replace my aging CD changer (it's also my first DVD player). My old changer lacked a remote and would skip at the slightest vibration. So when I set up my system with the C621, I threw in Van Halen "Hot For Teacher", cranked up the subwoofer for the drum solo, and hit Play. Nothing happened. It wasn't even trying to read the disk. Hmm. So I look over the remote and try to find a button that might help. I hit "Disk Skip", "Menu" and nothing worked. So of course I start hitting random buttons and voila! The CD loads up and starts to play. At the time, I wasn't sure what made it work, but I didn't care because the drum solo sounded great. In spite of rattling the windows and vibrating glasses right off the coffee table, the C621 didn't miss a beat. It kept right on playing even with the subwoofer turned up to 11 (my old player would skip at about 4).

However, the next time I tried to play a CD, the same problem happened, it wouldn't load the CD, didn't even try. I called up Samsung tech support and the guy didn't know what was wrong.
"Did you try another CD?"
"No, but it eventually plays it if I mash on random buttons on the remote. Do you know which button is making it play?"
"Sounds like it might need a repair, you better ship it to our repair center in New Jersey."
"What?!?!?"
"Yeah, or try some other disks, maybe they'll work better."
"Thanks buddy, bu-bye."

So now I try contacting Samsung through their tech support webpage form to see if they know what button to hit. I describe the telephone support guy's ineptitude and suggest maybe I should return the system and get a model that works. The six word reply I get from Dario at Samsung is: "If they will take it back." Nice customer service: dumb AND rude.

Later that day I purchased a couple of DVDs. When I put in a DVD and turn on the TV, there is an initialization menu waiting for me on the screen. Apparently, the first time you use the C621, you need to select the default language by selecting the corresponding number on the key pad 1-5 (Dario, are you reading this?). THEN the C621 loads the first disk. THAT was probably the problem I was having with playing CDs. But because the TV wasn't turned on, I couldn't see the language initialization menu waiting for a number response. It either timed out and loaded the disk, or when I mashed on the remote I happened to select a language and it proceeded.

I haven't had any problems with the C621 since that episode. Overall, I'm satisfied with the component. The joystick on the remote feels a little cheesy, like it might eventually break. But it works fine for now. And for [the money], you can't beat the price.

I've only had this player for a few days but here are my initial reactions. I've played a few DVDs in the unit and the picture and sound are great I have no complaints but I did notice a few things.
1. The optical cable does not click in, it fits very loosely and seems like it would fall out, I took it back to the store to exchange it but when I got there I realised the display model had the same issue and they had no more in stock, the next comparable model (a Toshiba I think) so I decided to keep it. I guess another option would be to use a digital coaxial cable instead. If you're not using surround sound then this isn't even an issue for you.
2. I find the lights on the side indicating which disc is playing annoying but that's a minor issue
3. When playing mp3 CDs only the first 8 characters of the filename are displayed, not nearly enough to give you an idea of which artist/song it is

Overall I like it, I wanted a 5 disc changer with carousel that plays mp3s and this was the best deal I could find.