DVD Players - reviews and price comparison

In the latest years portable DVD-players have been introduced, these are suitable for travelling or such. They are however not optimal for playing DVDs at home on your TV since the picture quality is lower than on the stationary players.

Recording

Nowadays it is not just possible to play videos with much better quality than the old VHS tapes. It is also possible to record on DVDs or directly to a hard-drive on your DVD player. With the latter you don’t have to worry about finding discs or tapes to record!
(show more on recording) Record to DVD
A DVD-disc can store 4.7 GB which is equivalent to 2 hours of film of high quality. There are also dual layer discs which can store 8.5 GB but these are expensive and not many DVD-recorders can handle them. A DVD-disc today costs less than a videotape.

Record to hard drive
The advantage with a hard-drive is that you don’t need any discs to record; you just simply record the movie or TV-programme directly on your hard-drive. There are DVD-recorders with up to 400 GB hard-drive which means they can store 170 hours of recorded material of the highest quality, or 500-600 hours of standard quality.
When the hard-drive is full you can either delete old recordings or write (burn) them to DVDs to make space available on the hard-drive.
Another advantage with the hard-drive is that most hard-drive recorders give you the opportunity to ”pause” when watching a broadcast, a so called time-shift function. This enables you to take a break and make coffee and then come back and continue watching from where you paused. This means you’re then watching a recorded version of the programme, so you can fast forward during the commercial breaks to catch up with the live broadcast.
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Disc types

DVD-players with recording function can use different types of discs. Unless you plan to record to DVDs you don't have to bother. (more on disc types)

The different types are separated by a plus (e.g. DVD+RW) or a minus (DVD-RW) and are more or less equivalent but not exchangable. If you want to record on a DVD-player or computer, and play it in another player you must however make sure that they can write to and read the same type of discs. (Many DVD-players can play both types but record only on one of them.)
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Two new formats are entering the market, HD-DVD and Blu-Ray. These discs can store more information than the regular DVD-discs. This enables them to store video and sound in a higher quality. There are still quite few players with Blu-Ray/HD-DVD and besides there aren’t many movies in these formats yet either.

All DVD-players can also play regular rental-DVDs, music-CDs and some can also play MP3-discs with music.

Connections

There are different connections between the DVD-player and the television. The scart-connection is the most common there are also newer and better ones, for example HDMI, DVI and component video. If you want to connect your DVD-player with a plasma television it is recommended to use one of the newer connection types to get the best quality in picture.

SCART	HDMI

DVI	Component video

Firewire & memory card

Some DVD-recorders/hard-drive recorders have an iLink/Firewire-port, which means that you can easily connect your digital camcorder to record your own films on a DVD-disc (Show more on Firewire)

Some computer accessories and MP3-players use the Firewire port, but it is probably mostly used on digital camcorders. The computers generally use the 6-pin type, while camcorders often use the 4-pin type. The latter can be connected to the 6-pin type with an adapter.
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Some DVD-players also have a memory card reader which means that you in a simple way can show your digital pictures on your computer.

Firewire 6-pin port	Firewire 4-pin port

Surround sound

Almost all new DVD-players support Dolby Digital sound. This means that via the digital audio port (which is featured on most DVD-players) can connect your DVD to your home cinema system and get the surround sound. Most movies today support Dolby Digital.
DTS is one of the competing technologies and is said to have a better quality in sound but is not as well established and is less used in new movies.

DVD regions

For various reasons the DVD-industry has defined different region standards. This means that a DVD-player for region 2 (Europe) normally can’t play discs intended for region 1 (USA). Some DVD-players can however be made region free, so that they can play discs from all regions. If you travel a lot and buy films abroad it can be a good idea to buy a region free DVD-player.

Rating/awards

On testwinner.co.uk all the different ratings given by expert testers have been translated into a percentage from 0 to 100 with 100 being the maximum rating.
The average rating for a product can indicate different things. A low average rating is a warning that the product maybe won't live up the expectations created by the ads for the product. A high rating often means that the product has great features and works well. The more tests of the product the better accuracy in the average rating.

The amount of test wins/awards shows how many times the product has been named winner or been selected "Editor's Choice", "Best Buy" or received similar positive awards in tests. An award means that the product stands out from the competition in one way or another. It can be by giving value for money or by being innovative, or simply by just filling its purpose in a really good way.