No idea which player??

[Pezerinno]

Hi, I'm in the process of buying a 37" sharp LCD TV (LC-37GA4E) as well as a Thomson DHD-4000 dual tuner freeview PVR. I also want to buy a standard DVD player but have no idea what I should be looking out for. They seem to range from about £20 into £1000s. To be honest I want everything to be of good quality however I can't afford to pay a fotune. It is just for the bedroom after all. Around the £100 mark is good, although I'm not sure if that will be enough to get me something decent. One thing is I want sound for the TV to come through my logitech Z-5500 5.1 surround sound speakers (which are connected to the pc - they can be connected upto 6 devices simultaneously). I'm not sure whether I need 5.1 sound on the DVD player as I think the logitechs include some sort of decoder. Having said that I know nothing about it really. I imagine I'll need progressive scaling.

If you could point out the things I should be looking for or perhaps some particular players in my price range.

Thanks.

[Henry]

The Toshiba 340 is supposed to be pretty good, but I'm sure that you'll have other suggestions. You can pick it up for less than seventy five quid Here

The Logitech does indeed decode 5.1 and DTS so you won't need a decoder on your DVD player just an optical interconnect that you can pick for not much at all.

[spocktra]

I can recommend the toshiba 340e.Picture and sound are excellent for the money.Build quality is a little thin but what do you expect for £75.00.Multi region hack works a treat too.

[Pezerinno]

This looks like the player for me then

Thanks.

[Andy_t]

Richer Sounds have got it for £70. It's out of stock online but if you print out the web page and take it in to one of their shops they'll match the online price.

[bonzobanana]

The Pioneer 575 is another popular option but from the sound of it you don't need a 5.1 decoder so perhaps its the Pioneer 470 would be the model to consider.

It has to be said neither the Toshiba or Pioneer are particularly well made players and their audio performance isn't particularly amazing but they do have excellent picture quality. Your current setup then is probably quite well matched with the above players but you still may be disappointed with the build quality of these players.

I have to say though that my personal opinion is that for such a nice LCD tv you really ought to spend a bit more and look to upgrade your audio system later. Maybe the Samsung HD945? It has a more expensive zoran chipset which has only recently become available. Its debatable which chipset mediatek(Toshiba/Pioneer) or Zoran produces more actual picture detail but I do think the zoran chipset produces a cleaner, more accurate picture and is favoured by top end companies like Arcam.

[Pezerinno]

The problem is, I'm a student so can't really afford to spend much more, also my room is small and I won't have room two lots of audio equipment. The logitechs will always be connected to my pc.

Will I not get that good a sound from the toshiba player and logitech speakers? Is this the fault of the player, the speakers or both?

[Henry]

Originally Posted by Nick25

The problem is, I'm a student so can't really afford to spend much more, also my room is small and I won't have room two lots of audio equipment. The logitechs will always be connected to my pc.

Will I not get that good a sound from the toshiba player and logitech speakers? Is this the fault of the player, the speakers or both?

It won't sound bad. Just not as good as a "proper" system could. Given your budget I'd've thought you'd be quite happy with it.