Which hdmi DVD player approx £100?

[G a f f e r]

Hi.
I think my Jamo DVR50 has finally died (1 month after it's 2 year warranty ran out ).
It doesn't respond to any inputs and doesn't play anything or output any signals.

Anyway, I have to start again, and wanted to go the seperates route.
I have a Panny AE500 with DVi input and native 720p resolution (also allows 1080i).

I was looking for a player that:

• Has DiVX playability
• Upscales to preferrably 720p (1080i OK too)
• Costs around the £100 mark
• Has HDMI or DVI output
• Can be easily modded via bootdisk/handset hack (NOT needing a chip mod) to play any region and also RCE discs

It will be partnered with an AV amp (eg Yamaha one) and I can buy the spkrs 2nd hand/seperately

These are my shortlist:
Samsung DVD-HD850 - £100
Samsung DVD-HD860 - £90 play.com
Samsung DVD-HD960 - £120 play.com....worth the extra? I've heard the latest firmwares on these cannot be multiregioned?
Tosh SD-350E £90 - cheap, plasticky feel so not a favourite
philips DVP5900 £70ish - ditto...what is it with cheap nasty plastics nowadays?
LG DVX9900H £100 - looks a good bet but no 720p? (don't wanna upscale to 1080i only to have another conversion to native 720p by the projector...rather just have an initial conversion to 720p that the proj can "leave alone").

Anyways, any experience with these? The advantage of my dvr50 is the DiVx playback and the RCE 1 playback (I have some which won't nomally run on other "multiregion" players, but the Jamo handled them flawlessly).

Any I should also shortlist and which do you recommend?

Cheers

Gaffer

[hornydragon]

i think most would say get the oppo, i have never used one but try a search

[unique]

i dont think the 960 is out yet (or the 860), the 950 could, altho newer models you had to downgrade firmware from a disc to make MR. i have the 950 MR from richersounds £120

the 950 plays sacd and dvda, the 850 doesnt. both play divx and upscale and come with hdmi cable. its up to you if the extra dosh is worth it for dvda and sacd. if you like pink floyd and dsotm, then it can be worth it to play the sacd of dsotm alone, and wywh is due out sometime this year as is the DG solo album in sacd surround

there is also a few new pioneer models due out may/june worth considering, the 696 is £120 from amazon and plays dvda/sacd/divx and sounds a very promising cheap hdmi upscaling player. theres also a couple cheaper models without dvda and sacd, so if your not in a hurry and can wait a few weeks, those might be the ideal models. there are some details on the avland site about them

[Papua]

Not sure which one to recommend but the LG DVX9900H does output 720p.

[G a f f e r]

Papua = thanx for that. The box didn't mention 720p and the monkeys ....ahem..sales assistants in Curry's didnt' have a clue.
Guess it's looking more tempting then.

Hornydragon, did you mean this?
Looks Fantastic...just what I need...can it be multiregioned easily and play RCE discs? (comes with a DVI-DVI lead too...excellent ). Can only find it on one UK site though (IT supplies .net), @ £170 so it's way over budget for the other shortlisted machines that do the same for half the price.

Unique, does your 950MR also play RCE discs?

EDIT: HornyDragon, just seen the OppO thread over here which have answered most of my Q's (apart from wether it will play RCE discs). Seems like having the Faroudja DCi chip on board is worth the extra over the others shortlisted, no?
But I do have a few other concerns such as:

Image does not fill the entire frame. There is a 3-4 pixel border all around the image in all DVI resolutions. (This problem is not seen in all displays. Direct view displays typically have 3-5% overscan which will hide this problem. Displays that allow for precise border to border adjustment including projectors may exhibit the problem)

and

Some languages are not recognized and displayed in the subtitle and audio track options, like Portugese, Korean, and German

(I have Korean, German and Brazilian films)

[unique]

it's hard to tell what discs have got RCE or not, but i've never had a problem playing anything. i'm sure some of the kevin smith discs have RCE. i certainly must have some stuff with RCE, the amount of discs i have

if there are any popular RCE discs you can think off (or anything you have yourself), let me know and i can tell you if they play or not if i have them

[tezer]

I got the hd950 from richer sounds for £109.passes all of your criteria

[G a f f e r]

Originally Posted by unique

it's hard to tell what discs have got RCE or not, but i've never had a problem playing anything. i'm sure some of the kevin smith discs have RCE. i certainly must have some stuff with RCE, the amount of discs i have

if there are any popular RCE discs you can think off (or anything you have yourself), let me know and i can tell you if they play or not if i have them

Hi.
The Region 1 version of Cowboy Bebop is RCE and won't play on any other "standard" mulitregion player apart from the Jamo AFAIK.

Also the International Edition of The Professional ("Leon" as an extended cut basically)

In fact, go to playusa.com and type RCE as a search and take your pick

Thanx

Tezer any difference between the 950 and 960?

[unique]

Originally Posted by Gaffer74

Hi.
The Region 1 version of Cowboy Bebop is RCE and won't play on any other "standard" mulitregion player apart from the Jamo AFAIK.

Also the International Edition of The Professional ("Leon" as an extended cut basically)

In fact, go to playusa.com and type RCE as a search and take your pick

Thanx

Tezer any difference between the 950 and 960?

i dont' have cowboy beebop, but i have the 2disc r1 of leon and that plays fine. you can't really trust play as they list stuff as RCE when it's not. most of my r1's are from play or cdwow, and quite a few are listed as RCE but i don't think they are. i've never really heard of problems with RCE discs for a long time, so it's probably not such a problem these days

[hornydragon]

Never used the oppo but thought it was £130 ish, i have a pioneer that plays RCE fine and i would expect all decent players to do so but under £100 not plaing some obscure discs is acceptable (when you pay £1000+ it isnt IMO)

[G a f f e r]

Thanx.
The way that the Jamo got "around" the RCE coding was that I manually had to set the region to "region 1" before playing the disc.
Simply having it set to "all regions" wouldn't work.

Can someone confirm that this will effectively work with any player (ie at most, I'd have to go into the menu system (or handset hack) and set the player to "region 1 only" rather than leave as "any region").
If this is the case, it implies that any of my shortlisted players would be OK.

(HornyDragon, you're right, you gets what you pays for , but my £450 Jamo consisted of av amp + 5.1 spkrs + dvd player all in one, which comes to £150 per "part"...and that could play everything fine....)

[unique]

i just have mine set to all regions, and i've never had a problem. you do have the option to change it via handset hack, so if you did get stuck you can set to R1 and back again. i've never had a problem playing multiregion discs on any of the dvd players i've had tho. i did pick em to be able to play MR specifically

have a look on www.videohelp.com and see it it mentions RCE discs. i'm sure someone would have posted if it couldn't handle them

[garydhooper]

I can recommend the Sharp 97 DVD player. It outputs 720p and 1080i, includes HDMI cable, plays Divx including DRM. I paid £76 inc delivery from Tribal UK. Don't know about hacking it for multi-region though.

[NinjaMonkeyUK]

How about the Panasonic DVD-S52 which is on its way? It has DivX playback, HDMI output & upscales to 720p / 1080i. This is the one I'm waiting for...

[loz]

Originally Posted by Gaffer74

it's way over budget for the other shortlisted machines that do the same for half the price.

Well "do the same" is a subjective opinion.
Do they all upscale standard DVD to 720p or 1080i? Yes.
Do they all do it as well as each other? Hardly...