 | Reasonably priced Easy to use, performs playback smoothly, no stutter |  | Color Patchiness and artifacts here and there Absolutely no extra features |
The DVD market is far from over, because at the end of the day, big brands like Samsung and the other far east electronics giants will reflect so in their product releases. India still needs a good cheap DVD player, and thus it is our job to see which one can fit the bill. Today we are reviewing a DVD player cum FM radio by Samsung, called DVD-P182R, already quite famous in the online and discount stores.
Design and features
This one is a true no frills budget model, but the aesthetics are not tacky at all. The finish is black all over, with a mildly lustrous finish. The front panel is curved and well contoured, with bare necessities on the fascia. There is a black tray with a lone power on button to its left with illuminations provided by a tiny LED. This glows red on standby, and adds to the subtle good looks. The right side has a small alphanumeric green LED screen, shaped flat rectangular with circular corners. Again, in this extremity too, there are only two slightly squarish push buttons. One is for eject and stop while the other is for play and pause. Of course there is a remote with all the necessary controls, but no batteries included.
The connections are also scarce, so this will be one of those days that brings back nostalgia as after months we would be not checking HDMI, as this model doesn't have it. It has good old component video out, and regular composite. There is a digital audio out in the form of co axial out, and also 5.1 analog audio out, thus the DVD player at least does some work on its own of decoding.
It plays DivX and MP3 CDs, catering to most customers' needs. The unit might come locked in region 5, thus adventurous users can unlock the code. (http://www.videohelp.com/dvdhacks/samsung-dvd-p182r/9346). One can also call the retailers up, because more often than not, they are helpful in DVD region matters. Besides this, it plays all the regular media like DVD, DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD+R, DVD+RW, CD, CD-R, CD-RW. Playback formats are listed as follows: MP3, WMA, VCD, SVCD, JPEG, MPEG-4 and DivX. There is no USB input and also no upscaling, guess we will have to stick to our TV to do the enlarging. It does have progressive video output though. Thank God.
Performance
We went forward with this review keeping in mind the entry level pricing and decided not to be too strict. But of course the DVDs must run smoothly without framing and stutter, however cheap the model is, and the good news is that this player can play DVDs quite smoothly, even menus and navigation is a breeze, as it is not intensive anyways for eg. there is no 1080p upscaling to choose.
We used the included RCA component wires and plugged in to a Panasonic Vierra telly, and slid in DVE test Disc first, followed by Ratatouille. The playback was not all that bad, all the colors were nicely in their borders (no Y/C delay), something that component video can suffer from. And also the progressive video output was a decent job, though there were a few artifacts around and about. Another issue was a little patchiness in the colors, especially in extreme ends of the bandwidth, the darker areas were not that smooth and fine. This is purely the DACs job, and the low cost factor comes into play here.
Conclusion
At Rs. 3,600, this player makes sense for those totally inconsiderate of fine picture quality, or if you want to gift your mum. It’s easy to use, and the well responsive menus and resume functions etc. make it a nice budget player, but those who recognize video artifacts will definitely not like this player, they need to spend a bit more.
No comments:
Post a Comment