DVD player shopping help

[Garcon Bifteck]

Right... Family is looking for a DVD player and a Widescreen TV downstairs. My family is also looking for a reasonable price on this. I'm asking for help on the DVD player side of things....

Where can I find a cheap(ish) multiregion DVD player, preferably one of those combo-things that have a VHS player too. Because that seems to be important to my mother (**** knows why, we already have a VCR -- we're getting a new TV as well so we simply need a stand with slots for 3 boxes. Silly woman)

Alternately, if you could reccomend a TV with a built in multiregion DVD player that'd be nice

Reasonable price is also important. Not ?20 of course, but not ?1,000 either.

Cheers in advance for help.

[mid]

You really, really want the Toshiba SD-220E. No VHS deck, but its sufficiently small that you should be able to get one in the space you'll be using as well, its only ?119 from Richer for multiregion (or if you're feeling brave there is a French website with a firmware upgrade ISO to multiregion, but I've not tried it) and most of all it just absolutely kicks arse on picture quality.

I'm not joking - both my brother-in-law and I replaced our ?300+ machines with ones after he bought one for his parents for Christmas, and then I calibrated it all up for them. Plays everything I've thrown at it bar a particularly badly encoded xsvcd, too, which is nice.

For maximum bonus points, if you're getting a new TV at the same time, get on of the Toshibas that takes component inputs; it apparently looks even slightly better than the RGB Scart we both use.

edit - oh, and I've not seen a combo unit thats been reliably chipped yet, so I'd stick to seperates unless you really, really need to. Not that I've looked very hard, however, but these things usually pack so many bits in that chipping them would be a nightmare.

[Garcon Bifteck]

Cheers for the advice!

I did a google search for that DVD player and found some American sites selling them. Amazon.co.uk threw up this (http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/...343827-4031059) after a search, which is ?100 and appears to be pretty much exactly the same thing so I think we'll possibly be going for that.

Cheers for the help once again!

[mid]

That looks like the new model - the replacement for the 320. As far as I can tell, the only differences are that the new 330 and 230 support JPEG display and WMA playback. They might have tarted up the audio playback support slightly if memory serves, too. I'm not aware of them messing up the video circuitry, so you should be fine with that one. And its still only 6cm high, so there's plenty of room for a vhs deck on top.

[beecee]

Buy Pioneer, they are the best players on the planet! IMO

but you can pick up a decent multi region player in the region of ?100 -200
and that will do the job perfect, make sure that it does rgb though. some budget models don't do it to cut cost so be wary.

try these guys, i bought of them a number of times for friends and family (all pioneer)

http://homepages.force9.net/grahamash/magic/indexhome.html

they currently do this
Pioneer DV350 Slimline DVD/VCD/CD/MP3 player From Only ?89 upto 129

dont be too fussed about the combo drives. just get a cheapo standalone vhs player.

[mid]

Pioneer aren't bad, but I'm not joking when I say that the current Tosh decoder blows the 350 away. It really is rather good. Sure you're lacking bells and whistles, but for picture its up there with a 737 easily.

[charlesr]

I got that Tosh. It was a revelation! Just get it.

[a_c_saunders]

Yeah i've got that tosh too. Very nice picture, but seeing as its my first DVD player I can't really compare it to any other models

[Crisp_Rapper]

I got that Tosh. It was a revelation! Just get it.

parents have the slightly older version of that one... superb player for the money.