Budget DVD Players
Budget DVD Players will make a nice rodent home in the landfill
Mass production of cheap optics and processors for DVD Players has made them easy to find at less than $50 at your local big box retailer. Features that were once considered premium are standard on even the most low-budget DVD players today. Progressive scan, slow motion, pause, zoom - all by remote control - are features you can take for granted today. The DVD players listed here are the bottom of the line, the very cheapest of the cheap. DVD Players in this price category are manufactured at OEM factories in Asia and may have a variety of names put on them. Many DVD players are literally clones of other cheap brands; the guts get passed around for other companies to slap on a face plate and a name brand.
CyberHome CH-DVD30s is a typical cheap DVD player. It's a compact DVD model, extra small so it takes up less shelf space.
CyberHome's CH-DVD300s can be found at about $40, that's less than some people pay in cab fare to get home from the bar. This little DVD player can produce video in progressive scan and output the images to an HDTV in 480P using component outputs. Thanks to inexpensive mass-produced processors, the CyberHome CH-DVD300s can playback various formats that can be read on optical discs besides the standard CD/DVD-Video. It also reads VCD, SVCD, JPG, MP3 and can read these on DVD-R/W, R/RW, CD-R/RW. It also features a coaxial digital audio output but since the player itself cannot decode Dolby Digital you'll need a receiver that can do the decoding. CyberHome's CH-DVD300s also has stereo RCA audio outputs for analog two-channel audio. This player is only 8-3/4" wide and at a hair over 3 lbs. - a modest sack of White Castle hamburgers could outweigh this puppy.
Next up is the NexxTech DP3222 DVD Player. This is a $30 DVD player among the cheapest available today. Thirty bucks for a DVD player is a plateau broken only recently in the consumer electronics world. Remember, the DVD player is a digital playback device that only a few years ago would set you back hundreds. Technology backed by consumer demand has truly given us reverse inflation at its best.
The NexxTech is a slim unit with a small footprint that can output video in progressive scan to your HDTV, presenting it with a resolution of 480P. This one plays DVD, VCD, SVCD, CD-R, CD-RW, MP3, CD, JPEG images. Missing is the DVD R/W, Sony and Philips own standard which cuts out a lot of rewritable media. The standard is DVD-R so that shouldn't cause too much concern. If you're looking for bottom of the barrel cheap for a second DVD player for the camper, cottage or a second player for the house, these are a great value.
With inexpensive DVD players out there complete with features like progressive scan and multi-format capability, why would one want to spend any more on a DVD player? Why is there such a disparity between these and more expensive DVD players? The answer lies in what makes these DVD players so cheap - mass produced processors and cut corners on electronics.
The progressive scan feature is wrongly sold as giving DVD the ultimate image quality. It's only relevant when using the DVD player with component cables connected to a Digital Television such as an HDTV. So if you're using a standard definition TV using an S-Video connection, you're not seeing any benefit from the progressive scan feature. If you did in fact have a large-sized digital TV, you'd really owe it to yourself to get something a little higher on the scale than the $30-$50 DVD player. Your eyes will thank you for taking this advice.
Cheaper electronics and materials used to produce DVD players of this caliber is the reason a $40 DVD player is billed as "compact" and lightweight. Small and inexpensive materials are used to produce these units on the cheap. From the power supply to the face plate, less stuff means less materials cost, lighter weight means less cost shipping from Asia. All these cut corners add up to cheap units with leaky circuitry that will produce comparatively noisy audio and video when stacked up against even a moderately priced unit that uses better electronics. Smaller, cheaper optics and motors means the unit will not hold up under stress of constant use as well as a unit with a little more weight. So the old adage, you get what you pay for, is especially true when it comes to DVD Players. If you want a DVD player that isn't built to last and you don't care much about image or sound quality, you may not mind having to replace the unit in a year.
Next we'll look at slightly more expensive units on the next rung of the ladder - those DVD players around $100. Page 3 Low Cost DVD Players $75-$150
