disappointed :(

Sony DVP-NS36 multiregion player arrived very quickly -from there it was all downhill.........I bought this to play the wealth of American DVD's I own,[ having changed our TVand DVD system, we lost our 'chipped DVD ]:(
So US DVDdidn't play straight away, straight out of the box -I do own a Kameleon, but different model, so I am stuck between a rock and a hard place. Great. Looks okay though.

Total disappointment - you can't watch one channel and record another!

I am very disappointed with this machine and dearly wish that I'd paid more attention to other Amazon user reviews before I bought it.

The set-up was really tricky - it took me about 2 hours over 3 days (and I'm not a technophobe). That's despite the fact that I have a nearly new Sony telly so they should be very compatible. The instruction book is truly dreadful.

AND only then did I realise that it will not record one programme whilst you are watching another, nor can you record two programmes simultaneously (both you could do easily on my old hard disk freeview box which cost me about £60 - though granted it did pack up after 18 months). So if you want to see two programmes which clash you are stuffed.

Why oh why didn't I go for something simpler and cheaper?

PLAYING COLOURISED DVD's AS BLACK AND WHITE

I am very pleased with the Panasonic DMREX77. My problem is playing a colourised DVD as monochrome. My Panasonic CRT Television PL28 will not allow me to change colour when playing material from HDD or DVD. I can change contrast and brightness but the colour seems to be set. If I watch television through the recorder then the colour control works, but not when playing the HDD or DVD. Any suggestions on how to solve this problem?

Typical good Sony

The DVD player was delivered at 11.00am the morning after ordering at 4.00pm.
The display spec is a little dissapointing but in reality the picture quality is very good. When using head phones as I usually do , on very quiet passages there is a little motor noise created by the DVD unit but to be honest it does not spoil the usage at all. Photo and MP3 playback are great.
As usual Amazon beat all contenders on price.
All in all a great buy and the battery on playback is as good as they claim , the best I have had is 5 hours 38 mins to a charge.

Ken Baker
Wakefield.

Worth every penny

Excellent quality. Arrived promptly. Easy to setup. Recording within the hour. Used DVD-RW. HQ setting is excellent although disks only last an hour. Took disk straight from SONY and played on Denon with no finalising required. Ace. N.B. For best quality (up to 2 hours) get some Dual Layer DVD-RW. May need a hack for multiregion.

good little machine for the money

bought one of these last minute for my Mum for Xmas. Works well and she's happy with it.

Reliable little player

This is a great DVD player which has performed well on all but the scratchiest discs. The USB function has also worked flawlessly. Very good machine for the price.

Good recorder let down by EPG

This is a very good recorder let down by a fault in the EPG. Basically it's fine if you set it to record programs on the same day. However programs set more than 24 hours in advance can be lost.

The good news is that apparantly (according to the pcadvisor website) Sony have a fix on CD-ROM. Call them on 0800-1695263.

Cheap, nasty and did not work!

I bought this in good faith after reading the other reviews but totally stick by the 'you get what you pay for' ethos. Except, I paid for something that didn't work! It wouldn't spin the discs up and just showed the message 'loading' then 'bad disc'. I'll be steering clear of Alba in future!

Good little runner

I bought my first for the intention of watch region 1 dvds and it lives up to its expecatations. There are some hiccups but you forget them after time as they don't cause major disruption and very rare at that. I'm onto my second now as the first one died. But thats what you get for 18pounds. It does a great job, without having to fiddle about with any coding issues on your more up market models. Its worth the price and you can afford to replace. Not saying that they're tacky. My first was nearly used on a daily basis, which probably led to it dying on me. Buy one and you'll save money, End of

Picture quality worse than Cyberhome. Item is noisy.

Returned this item as picture quality is inferior to my cheap Cyberhome player - yes really. (Played out of the box with no attempt at adjustments.) Also unit is noisy - periodic clunk from disc drive along with other noises when in play mode. This player has a cooling fan in a housing protruding from the rear which also contributes to the noise. Are fans really necessary or just a fashion statement? Consumer electronic equipment of old got pretty hot but never needed forced cooling. Seems to me that with fans in PCs and other devices the living room is slowly becoming industrialised. The basic play buttons are not intuitive and menu presentation is unrefined. Never got round to trying any record features.

Bargain DVD

Wont add too much to what has already been said, suffice to say it ticks all the boxes and for £30 one of the cheapest around.
I would mention that when mine arrived, the box it was in did not mention it was DVD+r/rw compatable only DVD-r/rw despite saying on the website that it was.
Thankfully it plays all types! Must just be a packaging error!

wast of money

I was quite happy with my old Panasonic DVD player until it decided to give up the fight. So I thought the Hyundai HPD719 DVD Player would be the answer to my problems. I was wrong, the screen quality was appalling and to top it of I was supplied with the wrong TV connections.
The quality is cheep and nasty, don't by it if you're used to something better.

Not as good as the Shinco

Very disappointing. Had I paid full price I would have felt cheated. The picture quality is poor, the remote control is inaccessible and worst of all it has no memory so when you restart you have to go through the laborious process of selecting the relevant scene. I had the Shinco (10") which had an infinitely better quality picture but very few functions and an awkward shape. This is the second Philips portable DVD i have owned and they seemed to have failed to evolve. The battery life is lamentable and far shorter than advertised.

toshiba hd-ep30

Im not sure what the hell Amazon is playing at with my order, ordered on 31st March and sill 20th April no DVD player. You are breaking rules and will loose my custom in the future as i was going to order a PS3 from you. But bak to the EP30, my friend has one and wow this shines over blueray. What are you thinking to stop making this toshiba. I think they should bring it back and keep both formats. Hope you get your sooner than me. At £59.99 and 2 films what a steel.

Next generation DVD

I have to say first off that this is a wonderful DVD and blu ray player, on my sony the image and sound is very good and it really is a step up, but, this is still new technology and it does take a few seconds to set up even old DVD's let alone blu ray discs.
If you want full blu ray support then I wouldn't hesitate to recommend this player, it is still faster and better quality than many others on the market.
If you just want something to upscale older DVD's then you may be buying something which is slower and less friendly than a five year old DVD player, pays your money and takes your choice really.

Great for DVD/HDD/TV ... rubbish for VHS video.

The (mostly) rave reviews here, and the decent price, convinced me to buy this machine.

Well it arrived today, and I must say it's a bit of a disappointment.

Yes, mine is multi-region, it plays region 1 & 2 DVDs, it plays backup copies without problem, it plays PAL & NTSC tapes, and it records unprotected material to DVD, HDD and VCR (all tested and confirmed).

But there are two very serious problems, at least one of which is a design fault.

First, when you play tapes on the VCR, you can only get audio through the scart connector, you won't get any sound at all through the audio leads. Yes, really ... I'm not mistaken. So for those who have a TV with no speakers (i.e. use an external amp), the VCR is essentially useless.

At first I thought the unit was faulty, so I immediately called the provided Toshiba helpline number. They just confirmed my fears. This is a"feature" of the unit. Yes, they /deliberately/ designed this thing to /not/ output audio from the VCR through the RCA audio connectors!

Undeterred, I decided to try splitting the scart signal into composite audio and video. I have a tonne of leads at home, and I was sure I'd find one that worked. Short answer: No.

It's quite bizarre. When you split the scart signal, and feed the audio to an external amplifier, you do indeed get an audio signal from both the VCR and the DVD ... /but/ ... the TV signal (in my case Sky) comes out as white noise. After a bit of fiddling I discovered that setting the"decode" option in the channels setup to"on" for my (one) channel fixes that problem ... but introduces another ... now the DVD and VCR audio won't play through the (split) scart connector ... I only get the TV signal.

So that's that then. I have to choose between white noise on the TV signal, but perfect DVD and VCR audio playback, or perfect TV signal audio playback, but total silence from the DVD and VCR, or perfect TV and DVD playback through the RCA connectors, but total silence from the VCR.

Then there's my second problem, and bear in mind I've only had this machine for a whopping 2 hours so far, so the list may get much longer as the days go by. The second problem is fast searching on VCR tapes results in a blank screen (a nice shade of blue). Once you stop searching, and press play again, the picture /does/ return, but it kind of makes the whole"search" feature of video tapes completely useless. I tried this on an"LP" tape, and amazingly it does show a picture while searching ... but not on"SP" tapes (i.e. all pre-recorded material).

I have to assume that this is an /actual/ fault, as opposed to a design flaw, but given the obviously stupid design of this machine, nothing would surprise me.

In essence, the VCR functionality is little more than an afterthought, and an extremely poorly implemented one at that.

As for everything else, so far it all works fine, but I'm so bitterly disappointed with the excruciatingly bad VCR support, that I'm only awarding it a 3/5.

My advice ... forget it, and buy the more expensive Panasonic.

DO NOT BUY!!!!!

Bought it a few days ago, got it tried to play region 2 discs - didn't work.......... sending back tommorrow.........Really annoyed!

The winner plays it all !!!!!!!

After much thought and consideration I purchased this Blu Ray player from Sony. What a great choice I made especially as Toshiba have droped the rival HD DVD format. After setting the player up to my Sony Bravia HD TV & theatre system, I loaded it up with Casino Royale on Blu Ray. The Picture and sound blew my mind!!
Yes it's true to say start up is slow (about 1 min), but the wait is worth it.
I also downloaded the firmware from the sony web site and followed the instructions to update it. This was so easy and will make it compatable for future BD-R Discs.
Looks like I backed the winner and can't wait to see all future films released on blu Ray for a real high definition experience.

Dissapointed and Disgusted

I ordered this item on 13th January 2008,that date has most certainly been unlucky I as yet have not received the item.
Amazon are still advertising the item as available and in stock, I have lost count of the amount of E Mails I have sent demanding an answer from them,I get auotomated replies from Amazon and the occasional name added to the response, but no commited answer from Amazon.
They have even taken the antisipated delivery dates off my account notification.
I have demanded a confirmed date, but I never get a reply.
The service is disgusting,they are advertising the product still, and I have asked many times for them to send the items they are advertising as in stock,no answer!! By the way, the item they now advertise is more expensive than the item I ordered, I think that tells you something"con" is the term I would use.
WHERE IS MY STUFF??????