Pro DVD Player

[Bryson]

So, my DVD player (a Tascam DVD-01U) is misbehaving - composite video out has died and it's started glitching on some discs - so I need to replace it.

 

Shopping list:

Rugged: (The composite died on the Tascam really quickly and repair is proving tricky - it's several circuitboards deep in there..)

Buttons (Menu, select, up down left right) on the front panel. We lose remotes almost instantly.

Rackmountable

Tolerant of home-burnt discs.

Use as a CD player would be helpful

 

Price range: up to $800 (so about 500UKP)

 

 

Anyone got any recommendations?

[jason5d]

Pioneer do a good range of pro dvd players - you want the DVD-V8000 it's a bit more than your budget though,

much improved on the v7300D.

[David Lee]

Tolerant of home-burnt discs

- I have found that this is where Pro DVD players fall down. Very embarrassing when you then chuck it in a £20 DVD player from your local supermarket and it plays glitch free.

 

The Denon range can be good as well. I'll see if I can find the model number as there is at least one model where you can turn all OSD functions off - so no play or pause symbols popping up when you start and stop play back.

[ceecrb1]

We bought at work 2x Numark double dvd players.

 

http://www.futuremusic.com/news/images/numark-dvd01.jpg

 

To be honest they havnt held up very well AT ALL to being moved around.. they´ve probably done in the region of say 20 jobs each and now all 4 players skip badly, fail to read disks etc.. they seem to be far more suited to an instalation.. you maybe best looking for something other than these if your into moving around a lot.. and yes we treated them with care. they received normal treatment an "opp dpt case" would get.

 

my 2p

[sleepytom]

The HHB one is worth a look too.

http://www.hhb.co.uk/hhb/uk/products/detail.asp?ID=2905

 

TBH I wouldn't bother with any of these expensive players - none of them have any useful functionality beyond what you get on a decent home player.

 

If you want to spend a lot on a DVD players then get a pioneer DVJ1000 - this is like the CDJ1000 but with video functionality. Its a great player as it has solved most of the annoying issues with the DVD format, you can frame accurately cue disks and save cue points to an SD card. you can seamless loop sections of the disk. You can do fancy tricks such as slomo playback and even scratching. Its a great player even for conference work it can be a godsend as the accurate cuing and ability to seamless loop are really useful functions.

http://www.pioneer.co.uk/uk/products/44/10...1000/index.html

[Stuart91]

We've tended to just use laptops rather than use racked-up DVD players. Price of a modest laptop is comparable to some of the "pro" DVD players. You get the bonus of a built in screen for previewing etc. and obviously it can be put to a whole lot more uses as required.

 

A laptop might not be as good for Bryson's situation, but perhaps a small format or even rackmount PC could do the trick?

 

The one other bonus with computers in general is that if the DVD drive fails it is a relatively cheap part to replace.

[sleepytom]

We've tended to just use laptops rather than use racked-up DVD players.

do you not suffer from interlace issues on software dvd players?

 

software also suffers from region issues unless you use something like anydvd.

 

for me the key features that would make a dvd player worth more than £20 are

OSD (lack of!)

multiregion

NTSC/PAL switchable (so it outputs real NTSC from an NTSC disk that I can then convert to PAL with an imagepro or 1024g - most domestic players don't do this and output NTSC as PAL60 which doesn't work into vision mixers)

Digital Video out (HDMI or SDI)

 

The pioneer DVJ players have all these features (except digital outputs), otherwise I'm tending to use software players, often by ripping the disk first so I don't have the durability of home burn dvds to worry about.

 

I also have some samsung DVDs which cost about £50 each - they are mostly great, have minimal OSD and feature HDMI with upscaling, they are considerably better than the tesco's value ones (but don't have the ubercool tescos value logo on start up! There is something extremely pleasing about doing a corporate job knowing that a wrong button push could throw up the tescos value logo!!)

[mac.calder]

TBH I wouldn't bother with any of these expensive players - none of them have any useful functionality beyond what you get on a decent home player.

 

Pioneer DVD-V8000 has a "Super out" (with TC overlay etc for cueing) and the option to disable all menu output to any output but the super. A very handy feature. It also has frame advance on the front panel. Again, great for cueing.

[KevinE]

I guess there are lots of europe-wide machines that arent available in Canada and vice-versa!

[BlueShift]

Have a look at the HHB unit. Excellent quality, all the outputs you could want and complete front panel control

1u as well...

[nickb12345]

This is something I've been struggling with too.

 

We originally tried the Numark units mentioned above and they lasted about a 6 months. In our venues they are switched on for about 10 hours a day, but only playing video for maybe an hour in total. Discs are not changed often either, will often go a period of months without even ejecting the tray. All installed in racks too.

 

After that we got a couple of the Denon DN-V210 units on trials and after a couple of weeks testing were happy with them. We purchased about 20 of these and 12 months later have 3 working units within the company - and these you have to eject and reinsert the disc a few times over just to get it to read (nothing wrong with the discs).

 

We are installing AV gear in another 6 venues this year and I'm very tempted to just put in a couple of £20 Asda DVD players, but buy another 4 as spares. Would still cost a fraction of the price!

 

If you find a decent unit (without a ridiculous price) let me know :D

 

Sorry I cant be of more help.

 

Nick

 

 

 

Edit:

 

We have been using PowerDVD (came free with our PCs) for the last year without any issues (apart from a not being the most user friendly).

[david.elsbury]

Shopping list:

Rugged: (The composite died on the Tascam really quickly and repair is proving tricky - it's several circuitboards deep in there..)

Sorry to drag this up, I realise it's a 2 month old topic but I just had a thought- what do you mean by the composite died? The physical RCA connector? Would it be possible to fit a 1U panel to the back of the rack with BNC/ RCA connectors on it for the video, and RCA/XLR/6.5mm jacks for the audio output? This would take the strain of constant plugging/unplugging off the rear connectors?

 

:D

[Spyderman]

So, my DVD player (a Tascam DVD-01U) is misbehaving - composite video out has died and it's started glitching on some discs - so I need to replace it.

 

Shopping list:

Rugged: (The composite died on the Tascam really quickly and repair is proving tricky - it's several circuitboards deep in there..)

Buttons (Menu, select, up down left right) on the front panel. We lose remotes almost instantly.

Rackmountable

Tolerant of home-burnt discs.

Use as a CD player would be helpful

 

Price range: up to $800 (so about 500UKP)

 

 

Anyone got any recommendations?

 

I agree with others that have posted. Pioneer v8000 is a great machine we have 4 of them at work and they have never skipped a beat in 2 years. They are used alot. I really like the monitor output, handy to count down vt's on more domestic sized jobs. As well as the abiity to change the discs running order. Handy for client who hand you a 15 track dvd and wants each scene played at different points eg not 1 - 15, 3 2 5 7 10 11 etc. Mix track into any position. Great machines

And no I do not work for Pioneer.

[Bryson]

Shopping list:

Rugged: (The composite died on the Tascam really quickly and repair is proving tricky - it's several circuitboards deep in there..)

Sorry to drag this up, I realise it's a 2 month old topic but I just had a thought- what do you mean by the composite died? The physical RCA connector? Would it be possible to fit a 1U panel to the back of the rack with BNC/ RCA connectors on it for the video, and RCA/XLR/6.5mm jacks for the audio output? This would take the strain of constant plugging/unplugging off the rear connectors?

 

;)

 

I believe it's a dry solder joint from the RCA onto the board. Unfortunately the inside of the unit is a 3-circuitboard sandwich and I would ahve to pull a lot of very delicate-looking parts apart to get access to the dry solder joint...and I have't drummed up the courage to do so yet.

[plinque]

I've been using Oppo 971 and 981 DVD players for the last couple of years, and am very happy with them.

The only downside for me is that I have not found a way of getting the little play triangle that pops up for a second off-screen on the 981s (despite disabling OSD in the menu). They are also consumer rather than "pro" build quality and do not take rack ears -so are probably not good for very heavy continual use.

The reasons I got mine are for the ability to make the decks region free (very simple to do this from the RC), because they'll play back a very wide range of data formats from disks (and, rather less successfully, USB sticks) including MKV, DivX etc. In addition I've found them tolerant of home-burned DVDs, discovered that they have "infinite" pause which is great for me, and have a customisable background screen (although since getting logos to look good is quite tricky I just make it black).

That said I've started to run video from Arkaos Grand VJ (thanks blue-room!) which uses FFmpeg and appears capable of reading just about any format without having to transcode. Very handy when the Creative Director suddenly decides he'd like to show all 500 participants his brand new "MPEG*" right now, please. So the DVD players are being relegated to the role of backup more and more - even for small meetings.

Oppo sadly don't make DVD players anymore, and BD has passed us by on its road to irrelevence, but they are about to bring out a new streaming "media player" that I may well investigate (at home first :-)).

 

www.oppodigital.com

 

-and no, I don't work for them!

 

Joel

 

 

*can, of course, be anything, but isn't usually a *.mpg at all.