IT Blog Today

I bought this DVD player because it can play region-free PAL discs. It even flawlessly played a dual-layer DVD-R with a PAL-encoded movie on it. This ability means that you no longer have to go through the tedious and error-prone process of converting your PAL discs to NTSC.

The USB port is also an incredible convenience. Just copy some MP3s, DviX videos, or JPEG images onto a thumb drive and pop it into the player . . . you'll then be able to listen, watch, and/or view slideshows of your content.

This player provides a lot of functionality for a low price.

If you have a new LCD TV and still are using an old DVD player, and aren't ready to take the Blu-Ray plunge, then this is the product for you.
I just bought a new Samsung LN26B460 (26" 720P LCD), and had it hooked up to my old Sony DVD player through the RCA cables. The picture wasn't as good as it used to be on my old CRT. So I bought this upconverting DVD player and I'm not disappointed. The picture quality improved immensely. It is now better than it was on my CRT. I can't say if it is as good as 720P Blu-Ray, and I'm sure it isn't as good as 1080P Blu-Ray, but it is way better than a non-upconverting DVD using RCA cables. It is most likely that the improvement is only because of the HDMI connection instead of using RCA cables. It doesn't matter what I set the player to, the picture seems to be the same, because the TV will also convert the picture to 720P no matter what. So the converter on the TV seems to be the same quality as the converter in the player.
If I were to guess, I'd say it is just a touch below 720P Blu-Ray quality.
As far as the rest of the player goes, it works as expected. It isn't super fast at loading DVD's, probably about normal. It isn't too noisy. I guess my one complaint would be that I seem to have to press the buttons on the remote more than once for them to work. I have the player at an angle to were I sit, and it doesn't seem to have the strongest sensor. If I'm aiming straight on, it works fine.
If your player already has HDMI or DVI connector, then I wouldn't bother getting this one, I don't think you will see a big improvement.

Arrived on time. Great product. Picture looks great on my 720P TV (Samsung LN37A450). Anynet+ works great between TV and DVD player. USB video is very convenient for watching movies in .mpg .m4a .avi (these are the only ones I have tried so far. No issues, highly recommended.