About 4 or 5 months ago, I purchased a cheap DVD player for my den. We use it for a game / media room. It's a small room with a 32" inch CRT TV and a nice comfortable couch. A VCR, a Gamecube and a Playstation 2 are hooked up to the TV and the room is wired up with a Denon Receiver and some old Advent Legacies and Cambridge Soundworks Speakers for Surround sound.

I wanted to watch DVDs in this room sometimes. Playstation 2 makes a horrible DVD player. I didn't want another expensive DVD player, I just wanted something to play DVDs.

Solid as Sears

I got this $35 dollar DVD player at Sears and took it home. It had the capability of playing regular DVDs as well as burned DVDs on DVD R formats and DVDs of MP3s and photos.

As a DVD player, I hooked it up to my old Phillips Analog TV with component cables. A coaxial cable allowed digital sound including Dolby Digital Surround, but not DTS. It does not have an optical digital out. For sound, I had the player hooked up to the Denon Receiver Additional jacks would allow a regular composite video out, S video and regular RCA jacks for stereo sound if you didn't want to use the coaxial digital or the component outs.

The picture was quite good, especially since it doesn't support progressive scan. I tried playing a disc of MP3s on it, and they played, although you can't really do much in the way of skipping ahead or reading what song it is, because only the first few letters are displayed. Photos do play on the player as well, although it loads slowly.

That's one small Remote

The remote is tiny. Seriously, it makes my cell phone look huge. Its zero inches thick, a few ounces and about 2 x 5 inches with tiny little buttons that you have to strain your eyes to see. If you have a blackberry or like to text message on your cellphone, you should have no problem with this tiny little remote. Press those little buttons carefully!

But my FAVORITE FEATURE...

Like the Replicants manafactured by the Tyrell Corporation in Blade Runner, Memorex manafactures these DVD players with a built in life span. Replicants last four years, my DVD player lasted four months.

So.... Is it Live or is it Memorex?

IT'S DEAD, so It must be Memorex. Well I should say it isn't completely dead, the little red standby light still glows. Yup, about four months after purchasing this, I went in one day to watch a movie, and found that it simply wouldn't turn on.

Alternate Uses

I have thought of some uses for the Memorex DVD player even after it no longer plays DVDs.

It is light enough to move around easily, so if you unplug all the cables you can use it for a stylish high tech paper weight.

I did try this as a home defense tool, but it is too light and flimlsy to effectively cause injury to an intruder. However, thrown, it could provide a momentary distraction.

Skeet! If you are into skeet shooting, I think this would make an ideal target.

Store Displays. Many times at furniture stores, I see cardboard TVs that show how your TV would look on a particular stand. This could be used to show how an equally lifeless electronic appliance would look.


Summary

For the 5 or six movies I watched on this DVD player in the four months it lived, I give it 1 star. I would like to give it some more stars, but since the picture quality is now a blank blue screen, and the load time is now NEVER, I really can't justify any more stars for the Memorex DVD Player. Ah well, it worked fairly okay 'til it died.



Recommended: No

Amount Paid (US$): 35