Could this thing replace your old or dead audio CD player? Maybe..
Written: Oct 23 '02 (Updated Oct 23 '02)
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Pros: position memory.
fast scan.
Cons: no volume on remote.
slow to read disc.
The Bottom Line: Yes, it could replace your old audio CD player,
and give you DVD functionality as well.
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| wlexxx's Full Review: Panasonic DVD-RV32 DVD Player |
Let me just say, right off the bat, that I will be
exclusively concentrating, in this review, on
audio-CD playing
features, that other reviewers
neglected to mention.
Maybe they are not important, but they were to me.
This is why:
What I mainly wanted to do [and maybe you do too], was
to replace my recently deceased audio CD player, with
something that would play audio CDs mainly, and
as a bonus, add DVD capability to my system.
My former CD player was a fairly feature-rich unit,
so I wanted to retain as many features as possible.
When I went to the store, I tried to find out
what the features for audio were. It was next to
impossible, without reading the manuals, which
was also impossible. Salesmen
either didn't know, or made up obviously incorrect
answers.
So I gave up and bought one that seemed like it would
do what I wanted, I figured I could take it back.
So, I'm not going to cover video features at all, others
have done that extensively, and I don't have
a fancy enough video setup for that to even matter.
Sound quality:
It sounds pretty good, no faults there.
Ability to deal with CD-ROMs:
Seems good, I tested with the discs that gave my
old player problems, and there were, well, less problems.
I can't tell if the remaining ones on these
problem discs, were on the discs
or with the player, but there were almost no glitches.
Resume play feature:
Now this is cool.
You can press a button called "Memorize position", and
that position, on that disc, is remembered.
Even if you take the disc out, or change to another one.
When you put that disc back in, and press play,
it goes to where you left off.
It can remember up to 5 discs.
I am not sure how it recognizes the disc the next time
you put it in, though.
Also, it only does this once for a given disc,
which is odd.
If you try to remember more than 5 discs, the oldest
one is bumped off the list.
Programmable track sequence:
You can do it.
The salesman said you couldn't.
In fact, he said no players would do this.
It's even easy.
It does require turning on a connected TV though,
because that is where you compose the new sequence.
This is handy for making, say, a tape for someone,
with the song order rearranged, and possibly some
songs omitted.
Time Display:
It's complicated [press 'display', then the > button,
then the up and down buttons] but you can
get the unit to display the remaining track time,
the elapsed track time, or the remaining disc time.
At first, that seemed impossible.
It took a lot of studying the manual to figure it out.
Fast Scan:
There is a unique way to do this.
The fast scan buttons, when pressed repeatedly,
increase the scan speed until it gets really fast,
I presume 200 times normal speed is the fastest, that
is what they brag about on the face plate.
A normal CD player requires you to hold the button down,
and it only goes at one scan speed.
So this is better than a CD player.
Initial read of disc:
This seems to take a long time - about 10 seconds.
My old CD player would do this in no more than 2 seconds.
Maybe this is because the DVD player has to
figure out what kind of disc is inserted, the CD
could assume it was a normal audio CD.
Display:
I felt like I had to have a display on the unit.
I just couldn't buy one of the ultra-cheap players
with no front panel display.
Without one, you are forced to have a TV connected and
running all the time, just to see what track was playing.
The display itself is adequate.
It's alphanumeric, fluorescent blue, fairly bright,
with 2 brightness settings.
It's big enough to see from across a 20' room.
Other features:
Quick repeat: jumps back 10 seconds or so, sometimes
more useful than searching backwards.
A-B repeat: this is kind of cool. You press the button
to mark the start of a section you want to repeat
over and over, press it again to mark the end, then
it repeats that part til you tell it to quit.
That was a feature on early CD players, I thought it
was dead, but it's back and somewhat useful.
Shuffle play - works as expected.
Repeat play - adequate, you can repeat one track,
or the whole disc.
Random play - works as expected.
Remote Control:
As others have said, the buttons are tiny.
They are not color coded or grouped in any logical way.
Everything is on there.
Well, there is no scan knob, as there is on the
unit itself.
Alternate formats:
It can apparently play MP3s, which is important.
I didn;t test that, I don;t have any MP3s.
It can also play Windows Media Audio files, which
is pretty uncommon for a cheap player. How useful it
is, is a good question. That is for you to decide,
but these files are much less common than MP3s.
What It's Missing:
Volume control on remote. This has none. Some have it.
The ones that do, apparently only control the
TV volume. What I really want is for it to change
the volume at the audio line outputs, but that is
apparently not done any more.
Headphone output. None.
That's it for the audio features, I hope you learned
something.
I think I will keep it unless I find a better one that
doesn't cost over $150.00.
If not, this one will be ok, actually.
wle.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 129
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Epinions.com ID:
wlexxx
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Reviews written: 11
Trusted by: 0 members
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