Now that I have a new TV (well, a Westinghouse LVM-37w3 37" LCD HDTV Monitor) I'm looking for a nice DVD player to go with it.
But it seems like there's always something wrong with DVD players, and you never know until you actually take it home and start using it. So I thought I'd ask here.
I want a player that will:
1. give me good picture quality with my new TV
2. have a sensible and convenient remote layout (not like some players which are pretty much a rectangle of randomly placed buttons)
3. not have ridiculous limits on the remote distance / angle
4. let me play my R2 discs too
5. display the time left / etc information nicely, on the corner of the screen, not near the middle
6. not do anything unless I expect it (like decide to auto-shut-off after 30 minutes of pause time)
7. let me determine if it's on, off, or on standby just by looking at it
8. display closed captions (why did my old DVD player not show captions? I thought some discs didn't have them until I tried to use my PS2. Will those work anyway with a TV which is actually an LCD?)
9. not make me hate the engineers that created it
10. remembering my place and returning to it when switching on again is a plus - even more so if it can handle multiple discs
11. ignoring prohibited user operations would be nice (why shouldn't I be able to change audio channels in the middle of the movie?)
You get the picture. Suggestions would be nice, and by all means, if I missed any incredibly annoying "features", let me know.
I posted this also at DVDtalk, and the only recommendation was for Oppo players ( http://www.oppodigital.com/ ) - they look great, but I'm not sure I want to spend $200/$230 with HD-DVD (or was it blu-ray?) just around the corner.
But it seems like there's always something wrong with DVD players, and you never know until you actually take it home and start using it. So I thought I'd ask here.
I want a player that will:
1. give me good picture quality with my new TV
2. have a sensible and convenient remote layout (not like some players which are pretty much a rectangle of randomly placed buttons)
3. not have ridiculous limits on the remote distance / angle
4. let me play my R2 discs too
5. display the time left / etc information nicely, on the corner of the screen, not near the middle
6. not do anything unless I expect it (like decide to auto-shut-off after 30 minutes of pause time)
7. let me determine if it's on, off, or on standby just by looking at it
8. display closed captions (why did my old DVD player not show captions? I thought some discs didn't have them until I tried to use my PS2. Will those work anyway with a TV which is actually an LCD?)
9. not make me hate the engineers that created it
10. remembering my place and returning to it when switching on again is a plus - even more so if it can handle multiple discs
11. ignoring prohibited user operations would be nice (why shouldn't I be able to change audio channels in the middle of the movie?)
You get the picture. Suggestions would be nice, and by all means, if I missed any incredibly annoying "features", let me know.
I posted this also at DVDtalk, and the only recommendation was for Oppo players ( http://www.oppodigital.com/ ) - they look great, but I'm not sure I want to spend $200/$230 with HD-DVD (or was it blu-ray?) just around the corner.
