DVD advice anyone?.....

[ggenglish]

I'm experimenting with the whole self made films things creating my own movies and want to go as far as I can with creating a DVD functionality with a CDR or CDRW (mp3s would be a nice quality too ). So on this site the DVDs with all the functialities checked seem like the winner (i.e. Apex-660).

But!, which DVD player is best for homemade stuff? The more I learn about the Apex models it seems like a lot of people are having problems with quality.

And I will stress!, I don't want to do DVD ripping, so if that is all the reprogrammable Apex chips are good for then I will look at something else.

All advice is apprieciated!

[vitualis]

Why don't you try authoring a high quality VCD and then going to your local electronics/electrical goods store and testing them for yourself?

Despite what others tell you, this way, you can be sure that the prospective player will both play your discs and play them well.

Regards.

[ggenglish]

That's a good idea vitualis but the problem is I haven't figured out how to do all the stuff I want to do with a VCD yet. Like menus and subtitles and stuff. I'm just lazy I guess.

That is some advice I didn't think of though so thanks. .

[vitualis]

There are some VCD disc images that you can download from this site. I created a demo VCD that has quite a lot of complex authoring so it may be a good disc for you to use for testing prospective players. You can find it here: http://www.hvrlab.org/pub/vcdimager/examples/demovcd/

Regards.

[KoalaBear]

I understand a company called Sampo makes a line of DVD players based on PC DVD-ROM drives in a standalone cabinet. These are among the few players that can handle homemade DVDs recorded on CD-ROM. They also have some interesting firmware that permits you to take certain liberties with the DVDs you already own, and I think the retail price of the units is around US$170.

Had I known about these units in the past, I would have bought one. But I ended up with a Pioneer DV-333, which I'm very happy with because it plays [S]VCDs flawlessly.