can someone recommend dvd player for vcds?

[ghola]

I've got a few hundred vcds that I've been dying to play. my old trusty apex finally died on me and my lg bluray player just spits them out.
I tried a new toshiba that SAID it plays vcds but it only accepted 2 or 3 of the 5 different kinds I have.
I checked the compatibility list but honestly there are SO MANY listed and all the ones I looked into are old ones no longer available.
I saw a pioneer dv2012 on amazon but it got a ton of bad reviews.
can anyone recommend a cheap slim profile player that will definitely play most vcds?
I don't know if they're vcd or svcd or 1.0 or 2.0. I just know I bought them online from various sellers about 10 years ago.
thanks in advance.

[aedipuss]

vcd should play in any dvd player as it's included in the dvd spec, svcd not so much even 10 years ago. you can search the list of dvd players in the left column of this page. another thing to try is taking some to local stores and testing players.

philips standalones were known to play most formats if you can find one.

if they are burned cds it may be the discs themselves are bad now.

[jman98]

Actually aedipuss is not correct. VCD support in North America has always been iffy as the format had no widespread support here from the manufacturers. You can probably count on one hand the number of official VCD releases that got put out here. Sony and Toshiba have both been infamous over the years for their on again, off again support of VCD.

Philips continues to make DVD players that support VCD and SVCD. I bought the DVP3560 last year and it plays VCD and SVCD without issues. It can also be hacked to be region free. Follow the Feb. 7, 2011 instructions here:
https://www.videohelp.com/dvdhacks/philips-dvp3560/10922
Best Buy stopped selling this model but I think Amazon still sells it.

[dvd3500]

Since VCDs don't have any copyprotection you could easily and legally convert them to DVDs that would play.
VCD resolutions are DVD compliant.
It wouldn't even take that long

[jman98]

Since VCDs don't have any copyprotection you could easily and legally convert them to DVDs that would play.
VCD resolutions are DVD compliant.
It wouldn't even take that long

Some VCDs do indeed have copy protection. While the OP is unlikely to have any, we've had endless threads about this with posters from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh who could tell you that copy protection does indeed exist. Such VCDs use a variation on the bad sector and corrupt table of contents copy protection that some DVDs use and due to the lack of tools to deal with this with CD media, it is a real bitch to copy those discs.

Converting VCDs to DVDs is harder than you think. The audio has to be resampled. While we have no reports of such, in theory some manufacturer like Sony or Toshiba or Samsung (believe me, if anybody was going to do it, it would be one of those companies) could put out a DVD player that does not actually support MPEG-1. I did a few conversions some years ago and I found it to be so time consuming and troublesome that I never did another. One of the big problem is that most of the free authoring programs won't accept MPEG-1 video as input. The only thing I had at the time that could produce a DVD from MPEG-1 video was Scenarist, hardly a user friendly or commonly available tool. I'm guessing that you've never done this yourself or you'd know that it's neither easy nor quick.

[fritzi93]

Such VCDs use a variation on the bad sector and corrupt table of contents copy protection that some DVDs use and due to the lack of tools to deal with this with CD media, it is a real bitch to copy those discs.

No kidding.

My sister was in a group touring Egypt about 5 years ago. Among the guides was a guy videotaping the proceedings day by day, and offered a VCD for purchase the last day. Sis bought one and discovered it wouldn't play on her standalone DVD player. So she asked for my help, naturally.

It was horrible, the audio was bad, video was less bad, but overall a poorly done VCD. And of course there was a sticky label on it too. Whatever she paid for it was a rip-off.

Anyway, I used IsoBuster to extract MPEG data, filtered/re-encoded the audio and re-authored to DVD. I figured there wasn't much point in trying to filter and re-encode the video, the main problem was the resolution and rather awkward handling of the camcorder.

[EDIT] Oh yeah, had to use the patch method too (PAL->NTSC). Sis didn't have a PAL capable standalone. What a big fat pain in the ass that VCD was.

[ghola]

thanks for the help people.
I will look into that philips.

[jman98]

thanks for the help people.
I will look into that philips.

Please tell your masters on Tleilax that I was helpful

[ghola]

thanks for the help people.
I will look into that philips.

Please tell your masters on Tleilax that I was helpful

I serve no Tleilaxu scum. I am a willing servant to the Atreides family.

[ghola]

thanks for the help people.
I will look into that philips.

Please tell your masters on Tleilax that I was helpful

I serve no Tleilaxu scum. I am a willing servant to the Atreides family.

Update: close but no cigar. The philips won't play the ones that the toshiba couldn't play either.
I'm starting to REALLY miss that cheap old apex!!