Narrow DVD player wanted

[Obi-Wan-YJ]

I'm shopping for my first DVD player. The TV is a nice analog unit with component & S-video inputs. The major requirement for this player is that the space where I've got to put it is only 16-3/8" wide, so I can't fit a standard 17+" unit there (no, I can't replace a VCR or CD player to free up any more space).

I also need a unit that will play SVCD's and (eventually) rewritable DVD's (+/- unknown since I don't own a DVD burner yet) since I intend to put my digital camcorder to good use. An intuitive user interface is important, since not everyone in my family is quite the nerd that I am.

Any suggestions? If I buy a cheap brand that I've never heard of before, is it likely to die on me in 6 months, or are the innards of these things pretty much the same?

[wings]

Try BestBuy.com. They show the size of the DVD players. Width, Depth, Height etc. Also what they will play along with customer reviews.

[Alan69]

The Mintek-1600 is only 14" wide, and the best $60 I've spent in a long time. Look it up in the players listing here, it plays basically everything, mostly doing SXVCDs myself. Should be a pretty good match for what you want..
Even if it died within a year I'd still go get another one, I like it. After the warranty is out I plan on making extra vent holes or hacking a small fan into mine, almost all of the small cheap players could use extra cooling. With that I expect it'll last for years even if it wouldn't without the greater cooling. Probably will anyway but it's little work to make some extra holes at least..

Alan

[Retroid]

I'd have to recommend the Mustek V520 DVD player. Got one for my mother a few months back so she could watch VCDs & SVCDs I download, plus because she was getting annoyed with DVDs getting all the extras. ^_^

It certainly fits your size requirement; it's only 28cm across & deep, and 6.3cm high (that's around 11.2 inches wide & deep, and only 2.52 inches tall).

It's had absolutely no problems with any disk (of any format) I've ever thrown at it, and the picture quality is superb. My inlaws recently got their own stand-alone player, it cost twice the price, only plays DVDs & CDs, and the playback isn't nearly as good.

Still, hope you find a player to suit your requirements, whatever the make. I know that a friend of mine has this player, just from a different manufacturer, with a slightly different front facade. Remote, model number, on-scrren menus etc. are all the same, though, so it might be worth looking for "V520" alone, so long as the dimensions are similar ^_^

[Obi-Wan-YJ]

Well, I now own two DVD players, but I think I'll be returning them both to Best Buy where I got them. Speaking of Best Buy, their web site is full of errors about their various players. Don't trust anything it says there.

The Magnavox MDV430SL doesn't play SVCD's and doesn't allow slow-mo reverse, but otherwise works well for my needs. SVCD's are the killer, and the lack of slow-mo reverse is annoying.

The Mintek 1600 will play most everything I throw at it, and has most of the features I want, but it only has S-video out, and the remote layout sucks (FF/pause/slow-mo are 3" away from play), and I've seen it hiccup repeatedly in the same spot during two movie's, and I manged to crash it altogether once -- the soft power switch didn't work, so I had to unplug it to restart it. That's just a little flaky for my tastes.

Since my initial post, I've realized that my TV will do composite (from my receiver/VCR) and component (from my DVD player) simultaneously, but it will not do composite and S-video simultaneously. This means that any player that doesn't have component video is basically relegated to composite for me, which is somewhat undesireable.

I read the reviews on the Mustek 520 here at vcdhelp.com, and they're less than stellar, so I think I'll pass on that one. I guess I'm still looking...