Review DVD Players – Toshiba Voyager and Philips

I have now gone through two DVD players and I am now on my third. This is the first DVD player I’ve been happy with.

The first was a Toshiba DVD Player. It was bought several years ago so there is little point in giving the actual product number. At the time DVD players will still quite new and expensive. We chose a player priced about midpoint between the cheapest and most expensive ones. The DVD player was good at the time, but would only play DVDs or music CDs (not video CDs, VCD or SVCDs). The lack of support for VCDs appeared to be a feature specifically disabled to encourage you to purchase a more expensive version of the DVD player. It would also only play certain DVD-R discs. These were however features on the cheaper DVD players at the time. The DVD player did last for several years, but eventually stopped working as it would no longer read DVDs.

The second DVD player was much more recent. It is the Venturer STS 91 DVD Home Theatre Kit, which is a DVD player with surround sound. The DVD was bought only about a year ago, but has since stopped working and would not load DVDs. This is one of the cheapest DVD players around with built in surround sound amplifier. The player supported DVDs, DVD-R and DVD+R discs. It also played Photo CD discs and MP3 CDs. It would not however play MP3s burned on DVDs or photo images on DVDs. The menu to view MP3s and Photos was very basic, but other than that the player was quite good. It however started to play up, first struggling to fast forward and rewind, before finally refusing to play any DVDs.

Finally I have now bought a Philips DVP3020 DVD Player. Although I’ve not had much opportunity to give a complete review, I have been impressed so far. The DVD player is a fairly cheap player, costing only slightly more than the very cheap brands, but with a brand name with a better reputation behind it. The player plays DVD videos very well, but also supports DVDs containing photos. So I was able to view the pictures on my photo backup DVDs. The menu to view the photos or music CDs is not very good, but other than that I’m happy with the DVD player.