Saturday, June 25, 2005

Do you get what you pay for?

As the regular reader may recall, our DVD player packed up a few weeks ago. I was exploring all sorts of options to replace it but then we decided to buy a house. So we're skint. However, I was really missing playing my challenging European art house films. Ok, so I haven't got any challenging art house films, but I have got loads of dumb American action films and I really miss not being able to play them. So as a stop gap, I decided to get a £35 Mico DVD808 from Sainsburys. I expected it to be rubbish but I am astounded how they have packed so much performance into such a cheap package. It even has a Optical Digital output to pump the sound into my surround sound HiFi. I watched The Aviator on it last night and there was no fragmentation, artifacting or dodgy colours. For £35! That's less than the cost of 3 DVD films. My last player cost £970. Me thinks I may have been ripped off last time.

4 comments:

Tony C said...

Some of these cheaper units even look half decent now. I know the 'experts' would down their noses at players like this but if works well who cares.

I'm surprised your Pioneer packed up so soon, I remember you buying it. My old 525 is still chugging along.

No challanging art films Ports....surely not!?

Mr Ports said...

As far as I know it is region 2 only. I have searched the Interweb for a multi Region hack but found nothing.

Anonymous said...

DVD-808, DVD-1028

This hack may work on most Mico DVD players.

Multi-Region:

Open drive tray,
Press 2, 8, 1, 2, and then Enter
You should now have the Secret menu up on the screen
Continue to press Enter and you can select the region you want from 1 - 9
Close drive tray door when finished#

Enjoy!
Msrtin.

Mr Ports said...

Genius Martin! That does indeed work on my box. Thanks very much. £35 AND it's multi region. Amazing.