Junk. Ahem. (Samsung DVD 511)

Member Name: Blobbo

Product:	Samsung DVD 511
Date:	27/04/01 (1168 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Reasonably decent picture/sound

Disadvantages: My player overheated, very light, doesnt play CDR's

The Samsung 511... what could possibly go wrong with a DVD player from a reasonably good manufacturer like Samsung? A lot, I'm afraid.

I swapped this player twice and still had problems. Maybe it was a bad batch; I'll never know. First of all, the player seemed to overheat after about 30 minutes. "Don't put is on top of anything else", I was told - hands up who keeps their Audio/Visual equipment stacked up in a cabinet? Overheating is just not the kind of problem one expects.

The unit plays MP3s, apparently. This seems like a great feature until you realise it doesn't read CDR's - are we supposed to be buying MP3s in the shops or something now? What a useless feature.

The laser itself doesn't seem to be up to much - it struggled with DVDs with even the slightest scratches on which my LG 3200E had no problems with.

Maybe I expect too much from a player? I just wanted it to work. I'm not really that bothered about picture quality and sound, and all cues to Samsung on providing very high picture quality on a unit this cheap. The sound was also quite good.

The player itself seemed to be very light and the front of it was kind of drab to say the least. It was a nice silver, however, and the remote was also impressive. It has RGB/S-Video SCART outputs (doesn't come with a SCART lead though), and standard composite AV outputs. It also outputs Dolby Digital 5.1; I don't think it outputted DTS but I'm not sure.

Not a particularly impressive player in my opinion. Maybe I'd think differently if there weren't excellent players like the LG3200E around to compare it with. I really wouldn't recommend this player even if you're planning to keep it well away from your other AV equipment. The LG offers so much more, and excellent sound to boot. Anybody who has had no problems with their 511's feel free to comment on this opinion.

Thanks for reading. :)

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