Samsung DVD 709

VHS is almost dead. Not today, and maybe not tomorrow but one day it we will look back at the humble video cassette and laugh our socks off. We did it with music cassettes when the CD came along and we’re going to do the same with VHS now that the DVD has arrived. It didn’t arrive yesterday though, it’s been here for quite some time now but it’s really starting to break loose into the buying public’s world. A year ago DVD sales were starting to look healthy, now they’re becoming bigger than VHS releases and that trend is only going to get bigger. A DVD (or Digital Versatile Disc) is basically the video equivalent of a CD. It ...  Read the complete review

This player is/was the best selling DVD player in the UK, and rightly so. With a low price it falls into the budget DVD player catagory, however it really doesnt deserve that, as many people may consider it not to be as good as as £300 players, whereas in some cases, it is. The player comes in a nice silver/champagne colour and it has 6 buttons on the face on the player:Power, Eject, Play, Stop, and Skip forward and back functions. The LCD screen is easy to read, and is not extremly bright as to distract your attention when watching DVDs, there is a 3-step dimmer, so you can see what you prefer. It has a function light just below the disc tray, which is ...  Read the complete review

When you don’t consider the price tag this DVD player is average or maybe even just plain lousy. I mean, after all it won’t even read dual layer gold disk when you take it out of the box. To watch a movie pressed on this format such as The Matrix, you have to take it back into the manufacturer, wait two days for them to change out the laser and then go through the hassle of reconfiguring the 5:1 speaker outputs back into your receiver. Also Samsung, like many other DVD manufacturer skimped out on the CD portion of the player. Most DVD players only have one laser for reading disk pressed on the DVD format. Don’t get me wrong, these lasers can ...  Read the complete review

The price you pay for the 709 makes it is a very good budget player than can be as good as the more expensive players, Also with the 709 the easy multi-region "hack" makes it a very good feature of the player with details of this hack widely av on the net through many of the dedicated web sites for this excellent dvd player. Overall this player is a highly recommended choice if you want to experience the world of DVD.The features include ZOOM, 3D SOUND ENHANCMENT,2X 4X 8X & 16X FAST FORWARD/REVERSE, DTS etc, set up is a piece of cake and the instruction book is well written. There have been a few problems widley reported with the playback of certain ...  Read the complete review

I have been the owner of a Samsung DVD-709 for over a year now, and on the whole I am very impressed with the unit. The sound quality is great, the picture quality has never let me down, and the quantity of features on this budget priced model (now around £149 but costing £259 when I bought it :( ), make it stand out from the crowd. It did everything I wanted it to do, well almost. Being an avid movie fan I purchase quite a few DVD's, spanning multiple regions, and have had no problems with any of them. I use the well know AIWA remote control hack to set my player to region free (never quite fancied the 'chipping' solution for this ...  Read the complete review