Stand Alone Players

I know I have posted this before and may have been on the old dvdidle forum, but I think it is important. Just because you cannot play a movie or it freezes, it is not always a problem with your burn. My first stand alone player was an Emerson that was a gift purchased at Walmart. I bought a Liteon DVDRW SOHW 1633S because prices had dropped and I knew VHS was on the way out and CDs were even too small for some programs. It came with ICOPYDVDS2 wit instructions to download DVD43. We had the Emerson for about 3 months when a movie came out that we wanted to see so wife went to video store and rented it on DVD since the VHS version was out. I set the Emerson up and tested it on a still in case DVD that was also a gift that started playing okay. When tried the rented video it would not play, so put the New DVD back in and it played about an hour an froze. My wife took the Emerson to Walmart and exchanged it and paid a difference for a Samsung. The results were the same so it was returned for refund and video store agreed to give us credit to rent VHS tape when it was available. I ordered a Sylvania DVD player VHS recorder combo that was refurbished thinking that since it had been checked by a technician it would play Again the same results, but my wife had already rented a movie. She said an online friend said that the best way to view was to copy the DVD, so I decided to copy it as a test and I know we don’t copy rentals but I was frustrated and had never use my burner. It would not play in stand alone, but we were able to watch it on my computer screen. I had decided that the only way I was ever going to watch DVDs was to use my internal player so ordered a cable to hook to TV through my video out card. Called an 800 number and was given name and number of a shop to take the Sylvania for warranty repair. This shop was about 35 miles away and the person there was an older man who ask if it was under 90 days since we got it, which it was, so he said he would order a whole inside unit for it at no charge. He said if it had been over 90 days that he would have told us to trash it and buy a new one. On the way home we stopped at Sam’s Club and while shopping spotted a Magnavox that was a little over $30.00. This was the first one that played out of the box and was the cheapest of the 4 players. I even tried the burnt movie to check it too. Got the repaired Sylvania back and it worked even on my test DVD. When I started looking for a way to transfer videos, Tom and Larry recommended a Liteon 5005 stand alone recorder, which I purchased without regret. I almost think you could run a piece of sand paper over a Disc and it would play it. Gave the Magnavox to my wife’s grandmother sine we knew it worked, but then bought another one so I have three different players to check my burns on. Sometimes they play on all three and other times only 1 or 2. I learned from the old repair man that there is very little room for error in the position of the laser making the difference in good or bad plays. I also purchased a disc repairer/cleaner that is another topic I will post later.