Dark_Spectre's Guide to Buying a DVD Player
Oct 22 '00
If you’re one of the many people who’ve been wandering down the aisles of the DVD section at your local electronics store wanting to buy a DVD player but your love for your 15 year old VCR holds you back from doing it, then this guide is for you.
To make this as simple and as easy to follow as possible, I'll break down this editorial into sections, each section will cover a new topic. First, I’ll start with the things you should know before you buy the DVD player.
WHAT YOU SHOULD DO BEFORE BUYING YOUR DVD PLAYER
1) Look at ads in the newspaper or visit a few stores to get acquainted with the different models and designs of DVD players. I don’t recommend that you buy a DVD player from online, simply because, more often than not, the player looks totally different in real life than what it does in a picture. Also, if you know anybody else who owns a DVD player, talk to them first, they’ll tell you the things you need to get in order for the player to work.
2) You should set a money limit for yourself. Before you even leave to go to the store, tell yourself that you’re not going to spend more than $500. This also brings me to:
3) Never listen to what the sales people tell you. These people will tell you anything just to get you to spend more money. They’ll tell you that you need all kinds of things in order for the player to work, but if you talked to your friend that owns a DVD player, then you should already know this and see through the sales person’s plan. No matter how big your T.V. is, sales people will always tell you that it’s too small for you to enjoy a DVD player. When I told them I had a 27 inch T.V., they said that I’d be returning the player in less than a week because I would be unhappy with it. Well, it’s been almost a year now, and I’m still enjoying the hell out of it. The only time I’d advise you get a bigger T.V. is if you have one of those microscopic 13 inch ones.
4) This partly has to deal with #1, but don’t run out and buy the first DVD player that you see. You may think that it’s the best one ever, but odds are, you’ll find a much better one if you look in other stores.
Ok, so now that you’ve bought the player and have gotten home with it, you take it out of the box and start hooking it up. Be sure you READ THE DIRECTIONS when hooking it up. I know you’ll be excited to have a DVD player when you first get it, but don’t just plug a bunch of wires into different places without knowing what you’re doing.
Now that you’ve gotten it all hooked up correctly, you’re probably sitting there wondering why you bought this thing after all. I’ll tell you why:
WHY THE HELL DID I BUY THIS THING ANYWAY?
More than likely you bought it because: 1) You have tons of money and feel the need to have the newest of everything so that you become the envy of everyone on the block, or 2) You love movies. You want to know all the inside stuff about how the movies were made, like to see a crystal clear picture and hear a crystal clear sound when watching movies, and you want to see the movie the way it was meant to be seen: in widescreen.
Now I know that some of you out there hate widescreen because “Those little black bars are distracting.” If you feel this way, then by all means, don’t buy a DVD player. Roughly 90% of all DVDs come in widescreen form. The other 10% are movies made before 1956 (the year widescreen was invented) or movies that offer both widescreen and pan and scan (where the picture takes up the whole screen).
Now that all the widescreen haters have been scared away from buying a DVD player, let’s get down to business:
Digital Picture
I’m not going to bore you with a bunch of numbers about how many times greater the resolution is for DVD over VHS, but if you enjoy a nice sharp picture, where even the most minute details are visible, then you’ll love DVD. This feature is especially nice if you like the black and white noir films of the 1940s where a lot of the action takes place during the night. Fret no more about having to strain your eyes trying to find out who that shadowy figure is, with DVD it’ll be clear as day.
Digital Sound
Are you tired of having to turn the volume all the way up only to hear some distorted version of what used to be gun shots firing? If so, you’re in luck, if you hook surround sound speakers up to your DVD player, you’ll be able to hear even the faintest of sounds. Want to hear every twig in The Blair Witch Project break? Or how about every deafening gun shot fired in Saving Private Ryan? With DVD, you’ll swear you were on the beach with the other soldiers.
Those are just two features that come with a DVD player, I haven’t even talked about how you can change the language being spoken if you hate reading sub titles (not all DVDs have this option, though), or how you can chose which camera angle to watch a certain scene in (I haven’t found a DVD yet that let’s you do this, though).
Scene Selection
No more will you have to worry about rewinding or fast-forwarding to get to a specific scene in a movie. With DVD, you’ll be able to get to that scene with the push of a button. On the main menu of the DVD that you’re watching, there should be a place to get to the scene selections, once there, you’ll be able to skip to just about any scene in the movie.
Now, onto the real reason to buy a DVD player:
Special Features
If you're the type of person who sits there wondering how certain scenes in a movie were filmed, wondering why the director did what he did, or find yourself wondering what material ended up on the cutting room floor, then DVD is for you. Let me stress this though, not all DVDs have special features. Some DVDs only give you the option to watch the movies, some may toss in a theatrical trailer, but that’s it. Granted, this is mostly with older movies, but some newer ones do it too. In cases like these, you’ll just have to be happy with the digital picture and sound that DVD offers. But, with some DVDs, you get a dream come true:
Commentaries
This is the feature that tells you just about everything you could possibly want to know about the movie. Basically, anyone involved in the movie gives a voice over for the entire running length of the movie. The person (or persons) will dissect certain scenes, talk about the problems they had with making the movie, what certain themes in the movie mean, etc. This is especially cool with longer movies because you end up getting a longer commentary. Robert Altman’s commentary on the Nashville DVD is well worth the purchase.
Deleted Scenes
These are the scenes that end up on the cutting room floor due to various reasons. Sometimes these scenes will be nothing more than a short 30 second scene that isn’t of much value. But sometimes, as is the case with the Austin Powers 2: The Spy Who Shagged Me DVD, the deleted scenes turn out to be better than the scenes that made it into the movie.
I’m not going to go into detail about the rest of the special features that come with DVDs, as those two seem to be the most popular. Sometimes you’ll find story boards that were used for the movie, interviews with people who were a part of the movie, and various advertising art that was used for promotion of the movie.
Net Flix
I can here some of you now: “I want to watch on old movie on DVD but my video store only carries newer ones.” That used to be a problem that many people faced, but not anymore with the arrival of Net Flix (www.netflix.com). Basically, you pay a flat fee of $20 a month and you can rent DVDs through the mail. They carry just about every DVD ever made and you are allowed up to four out at a time. There are no late fees, once you mail a DVD that you’ve watched back into them, they’ll send out the next one on your list. If you’re quick at watching DVDs you can get up to about 12 of them out in a month.
Well, that’s about all I can say to try and get you to buy a DVD player. So, the next time you’re wandering down those aisles at the electronic store, don’t be afraid to shell out your hard earned cash for one of the ten greatest inventions of all time.
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Epinions.com ID:
Dark_Spectre
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Member: Jason Crutchfield
Location: Maryland
Reviews written: 11
Trusted by: 15 members
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