HELP! Urgently Seeking Advice on Wharfedale M5

[Mark153]

During a conversation this morning, a mate of mine at work has quite out-of-the-blue offered me a fair sum of cash for my Samsung 807 DVD player.

I own a fairly decent Panasonic Region 1 player which I use for the majority of the time, and use my Samsung 807 to play R2, R3 and R4 discs. I have lately been thinking to replace the Samsung, as I would like to be able to play the DTS discs that are available in the other regions.

For a while now I have been eyeing-up the Wharfedale M5 as a potential replacement for my Samsung, so basically I would like to know if I am doing the right thing if I go for it? My biggest fears are that my selection of R3 and R4 discs won't play, or that the picture/sound quality of Wharfedale is poor by comparison to what I have.

Any opinions from Wharfedale M5 owners (especially those that have upgraded from a Samsung 807!!!) would be greatly appreciated as soon as possible - because my mate is literally waving pound notes in my face as I type this!!!

[clayts]

Go to the Area 450 Forum (http://pub37.ezboard.com/btheencorefiles) and hit the M5 Owners board - plenty of happy bods in there !

[Mark153]

Thanks Clayts - I already stopped by the forums and Area 450 on Friday morning! I must say, that is a really useful and informative site you are running there. Goes without saying that it helped me immensely in making a decision...!

I took the plunge on Friday evening and nipped into my local Tescos to get my very own Wharfedale M5, and I have to say, it is a VERY nice player indeed! Certainly no problems to report so far.

I am still a little unsure of whether the picture quality is better or worse than what I used to get on the Samsung 807 though. There is some very visible pixellation on blacks on all of the PAL discs I have tried so far... yet on any of the high-quality NTSC R1 discs I try ("Gladiator", "The Rock (Criterion)", "Toy Story 2" and so on), generally dark scenes or scenes with lots of black background stay perfectly solid. But then I always did tend to spot major flaws with PAL-encoded discs on my Samsung as well. Is it just me, or are R2/R4 PAL discs not as well produced as their American equivalents?

Anyways... having watched R2 version of "Stargate - The Directr's Cut" in all its DTS glory yesterday, I can safely say I am pleased with the player. And the ability to play a CD-RW filled with MP3s is an absolute stonker of a feature!

[clayts]

I think it's true to say that all Sampo-manufactured players are geared more towards a Region 1 market (the US is, after all, the biggest market for this Taiwan company).

It is also true to say that the features on the M5 make it more than just an ordinary budget-end DVD player - Colorstream component out and both DD/dts decoders on board make it a great buy.

The bad news, Mark, is that the price is coming down to £99.99 in a couple of weeks, which I only found out about earlier today (useful inside information :D ). Hope that doesn't make you too angry !

As a favour to me, could you confirm the manufacturing date and the first three numbers of the serial number from the sticker on the reverse please. And as a second favour, tap in 1,2,3,4,5 on your remote and tell me what comes up on the screen.

Cheers mate - and welcome to the Sampo fanclub !

[riaz]

where did you get your from?

I have been interested in this player for a while, but seem to be no Tesco's in SE ENgland selling them. Last time I looked seriously was 4weeks ago.

If price is going to be 99, then its a major bargain.

Are you sure about the price drop?

[neverland]

Crikey, I was going to run out and buy one this weekend. I think I'll wait a bit now.

Are they really going to do a price drop pre-chrimbo though?