£99 Dansai player - i can't believe how good it is

[Simes]

Got myself one of the Dansai DVD players from Tesco yesterday.Here is my initial findings for anyone considering buying one.
If you see one grab it :D

The multiregion hack is dead easy and works a treat.It even seems to play RCE discs with the region set at bypass (tested with R1 Hollow Man).
Macrovision can be disabled (though according to other sources it is off anyway)
The drive unit is not noisey
Layer change is so quick that i didn't notice it when watching Bridget Jones Diary yesterday.
It plays VCDs (on CDR) very well.
MP3 playback is excellent. It displays the filenames onscreen.You can select the album then it will list the tracks on it .You have many options for playback including random, repeat folder, repeat track etc .It displays 10 characters of the filename. Very impressive on a £99 machine :)
DVD picture quality seems very good.It does not seem noticably inferior to the pic quality on my LG player.

The only thing i have found so far that i dislike is the fact it does not send the signal out to switch the TV into wide (16:9) mode.I have to do it manually.
I can't believe how good this player seems for the price :clap:

[john316]

Originally posted by Simes
Got myself one of the Dansai DVD players from Tesco yesterday.Here is my initial findings for anyone considering buying one.
If you see one grab it :D

The multiregion hack is dead easy and works a treat.It even seems to play RCE discs with the region set at bypass (tested with R1 Hollow Man).
Macrovision can be disabled (though according to other sources it is off anyway)
The drive unit is not noisey
Layer change is so quick that i didn't notice it when watching Bridget Jones Diary yesterday.
It plays VCDs (on CDR) very well.
MP3 playback is excellent. It displays the filenames onscreen.You can select the album then it will list the tracks on it .You have many options for playback including random, repeat folder, repeat track etc .It displays 10 characters of the filename. Very impressive on a £99 machine :)
DVD picture quality seems very good.It does not seem noticably inferior to the pic quality on my LG player.

The only thing i have found so far that i dislike is the fact it does not send the signal out to switch the TV into wide (16:9) mode.I have to do it manually.
I can't believe how good this player seems for the price :clap:

Sounds like any other bog-standard budget player to me! :rolleyes:

[Simes]

Originally posted by john316


Sounds like any other bog-standard budget player to me! :rolleyes:

LOL

Thats what i expected it to be.. I only bought it for MP3 and VCDs.
Most of the budget players have a few faults and don't have macrovision disabled.
For example the Cyberhome 528 has a noisey drive unit (in some cases VERY noisey), and dodgy MP3 playback.

I expected it to be ropey (but OK to use as a second player for MP3 and VCD).....but it isn't its actually very good.

[millec199]

Sounds like a nice budget player to me. If you are in the market for a nice £99 player (if there is such a thing) then it is worth considering, going on what is said above.

Not quite as amazing as Simes seems to think it is but still it does what it says on the box and seems to do it well (which most budget players don't).

[jim60]

I'm with Simes on this one.
£94 with my clubcard voucher!
Does everything it says on the box and more (RGB output via SCART)
Build and picture quality were better than expected, I even took the lid off to check out the internals and found a PSU board, what looks like an IDE drive and a decoder card.
The kids love it (you can alter the tone of the audio to make their favorite characters sound like they are on Helium) and I can now ban them from my Sony DVD player.

A nice touch (by Tesco) is that in the same way as "The hitchhikers guide to the galaxy" displays "Don't Panic" on the front cover, the Dansai displays Tesco's helpline number on the startup screen.
I called them before purchasing the player to ask a few questions, all of which were answered, except (for legal reasons) what the multi-region hack was to which they directed me to this forum. (This is probably why requests for the hack appear so often as first posts from juniors such as myself!)