Any Dansai 852 owners ?

[Professor Abronsius]

Anyone own a Dansai 852 ?

What are they like for the price ? Do they play all regions, and VCD's, CDr's etc... ?

Any similar alternatives for the same sort of price ?

Thanks in advance for any info.

Cheers. :)

[p_chally]

I got one for xmas from me sis and I am quite pleased with it. Had two Ps2s that I wasnt happy with (over a period of a year) so I can only compare to those and I am quite impressed> I only got it as a stop gap until I got a full dvd/av system but it does the job well. It is multiregion from quick remote change, I have played region 4 and 1 . I dont know whether the criticism i have of region1 is the old ntsc problem compared to pal but the picture does look stretched as the colour does seem to wash - say on the credits if they are white on a plain blue screen the small ones are unreadable. cant record to minidisc from it though through optical lead- dont know why.It plays VCDs ;) fine even ones that my ps1 wouldnt.Hang on I'll just try a cdr,yes it does play that fine. I aint very technical but for £100 seems quite good value for money!!!!

[Simes]

I have a Dansai too..
I was very impressed for the money.
The easy hack makes it multiregion and macrovision free.It plays DVDs (any region),VCD,SVCD,CDR,CDRW and MP3.
Its very good with MP3 with logical folder navigation on your TV screen.VCD quality is excellent too.
The DVD quality is good and the drive unit is not noisy and it does the layer change quickly (so quick you usually don't notice it).
It can output NTSC material as PAL50 (so it is possible to back up R1 DVDs to video)..

The bad points.....
It seems to revert the scart output to composite video every time you switch on.You have to cycle the video mode back to RGB if you want the best picture (or connect using S-Video ).
Sound is ONLY outputted throught the mode you select.So if you set it to output raw digital through the digital out (SP-DIF) you don't get sound through the scart and phonos as well.This is not really a fault (though most other players send the sound to all outputs).

THe best alternative to the Dansai seems to be the Cyberhome AD-L528 (also around £99). It does not have macrovision disabled but it does have an inbuilt Dolby Digital decoder. Be aware the build quality is much poorer than the Dansai's. Most have noisy drive units too.

[Professor Abronsius]

Thanks for the info folks.

Can't find a Tesco near me with any of these in stock, so will most probably be going for the Decca Player from Powerhouse.

It appears to be a clone of the Dansai as well, but a bit dearer.

Cheers. :)

[LV426]

Originally posted by p_chally
cant record to minidisc from it though through optical lead- dont know why
Never tried it myself, but a colleague has reportedly done exactly this. You need to set the output to PCM. Then it works, I gather.