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“I paid 120 GBP for this Technika dvd512 DVD player...”

written by James Betts. on 11/09/2002

Good Points
Will play MP3/DVD/SVCD/MPG/CD/CD-RW. Very good picture quality. Can be made multi region and allegedly macrovision free.

Bad Points
The remote control is very poor and can take several attempts to operate the DVD player. Takes a while to register a DVD initially. The sound level output is low when output though a TV.

General Comments
I paid 120 GBP for this Technika dvd512 DVD player having read the reviews on this site. I wanted a budget player which could play just about anything I through at it, particalarly VCD's/MPG's. I have a few minor concerns which were not mentioned earler which I will address.



As an aside, apart from packaging I think this player is basically the same as a Cyberhome AM-512. I have removed the cover and the DVD player uses a standard IDE DVD-ROM, which is made by Cyberdrive. Personally I think the use of standard components is a good thing as, if the drive unit fails, it can be cheaply replaced (I do not know how common this failure is with new players but believe the laser failing was a problem when computer CD-ROM's first came out).



I am very happy with the player in general. I'm not an AV buff but cannot fault the picture quality with DVD playback. I've played MP3/CD's and MPG's recorded on my computer on the DVD player generally without problem. The player has a directory navigation facility and can play CD's with MP3/MPG on them. For some reason I do not think it liked one of the files I put on the CD (which seemed to confuse the navigation and cause it to play another MPG). The MPG's I had on there were not standard (SVCD) size and the player seemed to only scale some of the small ones in the horizontal direction.



I have done the multi-region hack found on the web (I cannot remember how I did it) and played R1 DVD's generally without problem. On one occasion the picture froze but the counter on the DVD player continued. I rewound the previous chapter and advanced it and it did not hang again.



I have the DVD player connected to my TV by SCART and have leads from my TV to my amplifier for the sound i.e. I'm not using surround sound. Even with the DVD volume at maximum I have to increase the amplifier volume to get normal sound output. This is annoying especially when turning back to TV as it is very loud.



The first thing I really noticed about the player was how hard it was to use the remote control. I bought a univeral remote control, all-in-one-6 (30 GBP @ Argos), this DVD model is not listed but their customer services updated the remote control by phone. This remote control works much better than the original.