Alba DVD108 Review

Overall Rating

Picture, price, can link through VCR

No DTS out, no optical out, crops edge of picture slightly

I've seen three of these Alba DVD 108 players in action, and I must say I'm pretty impressed. For the price the picture is excellent. It does however slightly crop the sides of the image (at least it does on my TV, which has a 4:3 ratio screen). [It does it even if I set the DVD player to 16:9 mode, (maybe it isn't fooled! I believe this is a fairly common problem though.]

I don't have an AV system, but audio through the TV is adequate, despite only having a 16 bit DAC, and low sampling rate. It is, however, a very low level output, so you need to wind the volume on your TV way up.

Outputs are limited to RGB scart, composite video, left/right audio out and co-axial digital out. There is no optical out.

It supports Dolby digital, but has no support for DTS, (which is a bit of a shame, as this is the only really serious ommission with this player).

You can route it through your VCR if you want, (with no apparent macrovision interference), but macrovision cuts in if you try to record from it (quite how this works I haven't worked out). You might also lose the RGB signal and have to make do with composite video output.

Finally, it plays CD-Rs, (I've tried this), and is also supposed to play CD-RWs, MP3s and VCDs, (VCDs with a bit of button pressing!), but I haven't tried any of these.

However, at £70 from Argos, I think it's pretty good.

Members' Comments onchurdy.'s Review

• Fred. on 30th Aug 2002

  Just a quick note to say, the Alba DVD108 doesn't appear to function with the denser DVD 9 format. A lot of Hollywood movies use this format to include all those extra bits and pieces we love so much. I don't know if there is any kind of hack to get round this, but it is a serious drawback.

• Alfredoy2k. on 29th Sep 2002

  I have recently bought it and it does not play any VCD which is a real shame. Apart fromt hat 10/10

• MBA. on 2nd Oct 2002

  The DVD 9 comment made me buy the Dansai 1010 instead. I played R1 Disney´s Beauty & the Beast on Dansai and it coped. Would the Alba 108?

• po. on 3rd Oct 2002

  Alba 108: I've just bought one I give 10 out of 10
  it plays vcd svcd cdr cdwr dvd
  

• zeebagpuss. on 13th Oct 2002

  I've got this player and it's very good for the money, the only downer is a little bit noisy and U have to do the VCD hack every time U want to watch a VCD!
  
  The sooner they come up with a perm hack the better.. I'm keeping my eyes on VCDHELP.COM for any that may come up (Link below)
  
  http://www.vcdhelp.com/dvdplayers.php?DVDnameid=1310&Search=Search&#comments
  
  If anyone knows anything plzzzz let us know
  
  Otherwise 10/10 player

• jconnman2k. on 27th Nov 2002

  This is all very well and good but this is the best review I have read. But it does not state what I need it to state before I purchase. .... Is it a multi region DVD player???

• don9999. on 2nd Dec 2002

  Multi-Region? I don't think so. But.....have just read the following:- <> Haven't tried it myself yet, but it seems quite easy to make it multi-region.....

• jconnman2k. on 3rd Dec 2002

  It is Multi region. I went ahead and got it anyway and tried one of my mates Canadian DvDs and it worked fine. Even has a PAL/NTCS buton to switch between. All in all a great machine for the price.

• Black Fox. on 30th Dec 2002

  Anybody know how to get the sound working on the 108? the mannual is no help?