Yamada DVX-6600 Review

Overall Rating

- Playback DVD/CD/VCD/SVCD/xVCD/xSVCD/DivX/Xvid/MPEG-4/AVI/MP3(inc. vbr)/WMA(inc. vbr)/Ogg-Vorbis, Picture CD inc. slide show/thumbnails
- Multi-region "out of the box" inc. RCE disks
- Dolby 5.1 with AC-3
- Slim line design
- SCART with RGB out
- Firmware upgradable

- Average picture quality
- Average sound quality
- No adjustable sound quality, i.e. extra bass, environmental control (living room, hall, etc)

Having downloaded a huge quantity of movies onto my hard drive and being sick of watching them on my lovely Belina 17" monitor I decided to get hold of a DivX/Xvid DVD player.

Whilst out doing a bit of Christmas shopping I popped into WH Smith and guess what. Yamada 6600 DivX player for £59.00 (usually about £70) and guess my joy when the cashier says to me "there's another £10 off "

Woo Hoo! As Homer would say.

The unit comes in a silver finish and slim at roughly 6cm thick. The on/off button is located to the far left of the machine and a set of operational buttons are situated along the top right edge of the unit.

The disk tray ejects from the centre of the unit and there has been much written since it's only a fraction bigger/thicker than a standard CD case. The other thing to note is that it doesn't actually fully eject, leaving the user having to tuck the disk in about 1.5cm. This has caused the odd problem as when the tray closes it catches a disk that's not placed completely on the tray and doesn't close properly

The picture quality is unusually average with pixilation present on most titles via gold SCART socket viewed on a 28" television. With the RGB turned on red blurring occurred on the top and bottom edges of the screen. This has never been present on any of the other DVD players that I have reviewed (http://www.reviewcentre.com/review30295.html - http://www.reviewcentre.com/review34731.html - http://www.reviewcentre.com/review10302.html - http://www.reviewcentre.com/review19714.html - http://www.reviewcentre.com/review29869.html). With the RGB turned off the picture is decidedly poor with a real lack of punch. Although sharpness and brightness and contrast could be controlled independently, this did not improve the overall richness of the picture.

Sound quality comes in the form of a 5.1 Dolby stereo set up. Apart from that there really isn't anything else to say. Unlike previous DVD players with 5.1 set up this model doesn't come with any extra bass, Virtual Surround Sound (VSS) or environmental enhancements. Initially I believed the bass connection was faulty since I was not getting any sound, but going into the set up and switching the sub "off" and back "on" seemed to solve this problem.

One of the great things about this player is the ability to play any region disk without the need for any remote/firmware hack. Placing Spiderman 2 (region 3) and Underworld (also region 3) both with RCE the DVD player just started playback of these disks with no problems.

Placing a CDRW with mixed content displayed an explorer-esq menu screen with folders and other content on it. Pictures could be viewed as a slideshow or thumbnail format, but unlike the AMW P80L (http://www.reviewcentre.com/review119487.html) it couldn't play a music file and play the slideshow simultaneously, a slightly annoying aspect. Switching off the machine completely also meant losing the last memory of the disk playback position (unlike the AMW P80L).

On the upside the player performed well with DivX and Xvid formatted disks whether on CDR/RW DVD+/-R and mixed content. I attempted to access subtitles on an DivX formatted filmed with no luck, but this might have been the way that I formatted the disk. Admittedly no were in the literature did it state that it could support subtitles on non-DVD titles.

Conclusion

This unit has sold in there thousands with generally raving reviews from users. I have to say on balance that it did "what it said on the tin", but just that and no more. Considering that the Yamada/Umax 5520 DVD player has all the audio adjustments it seems a shame that this model couldn't replicate these positive aspects of the player.

This is still a good DivX/Xvid player, but if you didn't have or was not going to use this file format I would recommend the AMW P80L instead. Yamada has just brought out the 6700 with subtitle support for DivX/Xvid and a few other goodies