goodmans ghdd177dvdr review

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Average Ratings

Value for Money	9.3/10
Overall rating	9/10

100% Recommended3 out of 3 Reviews

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By Terence Wass on 10th Feb 2007

Terence Wass's Ratings

Value for money	9/10
Overall value	9/10
Terence Wass's recommendation

Good Points

Good looks, versatility, picture and sound quality, supplied equipment

Bad Points

Lack of video playback formats.

General Comments

From out of the box I thought "Oh yes, I like the weight of this".
Out with the old VCR, out with the old DVD player and in with the Goodmans.
Power on time to select the region. Remote was dead. Checked the batteries with a volt meter and found one was fully charged and one was completely dead... out of the same packet. Unusual. One good battery later and we're off.

From the top....
It looks good, not as chunky as some players and it has a nice mirrored front.
The front panel available inputs could have used a cover to improve the aesthetics but it's still a looker. A bright electroluminescent display conveys the information in an easy to read manner and status lights glow from behind the mirrored surface.

Being male, I ignored the instruction manual and started connecting up all the spaghetti round the back. There are more input and output connectors than I will ever use; Optical, Coaxial, SCART, Cr/Y/Cb, RCA, and S-Video.
I wonder why these units don't come with shorter audio leads; the amp is sitting right on top of it after all, not that it really matters, all the wiring is hidden round the back.

Test one, power it up, crank up the AA amplifier to 0 (loudest) and listen for hissing or buzzing. Very quiet, just a barely audible hiss some of which is produced by the amp itself; a good start. My previous DVD player by Pacific produced so much buzzing, people in the room would have to raise their voices to be heard above it.

Next test, the menu.
Manual still not required. Whoever designed the menu put some thought into its' usability because it is very intuitive. The Goodmans auto-tuned the channels but failed to order them, this job must be done manually.
One thing about the menu that could irk slightly is the Auto-tune option is at the top of the menu and does not confirm the choice before starting off another scan.
The scan cannot be cancelled.
The scan takes a few minutes.
I accidentally did this once when I wanted to change the order of the channels.
Only once.

CD time.
I replaced my old DVD player because it stopped recognising audio CDs.
Pressing the open/close button (all the buttons have a good solid feel to them) causes the drawer to open after a short pause and in goes "OK Computer" by Radiohead.
The Goodmans produces a good sound, crisp high end, clear mid-range and warm bass with no attenuation caused by heavy beats. A big "Thumbs up".
Building your own play-list is also very easy as the menu continues to be intuitive in this area too.

MP3 CD.
No problems here either, easy navigation through the subdirectories. This unit also plays MP3 DVDs. Yes, that is useful isn't it? All your favourite music on one disc effortlessly handled by this player.

Hard Drive recording.
So, you select "hard drive" and press record. It records. You press pause, it pauses. You press stop, it stops.
You can rename your recordings and dump them onto DVD.
All these processes are very simple.
I'm sure if I picked up the manual I would find out that I could do all manner of other things with these recordings such as editing or dubbing, but as it stands I will pick up the manual when I actually need to do these things, which I probably never will.

Time Shift.
What a beautiful idea; pause live television.
I've never had this functionality before but it is so useful.
You've Been Framed was about to start so I thought I would have a play and pressed the "time shift" button.
My kids like to watch You've Been Framed so I called them down to watch it, they had missed the beginning by the time they'd finished on the computer upstairs.
"Aww dad, we've missed some!"
Not to worry, I just rewound time a bit to the start of the show to a simultaneous "Wow!" from both of them.
We then skipped past the advert break to "Cool!" and watched the particularly funny bits over and over again to hysterical laughter.
I just wish that there was the option to save the stored video created by the time shift function, but there isn't. I should have pressed record shouldn't I?
But skipping past the adverts? Pausing TV to make a cuppa or answer the phone (or a call of nature) is something I will never want to be without again.

I wonder
I decided to dump a load of video files from my PC to a blank DVD (various formats, sizes, compression ratios etc) and see if the Goodmans would play any of them.
If it did, I would have to pick myself up off the floor in awe only to fall back to my knees and bow down to the ground chanting "I'm not worthy, I'm not worthy"

It didn't play them. It won't play XVID or none DVD compliant MPEG files.
This is a shame but not the end of the world.
So to recap, it does everything except order the channels for you and play all the PC video formats. Can I justifiably complain here? Of course not.

Weighing in at 120 Great British pounds, this remarkable machine left the opposition twitching on the canvas long ago.
It looks sexy. It has connectivity. It has quality running all through it. It's cheap.
If I could verify it's longevity I would have given it perfect tens but I only bought it yesterday.

Do yourself a favour, buy one.
Oh, and apparently it has a fan, but I couldn't hear it.

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