written by Gote Johansson. on 05/03/2002
Good Points
1) Price/performance is outstanding. 2) easy to change to specific region or to region free. 3) exceptionally easy to remove the Macrovision copy protection (and it works!). It's controlled through menus, no hardware modifications is needed.
Bad Points
1) The tray seems to be a bit flimsy. 2) there is a disturbing sound when entering the subtitles menu (however, I've been told that the Cyberhome ADL528 has the same sound)). It disappears after the menu selection.
(I'm a newbie, maybe this sound is the case with EVERY player...)
General Comments
What a GREAT player, the Dansai 852(S) DVD player! I haven't yet tested all the formats it can read, but most of them and I'm impressed!
I bought mine in Sweden for only 145 USD, which made it one of the cheapest ones here.
Before buying it, I looked it (and a United 3151) up on the web and I found lots of good reviews here and elsewhere. The hacks page was also an important input to my decision.
Regarding the hacks, it should be pointed out that there should be NO disc in the player, when entering SETUP, STOP, PREV and NEXT. If there is a disc in the player, the secret menu only appears in rare cases. Without a disc in the player, it appears every time. The hack at http://www.vcdhelp.com didn't show that.
For hacks, take a look at http://www.dansai.freehosting.net.
I recommended the player to lots of people. Several of my neighbours and friends bought one after that. :-)
For Swedish readers of this review, I can tell that I bought my player at SIBA. They (of course!) don't know anything about the hacks. They said that the hardware needed to be modified, which is totally wrong.
If I were to wish for someting, it would be one more SCART interface. There is one on my player.
Now, stop reading and go and get one before they are sold out!